Norway to Block Online Gaming
29th November, 2007
Norway’s Minister of Culture and Church Affairs Trond Giske has begun to press ahead with plans to block online gaming by halting all payment systems in the country to online gambling sites, numerous press reports have said in the past week. The move will be similar to America’s new Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), except that it now looks as if Giske is set to amend existing gambling legislation to encompass payment processors.
Giske has proposed a ‘clarification’ that would see existing gambling laws applied to the processing of payment transactions from online gambling. If passed, the new laws would effectively make any processed payments by a Norwegian financial institution illegal. Current law prohibits the marketing, promotion or facilitation of Internet gambling services. After being put forward late last week, the proposal is now open to public comment until mid February before it is put before Parliament. The justification for the ban is that it would help protect Norwegian problem gamblers but many people have suggested that it is nothing more than cheap way to protect the State gambling monopoly Norske Tipping. Giske played a key part of the legislation last year that banned all land slot machines not owned by Norske Tipping. As a result, all slot machines in Norway are now Government-run, generating revenues that have grown by 4.6 percent. In Scandinavia, poker is extremely popular, especially amongst younger people. There will no doubt be an outcry from the numerous online poker players, as some will see it as an income and their future.
