Australian Online Gambling List

February 27, 2008

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has produced what is being referred to as a “blacklist” of illegal online gambling sites. The list is usually a list of a few hundred web pages - not websites - that are considered unsuitable and are to be blocked by Internet Service Providers.

The ISPs and content filtering companies get these lists and update the current list that they already have so that they can ban the listed URLs. However, this time around things went a little differently. So differently, in fact, that many of the online gambling industry was shocked.

The ACMA sent the ISPs and content filtering a list about three months ago telling them what URLs they were to block, and the online gambling industry got confused. What had happened to the roughly 100 pages that were supposed to be blocked? It had grown to more than 800 web pages.

They asked the ACMA what was going on and they said that the sites are illegal online gambling sites that have been defined as inappropriate by the federal government. The second list that they were receiving was to be blocked as well.

The ACMA said that normally they would be sending out only one list and that this list would comprise of the regular sites as well as all of the online gambling sites that were to be blocked. Because of the high number of complaints that they had received regarding online gambling sites, they had to send out a second list this time around but did not see this having to happen again in the future.

 

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