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Australians Barred From Gambling Online
An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story today about online gambling. Australians will be banned from gambling on online casinos -- domestic or offshore.
The deal, made on the day before Federal Parliament goes into winter recess, means that in six months' time interactive gambling operators will not be able to enforce debts owed by Australians gambling on their sites."
The bit that makes your debts to the online casinos nullified would also nullify any gains. Like someone else said, they do it by erasing the transactions from your credit card.
Australians can get connectivity to overseas casinos - no problem. No blocking by ISPs, no need to create blacklists, etc.
The Australian Government, within the next six months, is required to implement additional legislation which will prohibit banks from honoring credit card debits originating from transactions with casinos. They'll still have to honor credits, though. You can tell whether a credit card has been issued by an Australian bank by looking at the first four digits.
When an Australian gambles at an overseas casino and wins, they'll get to keep their winnings, because the casino will post a credit to their credit card account. When they lose, though, the casino will attempt to post a debit transaction... which the banks will be required, by legislation, to dishonor.
So Australians will still be able to gamble, but they'll never lose.
So there's no need to prohibit Australians from visiting online casinos overseas, because online casinos overseas will simply refuse to do business with them. You have an Australian credit card number? Sorry, that card isn't accepted here.
This isn't a technological issue, it's a financial "solution" to the "problem" of online gambling. Why bother banning it when the casinos themselves will do it for you?
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I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
Does this mean that if the Australians happen to be abroad (offshore) they will be banned from gambling too? ;-)
Jacco (to e-mail me, please remove all yourclothes) /var/log
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
In Australia, gambling is controlled by the various state governments, who receive a significant fraction of their tax revenue from it - I think the figure in my home state is approximately 10% of state tax collected - that's about 170 AUD (85 USD) per person per year. Faced with the demands of funding stuff while keeping taxes low, raising money by tacitly encouraging gambling by increasing the opportunities to do so has been an easy option. Hence, we have massive mini-casinos full of one-armed bandits scattered throughout our suburbs and towns, horse racing, which you can bet on by phone or in virtually every pub in Australia, and massive casinos in all our major cities, which get most of their revenue from locals rather than tourists.
The federal government, however, has the power to regulate telecommunications, so internet gambling is in their bailiwick. As regular /. readers will know, the current federal government is run by a bunch of wowsers (they brought in the net censorship regs, for instance, and have tried to stack the film classification board with fundamentalist nutballs), and so it's unsurprising that they have tried this ban. If the federal government is being hypocritical, it is doing so only in that states who fund a significant part of their budgets from gambling taxes aren't going to be quite so dependent on the federal government for funds.
About the only surprise is that they have done so in such a clueful way - this stands a chance of actually working.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
--
Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.
Anyone actually from there know if that's all over IL, or just downtown Chi?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
First off, this is not as simple as saying 'they can all welch on their debts'. They can't. Here's why.
First, we have to assume that payment was made to the casino/sportsbook via credit card (because if it was a cash or wire transfer, there would be nothing to refute, it'd be a done deal, right?)
Online gambling operations, at least, the successful ones, firstly, have fairly low credit card limits. You'd be surprised how low. You can only put so much a day and a month into the account.
Rule #1 with Visa (for example, insert other card names as you wish) is that, if you authorized the transaction, then the transaction goes through. You cannot later refute it saying 'I changed my mind'.
Now, you COULD point out that, as gambling is illegal, Visa lending you money for gambling (presuming they knew the merchant was a gambling operation) might be determined illegal, and you might get off on the debt (and lose your credit card, and credit rating, of course). This is what happened in California that one time; some lady had her $50,000 debt to Visa overturned because lending money for gambling is illegal in California, and Visa knew what the merchant was doing.
3) By trying to cancel your bet, you are also presumably admitting to illegally gambling. I don't know what penalties are for this, if any, but...
4) Most online gamblers, the ones the online shops like, are addicts. If you mess over the sportsbook you are betting at by welching on your bet, do you think you will be allowed to bet there again? Do you think they won't share your name and info with other operations? Where are you gonna get your fix? The truth is, many people WILL pay up, though I'm sure some guy who first-times it in and blows his life savings will use this as a loophole and get away with it.
This is where Vegas is gonna lose out, and where North America (and many other states) are missing out.
1) Don't tax the people, tax the casinos. But that doesn't work if you forbid online casinos from operating in your country.
The problem is that online casinos need basically the same license as a meatspace casino to operate, and jurisdictions are not going to let it happen. THey don't realize that the laws are antiquated.
A casino/sportsbook that operates online is just as accessible to americans if the servers are in Antigua as it is if they are in Vegas, or California. IT makes absolutely NO difference as to who can gamble there. The only difference is that, if you chase the business offshore, you lose out on taxing the business, on on the jobs it would create.
Taxing people is a different matter; I'm happy I'm Canadian, and gambling winnings are not taxable. Not lotteries, not casinos, trips to vegas, whatever... not taxable.
No, actually $ is used by Austrlia, Singapore, Canada, just off the top of my head. So running an aussie publication and saying '$' would imply it was australian dollars, quite a difference from US$.
Just as the Pound symbol is used by the UK and Ireland (and no, they aren't the same thing)
Don't assume that because it's 'offshore' that it's 'shady', the two are mutually exclusive. Scams happen on and offshore.
Besides, what's 'offshore' to you might be 'onshore' to a lot of other people.
The sites that run gambling transactions tend to license the software from one of the 2 or 3 main developers of gambling software. These developers, most of them, also run the transaction servers themselves (those running the casinos often don't; they just run websites/do marketing).
Trust of the gaming system is an obvious question... so what do they do? Independent audits. You can look at profit margins, randomly test the games, lots of things to see that these casinos are operating according to the book. Folks, they can't afford not to. The margins for a small online casino are small; one or two people running it will make an okay living off it, a few grand profit a month, but that's it. If the word gets out, even once, that your games are rigged, hello lawsuit, goodbye ALL customers. It just doesn't really happen.
Also... a very large part of online gambling is the ever popular sportsbook... it's a little harder to cheat at that...basically impossible.
Basically, you dno't gambe at some little online casino nobody has ever heard of.. you check out who they are, where they are, what systems they use, and who audits them.
You are correct; that's exactly what the casinos will do if this happens. They will refuse to take payment directly from Australian credit cards.
Payment is also accepted in many other forms, including paypal & western union, and bank wire. These will be more difficult to stop.
This will simply be a waste of time for all involved, and won't really stop online gambling at all.
A quick google search for 'what is the origin of the dollar sign' turned upb ol s/dollarsign
http://130.88.203.73/asktheexperts/faq/aboutsym
What is the origin of the dollar sign ($)?
There have been several theories to account for the symbol $, which was in use long before the introduction of the American currency. Most probably it was an adaptation of the figure `8', representing the Spanish `piece of eight' or eight-real coin.
The name `dollar', however, derives from the Dutch or Low German word daler (in German taler or thaler) - originally Joachimstaler, referring to a coin from the silver mines of Joachimstal, in Bohemia (now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic), which opened in 1516.
Or.. From another site.......
Information on the origin of the symbol for the dollar.
As it turns out, the symbol ($) comes from Spain. the II upon the S
represented the Pillars of Hercules, upon which rests the Spanish
coat of arms. The S came about from the plural for Dollars or Pesos.
In Spanish 1 Dolar, 2 Dolares, 1 Peso, 2 Pesos etc. hence the S. To
identify the United States dollar from all other dollars the S was
superimposed with a U. Hence a US Dollar. In time, people not
understanding the origin and / or due to unclear hand writing, the U
was replaced with II. More time elapsed and to speed up the writing
process, the II became a single I as in $. Now that the $ is
built into virtually all computers, the evolution will probably
stop.
As for how the US came about acquiring the denomination, the
Spanish Embassy in Washington said that when the War of
Independence began, they soon realised how they needed to mint
money which would be recognised as legal tender by the US' allies.
France was approached and asked for permission to base the US
currency on the French 'Livres'. France said no. Then the US' other
ally, Spain, was approached. The Spanish Cortes (Parliament) decided
they would allow the US to base their national currency on the
Spanish Silver Dollar (Dolar de Plata), already in circulation in many
Southern States. However, it appears that the Spanish term 'Dolar'
was derived from the word 'dollar'. So the word itself comes from
somewhere else. The origin of the word 'dollar' is often attributed to
the Bohemian 'taler' (short for joachimstaler from Sankt Joachimsthal
where talers were first made). The Spanish Silver Dollar ('piece of
eight') was patterned after the taler. So I guess we owe Spain and
Bohemia our monetary units. I hope you find this topic as interesting
as I do.
... apart from the horse racing, the pokies, the cricket matches, the .... etc, etc ...
There's already a sizeable grey economy despite the red tape of the Grab Snatch and Take (GST) tax. The average Australian doesn't take much notice of what goes on in Canberra and I seriously doubt whether a fiat dictate on internet gambling is going to make much of an impact. Gambling is really a stupidity tax on people who can't do maths so I suspect this latest triump of parliamentary wisdom is really due to the politicians hating competition.
LL
As the world currently stands you can gamble on your credit card and if you lose you can simply dispute the charges and you're fine. As far as the credit card companies are concerned, no signature, no deal, the merchant (casino) is screwed. The credit card companies have basically behaved how you'd expect, no real innovation, no real proactive movements to securing things from start to finish (ie decent PKI smart cards at a reasonable price). The merchants wear it directly, but the legitimate consumers are wearing it to cover the high fraud rate.
Fortunately capitalism is beginning to scare them. The merchants are pissed off at the enormous chargeback ratio and are looking elsewhere. These days everyone wants to acquire transactions. Mobile phone companies want you to buy cans of coke with your phone etc. etc. etc.
The credit card companies have done as little as possible. Personally I'd like to see them screwed, but I'm pretty sure they'll manage to ride in on the hard work a lot of other people have put in and save their unimaginative arses.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Then the overseas site doesn't need to be able to enforce debt collection.
Buy tokens. Play with tokens. Big Deal.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
You also need legislation telling what you're allowed to read, what you should eat, how much youre allowed to spend, and you need to get permission to have sex too. These are all activites that stupid people make bad choices at, and you obviosly need to control this.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
For god's sake, won't *somebody* think of the children!
.au , lottery draws on the TV 3 days a week, the TAB has a phone betting service, you can buy scratch and win (lose?) tickets at every newsagent in town, and they've *gasp* banned internet gambling.
..*bZzZzZzT* ,er monitor.. *BzZzZzZzT*, ah, review ... *BZZZZZZZZZT* The internet is good! The internet is good!"
Poor little helpless souls, just think of the extra money a family could spend on their children , if only online gambling was banned FOREVER!
Oh wait.
There's poker machines and keno in just about every pub in
Hypocritical bastard politicians - more concerned about the tax drain and Big Business than people's quality of life.
Most aussies would prefer to head off down to the track, or the pub, or the TAB and socialise whilst blowing the family life savings.
Just another thing that makes me wish that shock collars could be fitted to all politicians.
Hey, maybe we could activate them via the internet? It'd be great!
Politician on TV - "I think the internet is evil and we should censor
A man can dream, can't he?
** Windows has detected a mouse movement.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The deal, made on the day before Federal Parliament goes into winter recess, means that in six months' time interactive gambling operators will not be able to enforce debts owed by Australians gambling on their sites."
Most gambling enterprises do not require a right of enforcement. They obtain a transfer of funds in the amount of the wager before the bet has been taken. Then, they "enforce" the debts themselves -- by moving funds in an offshore account they control, governed by foreign laws.
All the law will accomplish is to deny Australians gambling credit. Of course, even there, it is difficult to distinguish gambling credit from plain credit, when the loan is obtained independently from the wager -- thus, either the law will be ineffective, or the law will operate to make any credit to Australian nationals more risky.
And assuming that no java applets are involved?
Then again, with the preponderance of shitty sites that require javascript for all kinds of stupid reasons, plus needless use of frames, you might be out of luck anyway... I have a special silver sledgehammer waiting for me in heaven to pound those programmers responsible back into limbo every time they crawl out.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Any corporation would be stupid not to implement some kind of proprietry regime in which to protect their investment, why should a government be any different? Gambling is a multi-billion dollar tax generator for the Government, and it's in their interests (and mine) to deter the bulk of Australian gamblers from getting online. Gamblers will go to where the best odds are, and my betting dollar says that won't be in .au. I don't gamble, but the money gamblers generate in tax needs to stay here in Australia, not to the hundreds of .au tax free casinos in America.
Of course it's a pointless exercise. We know that - Alston knows it - but it delays the erosion of revenue until hopefully somebody figures out an even more difficult obstacle to place in the path of Aussie wannabe Internet gamblers.
Instantly setting up a host of sites designed to obfuscate where the gambler actually lives:
1: user@.au "buys" stuff at bogus e-commerce site
2: Account credited to anongambler@domain.!au
3: Gamble it away
4: If balance is postive, credit it back to bogus e-commerce site.
5: If it gts tricky, credit it to a real e-commerce site and get it sent as "gifts".
Does this mean that they will also be stopping online share trading? How many people use e-trading as a "classy" form of gambling because they don't know as much as they think they do.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
The move represents a backflip for the Government, as the Communications Minister, Senator Alston, has previously maintained that the fact gambling sites were overseas would be sufficient deterrent to punters.
..and for extra credit, who in our Australian audience can recall how Alston came to this remarkable conclusion? Anyone? Anyone? Beuler? That's right, he figured ozzies would have to "make a long distance call" to use offshore online casinos. We all knew he'd figure it out eventually, who figured it would take him 12 months?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Just get the money up front. I expect all online casino operators will require this from now on.
There was a case a few years ago where some bitch in California sued her credit card company because she'd run up a massive gambling debt on her card, and wanted to reneg because gambling's illegal here. The shocking thing is, she *won*, and Visa had to eat her gambling debt.
I think the judge should have taken note of her confession to a misdemeanor, and referred her to the D.A.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I live in Tasmania, Australia, and this decision has been in the works for a while.
Australia has lots of legal gambling outlets. Most of them are owned by the same people who own the mass media.
Putting two and two together, I'd be willing to bet that this is not so much an attempt to stop the 'scourge' of net gambling, but to prevent leeching of profits from the casinos.
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Using the holy grail of OSes...
One can easily see why most governments would try to outlaw online gaming. Taxes no other reasons why. Online gambling epsecially offshore gambling removes the currency normally given to the state/country. Here in the US well in NY at least we have OTB (Off Track Betting) which is monopolized... errr, controlled by the state, and anything in relation to horse racing passes through there without question, taxes are paid, Uncle S(c)am is happy. Lottery same thing.
Gambling is big business anywhere you go, and unless money is coming back into the state, they'll here none of it. Sort of similar to what the Secret Service did to Gold Age, a raid of their business. Governments despise people not paying money to them, and anyone doing so they're going to make sure they get them. What happened with Gold Age, is simple, no one pays taxes for buying `e-gold` and much can't be done to trace anything.
Big Bro gets pissed, we bitch, a week later another circumvention procedure takes over. Snowball Effects 101
Want Root?
> And yet insurance is emminently respectable.
Insurance is another ponzi scheme, just like gambling.
If people want to blow/"invest" their money, that's their prerogative, and others should have no right to tell them what they can or can't do with it.
Stateside Fosters, it's Canadian for a joke.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm so finding an internet gambling site...
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
Yeah, amusing how the Church in the UK grumbles on about gambling being evil, but uses its money in futures and other speculative markets.
Then again, theres no point in being religious if you cant be a little hypocritical.
It is a rather cunning way to get some degree of self- regulation
If they'd done the same thing for internet porn they'd have won applause.
no freedoms reduced, just making net companies think about the consequences.
Might speed up online currency develoment tho (to get around it)
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
So there's no need to prohibit Australians from visiting online casinos overseas, because online casinos overseas will simply refuse to do business with them. You have an Australian credit card number? Sorry, that card isn't accepted here.
the first piece of Australian internet legislation that can probably be enforced.
why this has happened:
as well as obvious tax controls, Australia has recently been having issues with "problem gamblers", otherwise known as gambling addicts.
online gambling has created a huge difficulty in trying to control problem gambling. if someone can't gamble at the casino or the tab or somewhere else because they are a known problem gambler, they could just go home and gamble online.
a gambling addiction is a very dangerous thing, it directly affects the lives of those around you... sometimes family or co-workers wake up to discover someone they trust has gambled away their house.
a communications minister who doesn't "get" the internet...
Also, if an overseas casino just labels its transactions as from Bob's Fishmarket then how does the bank know, and are they liable under the legislation if they didn't know it was a casino?
Because since it is not illegal to gamble in an off-shore casino (only for them to collect on losses), any Australian with an ounce of sense would dispute the charges on his credit card with the bank.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Action sequence: man sitting at computer, frowning. Monitor faced away from camera. long silence... Narrator: "Poor" fosters, Australian for beer!
I agree with Australia's decision. I think a lot of people have a backwards understanding of contracts and personal freedoms. A contract may be an agreement between two parties, but a legally enforceable contract is an agreement between three at least and one of them is always the government (meaning us)! When you say a contract is legally enforceable, that means the rest of society is willing to force each of the parties to abide by the terms of the contract. There are LOTS of contract that aren't legally enforceable and shouldn't be, contracts with minors, contracts that involve crime (for example a hit man can't sue his employers for non payment), and contracts involving the sale or slavery of humans! Consider the case of online gambling. Australia has not enforcement power over these online casinos. They don't know if they are crooked or anything about them at all and have no power to fix any problems. OK, fine you say, so let the buyer beware. Right, I agree with this, but it becomes a two way street. In the same way that these entities are beyond the power of the Australian government, the Australian government will simply refuse to enforce any debt these groups claim to be owed! In other words this Australian government is simply say that these casinos are beyond all possible regulation in all ways. It is a plain case of let the buyer beware, for both parties (anarchy is never pretty). If the casinos wish to do business in a country and have the country enforce debts owed them, it is fair to expect them to allow regulation by the country.