Would Internet Censorship Affect Online Casinos

January 22, 2012 | News Category: Gaming Law

0 Comments

The freedom that the Internet currently enjoys may well have been under threat in the United States. There has been much talk in the news regarding the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) actions.

While these two acts have been shelved for the time being, one has to wonder what the effects would be on online gambling if the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, and Lamar Smith would have succeeded in pushing these acts through the law making process and into law. While it should be noted that there will be no vote in the immediate future regarding these acts, they have simply been postponed, and may be changed at a later stage before being reintroduced.

Although online casinos and other online gambling sites would not have been affected immediately, if the laws would have changed in the United States, there could be problems for the online gambling industry that may surface at a later stage.

The kind of censorship that was being considered with the SOPA and PIPA acts would change the face of the Internet as we see it today. The effects would be far-reaching,

Essentially, if these bills had been enacted, if there is a doubt about whether a website has infringed copyright laws, it would be possible for the US Attorney General to obtain a court order that would force servers, advertisers, payment processors, search engines, directories, blog sites, and other services to blacklist the sites that have infringed, or possibly infringed any copyright laws.

While it may be fair enough to protect copyright laws, this system would have Internet Service Providers and other companies, such as payment processors be the ones to police the Internet. There have already been some issues in which third parties, such as financial institutions have had to police the Internet when it comes to those who wish to process online gambling payments. In some places, Internet Service Providers have been told to block certain online gambling sites from operating.

It seems as if this form of Internet censorship could be the beginning of a slippery slope that could have far-reaching effects, and could one day affect the online gambling industry too.

David Drummond, the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and also the Chief Legal Officer at Google, wrote in his blog: "These bills would grant new powers to law enforcement to filter the Internet and block access to tools to get around those filters. These bills would make it easier to sue law-abiding US companies. Law-abiding payment processors and Internet advertising services can be subject to these private rights of action." He further noted: "These bills wouldn't get rid of pirate sites. Pirate sites would just change their addresses in order to continue their criminal activities."