Italy has taken aggressive measures in its attempt to block Italian players from Internet gambling activities. Italian authorities actually slapped an e-ban on a Malta gaming authority website. Malta and Italy have been locked in a battle of words ever since Italy arbitrarily enacted a blockade of 684 Internet gaming sites back in February. Of the 684 sites, the Malta Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LGA) licensed 68 of them. The LGA attempted to circumvent the blockade by linking its website to all the Maltese gaming sites via a web anonymiser that disguises the websites’ IP addresses. In response to the LGA move, the Italians have upped the ante by blacking out the last remaining link to Italian gaming sites registered in Malta -- the Lotteries and Gaming Authority’s official website. As a result, residents of Italy can longer access the LGA website. The black out came after the AAMS, Italy’s state administration for monopolies, warned that the LGA had no authorization to collect bets and blocked it from Italian ISPs. Mario Galea, the LGA chief executive, strongly criticized the Italian action in a statement he made to delegates: “We cannot accept that the good, the bad and the ugly are thrown in the same basket. Malta’s websites are regulated by the official Maltese authority,” Galea said. Galea was in Italy addressing the European Forum of Gaming Regulators when he issued the statement. Italy started the blockade when the country decided to block all foreign gaming sites from the UK to Malta. The government claimed that the blockade was necessary in order to protect Italian gamers from “phishing” – the fraudulent acquisition of passwords and credit card details. International gambling groups responded to the blockade by threatening legal action based on European Union law and critics of the blockade argued that the real motive behind the Italian government’s actions was to protect the country’s EUR 1.8 billion gambling monopoly. Astrabet, a Malta licensee, temporarily benefited from the legal battle, when it was able to obtain a ruling that lifted the blockade in its case, but the ruling has since been revoked by an Italian appeals court after a further challenge by the AAMS. Nevertheless, Astrabet should still be accessible to Italians because, while the appeal by AAMS was accepted, the request for a suspension of the ruling was not. Italian gamblers cannot, however, access the site. There is nothing that Italian ISPS can do about the matter either since non-compliance with the AAMS blockade would result in a daily fine of EUR 180,000. In the meantime, the European Commission is investigating whether infringement procedures should be instigated against Italy. The results of the investigation will influence any further actions by Malta. Apparently, the European Commission has requested information from the Italian authorities regarding the restrictions imposed on online betting and gaming as well as a justification for those restrictions. Posted on: June 29, 2006
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