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Quebec Plans To Require Website Blocking, Studies New Internet Access Tax

Posted by Soulskill on from the welcome-to-the-information-supertollroad,-eh dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist reports that the Government of Quebec released its budget (PDF) yesterday featuring two Internet-related measures that are sure to attract attention and possible litigation. First, it is moving forward with plans to study a new tax on residential Internet services in order to provide support for the cultural sector. Second, the government says it will be introducing a new law requiring ISPs to block access to online gambling sites. The list of blocked sites will be developed by Loto-Quebec, a government agency. The government views this as a revenue enhancing measure because it wants to channel gamblers to its own Espacejeux, the government's own online gaming site.

3 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Cher gouvernement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why would you expect two languages separated by an ocean, as well as several centuries (mostly ones where long-distance communication was extremely limited), to still remain similar?

  2. Re: Cher gouvernement by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    English as spoken in, say, the southern US had its origin in Elizabethan times. But no law has ever prevented the dialect from changing from its original form or required that visitors use a specific set of words and expressions. Meanwhile in France and every other part of Europe, stop signs say STOP. In Montréal, they have to say ARRÊT.

  3. Blocking gambling sites by substance2003 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Having heard too many stories of gambling addicts loosing everything in Casinos and even seeing it happen to my own father. I might have gotten behind the idea of blocking gambling websites if they blocked all of them period. But since Loto-Quebec will be making it so that people go to their online site instead it's not a move to help reduce the risk. Just making sure our own provincially hungry fox guards the hen house. People will still loose their shirts in the end and we'll still have these establishment who end up putting people in poverty which I find is only a short term boost to the provincial revenue for a long term lost.

    I'm not even certain it's a good thing for Loto-Quebec since it would open the door to other provinces and countries blocking access to Quebec gambling sites. Who knows where this could end up? Once you start blocking one group of sites, you could start blocking other groups too.

    In the end, I don't think it will be seen as legal. Someone will surely challenge this all the way to the supreme court.