A new wave of crackdown is set to be unleashed upon online casino operators targeting Australian customers, local news outlets report.
Starting today, unauthorized Australia-facing casino websites will be blocked by local Internet service providers to be prevented from servicing Aussies. The fresh new clampdown is led by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which recently saw its powers extended to tackle more effectively black market operations.
The ISP block was one of 19 measures recommended in an extensive review of Australia’s online gambling industry by the former premier of New South Wales, Barry O’Farrel, in 2015. The measure provides the ACMA with the power to order local Internet service providers to block access to unlicensed gambling websites.
Australia’s original Interactive Gambling Act of 2001 contained loopholes that international online casino operators circumvented for years to operate in the highly lucrative Australian iGaming market.
Following Mr. O’Farrell’s review and the passage of an updated version of the nation’s gambling law in August 2017, online casino products were banned in Australia. However, what previously was a thriving gray market is now an even more thriving black market.
It is believed that Australians annually spend around A$400 million on illegal casino websites, which could have translated to around A$100 million in tax revenue for the nation’s coffers, if online casino gambling was legal.
The New Suite of Measures
Under the new gambling-focused measures, the ACMA will investigate unauthorized websites and if it fails to harness other enforcement actions, it will refer those that violate the nation’s gambling law to Internet service providers to be blocked.
Commenting on the new wave of clampdown on iGaming, Australian Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said that the measures aim to tackle illegal operations that prey on Australian gamblers by luring them with misleading incentives and oftentimes refusing to pay out their winnings.
Mr. Fletcher told local media that as online casino gaming is prohibited under federal law, “consumers have no recourse to retrieve their money.”
The Communications Minister added that while the ACMA was provided with a set of tools to protect local gamblers from illegal operations, including issuing warnings and seeking civil penalty orders, it would be an extremely challenging task to enforce direct action against “faceless companies” that have no physical presence in Australia.
Of their renewed effort to combat unauthorized gambling, ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said that their expanded powers that now include having local ISPs block illegal services is “a valuable additional weapon in the ACMA’s arsenal in the fight against illegal online gambling.”
Ms. O’Loughlin added that they have been targeting illegal gambling operators that they know are active in Australia through complaints from customers and monitoring and that they expect that the list of unauthorized sites on ACMA’s radar screen will grow as they investigate more.
It also became known that casinos using iconic Australian imagery and symbols would be among the first to be referred to ISPs as part of the looming crackdown on unauthorized operations.
Source Illegal offshore gambling websites to be blocked by Australian internet providers, The Brisbane Times
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