The Australian federal government is preparing to block illegal overseas gaming websites from serving domestic players under the enhanced powers of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
The ACMA “will be moving quickly to block at least one website in the short term and it will be actively exercising its powers in response to complaints,” said ACMA Communications Minister Paul Fletcher.
“There’s quite a regular stream of complaints from Australians who place bets on these sites and when they win they find it very difficult to collect their money—so these sites will take real money, but they won’t pay out,” he said. “They’re not licensed or regulated in Australia. That means they don’t have consumer safeguards in place. It also means they’re not paying any tax.”
Online sites such as Emu Casino and FairGo Casino, which operate out of Curacao, are branded to appeal to the Australian market, and are expected to be among the first to be blocked under the new policy.
The Australian government estimates its people spend up to AU$400 million (about US$276 million) on illegal gambling websites each year, amounting to about AU$100 million in lost tax revenues.
ACMA Chairwoman Nerida O’Loughlin warned players, “If you have funds deposited with an illegal gambling site, you should withdraw those funds now.”
The blocks will occur under section 313 of the Telecommunications Act, the same powers that allowed the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to accidentally block 250,000 sites in April 2013. In its guidelines for blocking, each block needs to be signed off by the chair, deputy chair, or a senior executive within the ACMA, with each request to expire after a “specified time”.
“The ACMA will monitor at regular intervals the disruption of access to the website to ensure that it remains appropriate (that is, it is effective, responsible, as targeted as possible and is executed appropriately),” the guidelines state.
