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Search Engines Break AU Online Gambling Ban?
An anonymous reader writes "According to a ZDNet report, authorities in Australia are investigating Google and a few other search engines for possible breach of the country's online gambling laws. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 prohibits advertising of gambling services on Web sites where 'it is likely that the majority of that site's users are physically present in Australia'. Banned services include online casino-style gaming services such as roulette, poker, craps, online poker machines and blackjack. Breaching the Act carries a maximum penalty of AU$220,000 ($168,000) per day for individuals and AU$1.1 million ($843,000) per day for corporations."
Sounds like Australia wants to cash out
I just KNEW one of these days, that "I'm Feeling Lucky" button would get them in trouble.
Google can toss a set of statistics towards the cops showing the sheer amount of accesses from everywhere _ELSE_ compared to Australia. That overrides the majority requirement, I'd think.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Ha ha! They just don't want to lose any of their precious income from Pokie machines at the pubs. Those babies bring in $50,000 per annum - don't want that cash heading elsewhere now, do we!
... Australians have been unable to access their various stock brokerages through Google.
Seriously, banning gambling has got to be one of the more evident forms of government paternalism. Business is about evaluating risks and taking them. It just happens that gambling is typically a bad risk.
And sure, some people can be habitual gamblers... but that applies to just about any other activity in life.
If you try and make stupidity illegal, you'll never want for laws.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Is google really a web 'site'? If you go to google Australia You're presented with very little more than a web-facing interface to a search-engine.
Certainly, if you type in 'Casinos in Melbourne' you will probably find a lot of adverts at the side of your search - but the ads are usually fairly relevant to what *you* (mr consumer) wanted to find anyway.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Maybe it's time to start looking into that again.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Google just need to pull the gambling ads from their Australia specific sites. Can't be that hard.
Anyone else sick of this stuff?
Say Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo got together and cut Australia off for one day with a black screen of "Search Unavailable Today; Contact the Australian the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts for more information".
-- Terry
Evidence
Throw the book at them. Google deserves banishment from the Earth for this satanic act against the Australian citizenry.
Block Google's IP and be done with it. Google isn't breaking any laws and http://www.google.com.au/ goes bye-bye.
You stupid fucking posers.
The search engine case aside (probbably far more complicated with Google having physical presence in most countries), how can Australia hope to regulate a website that's neither physically in Australia, nor run by Australians?
If the news article is right (and it's certainly possible it's completely wrong), all that has to be true is that mostly Australians visit the site, and online gambling is advertised. So if I (A US citizen) setup a website that Australians really like, then put advertising for gambling sites on it, I've somehow broken Australian law.
This whole law sounds very fishy. Is Australia going to seek extradition for anyone running a website targeting Australians that advertises gambling (and later on maybe whatever else they don't like)?
To any Australians complaining about how the US wants to extend control of the law beyond our borders I hold up a shiny mirror. To anyone else, maybe your country is next.
AccountKiller
but they charge to gamble, so I guess that doens't apply here.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Do a search on www.google.com.au for "gambling" or "casino", no ads on the side. Do a search for "shrimp"...ad's ahoy. Pretty quick response!
Or does damn near everything in Australia having to do with computers, telephones, or ISPs seem to have problems? What's with the Australian government and high tech stuff?
Is it just me or governement imposed bans were meant to be broken ? If im in Australia and i'm an addicted gambler will a ban actually prevent me from gambling ? A ban only makes it harder, but it won't stop the true addicts.
The same has happened before with alchol and OxyContin bans. In the later case, it is relatively easy to get on the street. Is this really helping anyone ? Even the prevention argument seems pretty bleak.
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
Google should just close down their .au site until Australia respects freedom of speech. To an American, this law seems absurd.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Don't criminals love to gamble?
Methinks they are beating their drum a bit to show they are not the civilservant slackers they appear to be.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
You do realize that Google has an Australian office, right?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
You do realize that he said excluding Google, right?
And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be bannana-shaped.
I guess that all the computers at SLASHDOT CENTRAL have gone down. That is what those dumbasses get for running windows...
More like a protection racket considering Australia runs its own state lottery.
Try asking Yahoo how their case for advertising Nazi memorabilia on pages that could be seen in France went.
This whole law sounds very fishy. Is Australia going to seek extradition for anyone running a website targeting Australians that advertises gambling (and later on maybe whatever else they don't like)?
This sounds like a Simpsons episode waiting to happen.
Be sure to bring a frog!
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Well, you could look at what happened to this guy. man faces extradition to US
He broke no Australian laws, never set foot in the US and is facing extradition.
Waking Up - There must be a better way to start the day.
Australia has a VERY vibrant gambling scene. There are areas of the country where people pile most of their monthly salary into slot machines (which they call "pokies"). Australia has one of the highest concentration of poker machines in the world, and a high percentage of gambling addicts per capita.
Australia isn't interested in banning gambling as it brings in so much money. They just want to ban online gambling, as the money is likely to leave the country and not get taxed by the Australian government! This is protectionism, not some moral judgement on the part of the Australian government.
I wonder how long it'll be till Bush passes a law so that non-US companies can no longer advertise to US customers. It'll stop money leaving the US economy after all, and reduce the gaping trade deficit.
This news items has been grouped YRO because... erm... it's your right to have casino ads.. *cough*
Well, does it?
In case you haven't noticed I think the whole situation is stupid.
This is another example on how monetary fines are a joke. It's not just Austrailia - it happens everywhere.
If you're Joe Shmoe in Austrailia and you have a banner ad for an online casino on your personal blog web site, you can get fined for almost $200,000 a day. That's a LOT more then most of the population earns per YEAR. Yet, if you're a corporation, it's $850,000 - which is a lot more but most corporations could afford to pay out at least a day's worth of fines (and if not, you bankrupt the company and go home) whereas the 200k would put any individual out on the street - no car, house, nothing.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
If the entire Internet was dumbed down to meet the restrictions of every government on the world together, there would be no content at all.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
He broke no Australian laws There's no software piracy laws in Australia?
I live in Sydney, and every pub and club here has rows of poker machines. The influx of gambling services is quite a problem here, and is having a huge social cost. We probably have more gamling machines than anyone else in the world now. Not to mention two large casios in Sydney and Melbourne.
If the government really wanted to limit gambling it would target the gambling in clubs and casinos, however, I believe the real reason for the online gambling ban is more likely to be lobbying from the clubs and pubs (who make most of their money from pokie machines now).
Of course, all it means is that Australians put their credit card details into foreign internet gambling sites, and the government doesn's get any tax revenue from internet gambling at all.
google.com.au . RTFA, man. Please.
There's nothing I like more than calling people on not following their own advice, so thanks for that opportunity. Had you actually read my post, you might realize I wasn't talking about Google (I specifically excluded it). Perhaps you should follow your own advice, and pay a little more attention to what you're responding to.
AccountKiller
> as does the fact that he's being celebrated, while another president who actually improved your economy alot got shafted for having sex with an intern
Celibrated? Not in most of the media I've read. Bush is certainly more controvertial than Clinton ever was. He won by some of the slimmest margins we've seen in a long time.
As for "getting the shaft," Clinton didn't actually get into any trouble for it. He voluntarily gave up his license to practice law to avoid sanctions from the Bar Association (his fellow attournies) for lying to a court about it (e.g. over allegations of perjery, but *not* over allegations of adultery), but for all the sound and fury, he was never convicted of any crime that I've heard of, nor was he removed from office by force or otherwise (his term limits were up--he served his 8 years in office). Hell, his wife didn't even divorce him for it, and now she's likely to run for president in '08. The fuss over it was nowhere near as bad as the uproar over Iraq by any metric I've ever seen.
Anyhow, as badly as he's disliked abroad, George W. Bush will leave office in '08, conspiracy theories to the contrary notwithstanding. Of course, he's most likely to be replaced by Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton if you believe the current talk.
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Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Seems that the rules once again seen to favour the media, its not ok to advertise or run online gambling sites in australia, but fine to bet on sports? and advertise ?
e /engine.cfm?l1=HOME&NEWVISITDT=17August2005_11_16_ AM&r=505963220183
a spx
http://tipping.foxsports.news.com.au/cfm/ft/engin
advertise sports betting (gambling)
and heres 'approved' sports betting for a australian site
http://www.tabsportsbetnsw.com.au/Sports/Default.
Can anyone tell me how they are getting away with this?
One country sueing a global internet site is like sueing the satellite company for broadcasting globally advertising that might be unwanted in a particular region. If somebody is watching a US channel and gets an ad for someplace in Vegas, do they sue HBO?
From my understanding, the country portals function to filter results through a quicker server and perhaps with more local relevance... if Australia can sue over google having generic ads then next will we see middle-eastern countries sueing over the ability to search out individuals online without headscarves?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What gives you the impression that they "hope to regulate" these sites? Laws of this kind are mostly about grandstanding. The purpose of such a law is to give the voters the impression that the government is doing everything in its power to address the issue. In some cases, "everything in its power" is 100% of Sweet Fuck All, but most voters who support nanny-state laws like this don't think in terms of efficacy, but the principle of the matter. The principle, apparently, is that such laws should exist whether they help or not.
And don't think this is a strictly Australian phenomenon. Show me a country that isn't like this.
Don't punish me for the asshats in government, I don't vote for either of the major parties. But Im sure if you blocked Canberra (Australia's capital) from porn sites they would remove the law the next day.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
That button will only be used to point at .xxx sites.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No entry found for sueing.
Did you mean suing?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Almost every pub (bar) in australia has more gambling machines than you would think believable. If grandma stays at home and does her gambling online, the government would miss out on the massive revenue it collects from poker machine taxes.
Australia to Google: "Keep those links to gambling sites on the left side of the page where they're legal. Put the same links in a box on the right side of the page and you're asking for trouble."
The search engine case aside (probbably far more complicated with Google having physical presence in most countries), how can Australia hope to regulate a website that's neither physically in Australia, nor run by Australians?
The law was brought in when Australia's "Technology Minister" was a man described by The Register as "World's Biggest Luddite". As far as he was concerned, if it appeared on his monitor, it was in Australia, somehow. It won votes from a group of people who would never use that sinful interweb thingy anyway.
So we had a law written by people who didn't know what the Internet really was, to win votes from people who didn't know what the Internet was..
IF AU dosen't like it, they should ban Google. It's not googles job to ban sites that countries don't like, its the countries job.
TruePunk | Games
The more I hear about Australia and their crazy conservative laws (seems like there's a new story every 4 days!) the more I think they should just disconnect from the rest of the world... Damn censorship, etc. No porn, no gambling, no violent media, etc, etc. What is this country run by, the Amish?
... how can Australia hope to regulate a website that's neither physically in Australia, nor run by Australians?
Uh, because Google does business in Australia? Last time I checked if you operate a business in Australia you are subject to the law in Australia. I'm pretty sure (or at least I hope) it is the same situation in the USA.
To any Australians complaining about how the US wants to extend control of the law beyond our borders I hold up a shiny mirror
Yeah that's great, except that google is operating *inside* Australia. I think it is only fair that a business operates according the law (I know it may be a difficult concept to grasp that some countries expect companies to actually obey the law, but please try).
From a WTO ruling last year: "The ruling followed a suit by Antigua and Barbuda, claiming U.S. restrictions amounted to unfair trade practices. The economy of the Caribbean nation relies heavily on Internet gambling. The nation points out that the United States allows gambling within its borders. And, in the case of state lotteries, the gambling is sometimes government-sponsored.
The Caribbean country views the WTO ruling as a victory. It sees two options for the United States. The first is that the United States must ban all gambling. The second option would be to grant offshore companies access to the market. The Justice Department did not return calls for comment."
So, it's interesting that the Australian government is taking a stance against Google and online gambling, considering that they are part of the WTO as well. I imagine that this will only leave them open to a suit by the small countries to force them to open their borders up to online gambling.
Then again, the WTO ruling hasn't had much effect on the States, where online gambling is still in pretty murky areas. On the other hand, one look at Google for searches such as poker or online poker and you'll find ad-sense placements filled to the brim. I think until someone actually slaps the search engines on the wrist and sets clear precedence, they will continue to see it as a (lucrative) revenue stream.
Are you trolling or are you an actual retard?
There's a difference?
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
That can't be a case where "it is likely that the majority of that site's users are physically present in Australia". Unless they mean the Australian version of Google. Even so, it's a teeny segment of Google's search engine, so the majority of Google users aren't in Australia.
antipaucity
That's teach to working class! Take all mee money will ya! NAFTA for you! CAFTA for you! [international country/continent code]FTA for you!
We have online gambling laws? Next they'll make it illegal to download pornography!