A Censorship
Threat to Online Casinos Raises Concerns
This past week the Internet Service Provider Adelphia blocked
all online casinos and gambling related websites from their
Southeastern US based subscribers. Industry experts believe this
is an early warning sign that online casinos are under major
threats due to legality and censorship concerns.
Mark Lesnick, an online casinos businessman and expert said, “I
read yesterday that on March 1, between 6 to 9:30 AM Eastern
Time Adelphia (an ISP provider) had blocked ALL websites with
Gambling related content… This included Neteller, gaming sites,
gaming affiliate sites; ANT site with gambling content. Sites
like MSN, Yahoo, Retail websites, and other sites without
gambling content were not blocked.”
Adlephia was contacted about their temporary lock down of access
to online casinos and the company, now under the auspices of
Time Warner, said they were experiencing technical difficulties
during those hours which would soon be fixed.
Since most online casinos are based outside of the United States
to avoid American gambling regulations and laws, maybe Adelphia
did just have a router issue?
Nevertheless, Lesnick believes this is not the case. “The
individual who experienced this problem was unable to access an
(online gambling) affiliate web site which is hosted in several
different locations throughout the US,” he said. “This was not
just isolated to companies located outside the country,” he
added. Lesnick himself operates and manages online casinos and
gambling conferences, and believes this Adelphia incident is not
just an isolated case.
Lesnick continued, “It is plausible to believe that the US
Justice Department is placing the same pressure now on Internet
Service Providers (ISP) as they did 2 years ago on the Media
companies and the Online Advertising Firms (like Google and
Yahoo).”
Have online casinos met a new match of regulation? Will other
Internet Service Providers follow Adelphia’s lead?
Whatever the result, this will certainly open up a new set of
conspiracy theories, ideas, and debates regarding the legality
of online casinos, and the censorship of material on the
Internet. The issue is larger than just that of monitoring and
regulating online casinos because it extends beyond online
gambling and into the sphere of censorship as a whole –
restricting access to certain sites by paying customers.
While most censorship debates and cases on the Internet have
revolved around pornographic sites in the past, online casinos
are clearly now in the fray.
A Virginia state law in 2000 would have outlawed materials on
the Internet that are “harmful to juveniles,” such as certain
writing and images. But the Constitution protects writings and
images, and nothing about online casinos was explicitly passed
into law.
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