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Quebec Government May Force ISPs To Block Gambling Websites
New submitter ottawan- writes: In order to drive more customers to their own online gambling website, the Quebec government and Loto-Quebec (the provincial organization in charge of gaming and lotteries) are thinking about forcing the province's ISPs to block all other online gambling websites. The list of websites to be blocked will be maintained by Loto-Quebec, and the government believes that the blocking will increase government revenue by up to $27 million (CAD) per year.
You can tax online gambling too, if you want. Its more direct, and you can keep more of the money as gambling organisation. No kiosk middleman.
Nice to see that American politicians are not the only crooks with too much power. Now what do we do about it?
A lot of the world's online gambling industry happens to be located in the province. (Porn too but that's a different story)
Will this have an adverse effect, such as the industry leaving? Do these pay taxes to the government anyway? Many are "natives"...
Will this really happen or just some rumors? This initiative has failure written all over it..
Interestingly, the leader of the opposition owns the largest ISP in the province and he's quite right-wing. Not sure he's gonna go for that...
You can figure out a way if they really manage to get ISPs to block the gambling sites.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
which is that you need a license from Lotto-Québec to operate in the gambling buisness.
If we don't want to block foreign gambling web sites, we should also allow foreign lotteries to operate in Quebec.
Personally, if I wanted to play poker online, I would use Lotto-Québec, which I trust a lot more than an offshore company. How do I know they are not selling my hand to another player?
By having a product that people want to use.
Quebec, have you ever heard of proxy servers?
They are fairly easy to set up.
You get your *trusted friend* living in another jurisdiction to leave a computer on for you.
Point your Internet connections at the out-of-Quebec computer and you're good to go.
Seriously, Loto Quebec is basically the law when it comes to gambling stuff. Anybody who doesn't pay them, cannot legally operate any sort of gambling or giveaways in Quebec. Which is why 99.99% of online giveaways, even if they are based in Canada, exclude Quebec.
$27M coming in
How much is it going to cost to implement, enforce and maintain? More than $27M probably.
Doing so is illegal under WTO rules:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...
A lot of the world's online gambling industry happens to be located in the province. (Porn too but that's a different story).
So that's where all the ultra hairy women sites are!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Blocking them will in no way increase your revenue, it will in fact drive more people to your competitors via proxies, dark net, you name it - they'll go out of their way just to piss on your attempts at limiting their choices.
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is located inside the Quebec borders, and they operate a large datacenter dedicated to online gambling.. They host many high-profile gambling site.
This is not a "foreign" operation at all.
Will ppl have to VPN through the USA or another canadian province to come back to a QC operated gambling site. That is ridiculous..
https://www.gamingcommission.c...
The real crime is that Loto Quebec partnered with a private corporation called Amaya Gaming which also offers online gambling to North America, out of Quebec. This is the same company that recently bought Poker Stars.
According to the latest news, they plan to block everyone but Amaya Gaming. Essentially, they are handing a monopoly to a non-governmental agency. If that isn't corruption, I don't know what is...
Source: http://casino-review.net/quebe...
Gov't to ISP: Block all gambling web sites that are on our blacklist.
ISP to Gov't: "Block all gambling web sites" - hey, that's a great idea. I think we'll start with the list we already use to block our employees from going to gambling web sites while they are at work.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I used to work for an online gambling company based in Montreal in the late 1990's. All I can say is that online gambling is a HUGE scam, hands down. Major players in the industry are fraud artists and thugs. The operation, unbeknownst to my coworkers and I at the time, was being illegally run (yes, live pay gaming servers) run out of downtown Montreal (3100 Cote Vertu, 3rd floor) - although they were 'legally' licensed to operate in Antigua, which they (falsely) claimed that they were.
The operation was run by Jewish mobsters - (convicted fraudsters who were known to police). It was an illegal racket that raked in millions of dollars. They managed to somehow evade law enforcement for years (payoffs? blackmail? I don't know) until they were able to setup "MIT" - Mowhawk Internet Technologies. MIT is essentially a server farm which hosts online casinos in North America but is physically located on a reserve, thus legally protected by "gray area" laws regarding gambling operations on native reserves. The natives are thrown a few crumbs for allowing the operation to exist, but at the end of the day, the owners were the ones who really benefited and profited from the operation. The natives, once again, are exploited by foreigners...
I won't mention names, but the company in question is famous for aggressive marketing techniques.. like buying fish sticks on ebay that supposedly look like Jesus or the Virgin Mary for ridiculous sums of money... like $10,000.
This information is not new to anyone who has worked in the industry. And there are many.
Blocking these criminal websites would really be doing people a favour.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.