Online gambling in Italy

Lovers of over-regulated, ultra-encumbered bureaucracy may like to consider a sea-change move to Italy - especially if you work in the online gambling field. News just out in the Roman empire: the Italian Government is about to place the onus on local ISPs to prevent local users from accessing online gambling sites.

In Australia and many other western countries that are trying to discourage online gambling, laws prevent the actual online gambling companies from advertising or targeting users in their respective countries. In other words, it is the actual gambling company that is not allowed to actively target users. In this instance, Italy would be forcing the phone & broadband internet access companies to stop users actually connecting to the gambling sites in the first place. Kind of like a gateway mechanism to stop internet users getting through to the gambling sites at all. A very different, almost censorship-like, anti-gambling approach.

A few critics have commentated that it limits freedom of choice (ie, the freedom of democracy) and that perhaps the law has something to do with the fact that Silvio Berlusconi doesn’t own online gambling sites himself (he owns pretty much every other media vehicle in Italy). Either way, I’ll bet Bigpond, Optus, iiNet and the other Australian ISP companies are hoping the Australian Government doesn’t introduce similar laws here.