Slashdot Mirror
Quebec Bill Would Force Internet Firms To Block Access To Online Gaming Sites (montrealgazette.com)
New submitter rotoblobule writes that in order to help Quebec's lottery service fight against illegal gaming sites, "the Quebec government is currently passing bill 74, which will impose mandatory banning by internet providers of a list of online gaming sites." Here's stories about the pending legislation in French and English, and a relevant excerpt from the bill itself: "To monitor online gambling, the Consumer Protection Act is amended to require Internet service providers to block access to illegal gambling sites entered on a list drawn up by the Societe des loteries du Quebec, which must report...if service providers fail to comply with the Act."
"Internet firms"? "Online gaming?" What a misleading headline.
The law books are full of unenforceable laws. This one is nothing new and won't be the last. In Canada, local regulations are trumped by Provincial acts, which are trumped by Federal acts, which are trumped by the constitution.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The whole province is broke from corruption so Loterie Quebec is getting leaned on to make more money.
They would have to classify VPN's and proxies as ISP's and block all know non complaint ones. That's a hard problem unless you clamp down on speech like in China where they will eventually more or less block everything that isn't whitelisted. It is just not a problem that can be solved.
What you can do is invalidate financial transactions legally which will require the gamblers to send money ahead of time which means they won't get into credit card debit as easily. You can also try to track payouts back to people and take the money but really there is no point that since gamblers always lose in the end; it would be an expense to police and there wouldn't that much money coming back.
I can't believe that people in USA are so stupid that they actually believe that only english exist in the world.... Wait, yes I believe it !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Well, Quebec is the only province in Canada that actually have a plan to counter corruption. Canada is a country build on corruption since 1867!
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Don't forget Hydro Quebec!
Mostly random stuff.
yeah, that's working so well.
biggest source of organized crime in canada... but the counter corruption plan is working so well.
quebec is the useless festering shithole of canada.
Quebec Bill Would Force Internet Firms To Block Access To Online Gaming Sites
"To monitor online gambling,
"Gambling" is not the same thing as "gaming."
Can some editor do their job and fix this?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Will they Crack down on western union? and other places used to move the funds to the sites?
I do not mind the lottery's continuing existence as a tax on people bad in Math. But I do resent the government monopoly on this particular business. Those "gaming sites" are not inherently evil — they are only illegal, because they compete with the state's offering...
And while the private casino slot machines pay back between 82% and 98% of the money wagered by players, the state lotteries pay back from 49.5% to 73.6% (sorry, can't find a similar table for Canada)... If I ran such a racket, I'd try to smother the competition too, I suppose...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yeah, not like their named their site after the British slang for urinating ('having a slash').
-Matt
If you find someone in Quebec who only knows a few words of English, chances are those words will be swear words, and will be used fluently. Of course, the majority of the population speaks English fluently, whether as first or second language, and is quite capable of laughing at the assnat.
Quebec is the only province in Canada that needs to have a *plan* to counter corruption. The other provinces find regular laws keep it in check just fine. But when the government makes a public announcement that they HAVE to do business with the mafia because there aren't any legitimate sources for things like pavement, you need a special plan. Or another special plan. They come along every 30 years or so.
Ohh that's right we also have copyright, 'hate' speech, and other content they want to censor. We might as well just give up our internet connections altogether. In the countries which censor the direction has always been leading to more political even if unpopular speech being censored. It doesn't matter if we're talking China, Europe, the United States, or Canada. Each country has its own methods of censoring its population. Canada has a 'voluntary' system where all the major ISPs were pressured into adopting. Similar systems were forced on ISPs in other countries. The UK for example that adapted it to add copyright, porn, and other types of sites and speech some within (and outside) its boarders didn't like.
So assnat.qc.ca looks good to me
Some natural ass (excuse me; "ass naturel") would look good to me, too.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/quebec-bill-would-force-internet-firms-to-block-access-to-online-gaming-sites-1.2843255
"Critics say the Internet-censoring legislation -- unprecedented in Canada -- is a way for Quebec's state-owned gambling authority to block competition and could lead to governments across the country deciding what citizens can and can't view online."
"I think the (Quebec) government doesn't understand the Internet and frankly doesn't understand the importance of an open and free Internet," said the University of Ottawa's Michael Geist, a renowned online-law expert.
Gaming site does not mean what you think it means.
my issue with any kind of State Level Blocking is how is the list edited (and by whom??).
Sure you might want to block
CP
Hate Sites
AP (for those that are not Adult)
"Snuff" sites
Otherwise Criminal Sites
ect
but im sure the SlashMind could come up with some edge cases where something might LOOK LIKE a "blacklist" worthy site but isn't.
and thats not getting into the "Oops we blocked %otherparties% site at a critical time" type issue or the Admin being bribed to include/exclude a given site ie the op for
wwwdotpoupéesprÃtespourleplaisirdotfr wanting to not be blocked bribing some admin with say "product" (because you know what kind of person lands up doing the admin on this kind of thing)
Other provinces have major issues with corruption too. Ontario is in the midst of a developing scandal, where you've actually got lobbyists coming out in favour of campaign finance reform because they're tired of always getting shaken down for money by the Ontario liberal party.
For one split second I thought Quebec was contemplating banning online video games as a whole.
I'm originally from Alberta, lots of relatives in Toronto, live in Quebec. "Scandals" in the other provinces are cute compared to what goes on here. But don't take my word for it, here's a CBC correspondent with middle east and Washington experience, who recently returned to Canada to live in Ottawa, who says the same thing. Bonus, there's a little video of one of our "potholes."
This is typical, with VPNs and proxies, this law will never work. I can't believe that those that thought up this law are so technically incompetent. Come on Quebec, catch up to at least the 20th century.
You've only been in Montreal, I assume. Nowhere near the majority of the population speaks English fluently in the rest of the province.
Hey, give it a few hundred years and most people will be native speakers I bet. Most languages are dying off.
Hey, at least in most US states we don't have corruption. Cities, on the other hand....
Another assinine law written by a group of politicians who simply do not comprehend how the internet works. Wouldn't it be nice if, before they wrote the law, legislators actually talked to some subject matter experts?
linquendum tondere
You may be right. In 2011 according to Stats Can 51.8% of Quebeckers claimed to know only French. I apologize for not looking that up prior to posting. On the other hand, that number dropped a couple of percent between 2006 and 2011, so it's possible I'm right after all.
Also note, just because someone won't speak English to you doesn't mean they can't.
Look like loi 101 in Quebec. I hosted a website that was english only and language police came and give a fined to the company. After that we decide to host the website outside Quebec. Problem solved... Now my upstream provider are US based. So now let the game of cat and mouse start...
If you find someone in Quebec who only knows a few words of English, chances are those words will be swear words, and will be used fluently. Of course, the majority of the population speaks English fluently, whether as first or second language, and is quite capable of laughing at the assnat.
LOL. When we swear, 100% of the words we use come from the catholic liturgy. We HATE religion with a passion, up here. So it's only natural that our pissed-offness be expressed with religious words.
That would be "you insensitive Claude"...
The potholes here have their own lot numbers at the land registry!
Mostly random stuff.
But there's a difference between speaking english and speaking english fluently. I'd bet you couldn't understand more than half of those who claim to speak english.
Good one.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
from TFS: "Quebec's lottery service"
How is this a 'service'? Who does it serve? Could it be . . . Satan?!?!
It seems to be a tax on the poor and ignorant. One that the state has usurped from entrepreneurial enterprises that at least offer an honest chance to win.
How does this 'Consumer Protection Act' protect consumers when there is less opportunity to win? Quebec is almost ready to sing the song of the Ministry of Truth:
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
...omphaloskepsis often...
Yeah, I live in Quebec, and we do have corruption here. The difference is that here, it is still illegal, and we fight it. Since Citizens United, what we call corruption in Quebec is business as usual in the US ...
the Consumer Protection Act
They got that wrong, the title should be The VPN Provider Full Employment Act.
Any restaurant that put "assmeat" in their menu would probably get their windows broken for anglicizing a French word. Then they would get a fine for having broken windows and having English too prominent in their menu.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
That's actually not a bad score.
And worth noting, from your link:
" Northern Europe emerges well in the index â€" itâ€(TM)s home to four of the top five countries.
But just because a country has a clean public sector at home, doesnâ€(TM)t mean it isnâ€(TM)t linked to corruption elsewhere.
Take Sweden for instance. It comes third in the index, yet the Swedish-Finnish firm TeliaSonera â€" 37 per cent owned by the Swedish state â€" is facing allegations that it paid millions of dollars in bribes to secure business in Uzbekistan, which comes in at 153rd in the index.
The company is now pulling out of business in Central Asia, but Sweden isnâ€(TM)t the only â€oeclean†country to be linked to dodgy behaviour overseas. As our research shows, half of all OECD countries are violating their international obligations to crack down on bribery by their companies abroad."
So your point was what?
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Yup. Montreal needs to become it's own province.
Seems to me the only way you can ban gambling sites is to do at at a high network layer so you can filter on content rather than IP.
Only problem with that is HTTPS would need to be cracked open by the ISP using a root cert they force you to install in your browser.
This may be the start of the slippery slope which will end at full circumvention of encrypted communications.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
There's a world of a difference between an "online gaming site" and an "online gambling site". Maybe not to the outer world but anyone writing a /. post is intentionally using that title as click bait...
"Typical! Just Typical!" (John Cleese)
Quebec due to its unique nature has a lopsided amount of political power in Canada. As a result so does much of the industry. Many of the scandals stem from Quebec industry trying to capitalize on that advantage, more less because they can.
As for this particular example, I don't see it so much as a scandal as just hypocritical really. If it weren't for many of the states in the US also with a similar ideology on online gambling (at least on the face of it) it probably wouldn't be tolerated for competition reasons.
However if similar legislation has proven anything these sorts of things rarely work well, if at all. There are numerous ways around "blocked" sites, with more created constantly, not to mention the lack of enforcement, largely because it is very difficult to do so, and then you will have folks playing with the definition of what exactly is "gambling" anyway VS "entertainment". Online "entertainment" is a multi-Billion dollar industry in the US despite the fact that online "gambling" is illegal in most places... Draft Kings is a perfect example.
So for all those reasons and more, I say "meh" to the whole issue.
You've only been in Montreal, I assume. Nowhere near the majority of the population speaks English fluently in the rest of the province.
The new generation of Quebecers are fluent in English and fully bi-lingual. They know that they are in the new era, where, if the job is not in your back yard, that you go to where the jobs are located. Most have a minimum of one year of university. Others have university or a "professional" vocational trade. Inter-marriage (English with French) results in bilingual households where one parent speaks to the kids in his/her mother tongue, and the other in their mother tongue.
Moreover, English TV is pervasive.
A small minority of rural youth are uni-lingual.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
To be fair, many in the world don't find Quebec French to be real French or even a real language, so I see where Americans would think Quebec French != French.
(Satirical nod to the history of Quebec vs Parisian)
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering