Following on from fellow American state Kentucky, Minnesota has served written notice to eleven national and regional telephone and internet service providers (ISPs) instructing them to prohibit access of all Minnesota-based computers to nearly 200 online gambling websites.”We are putting site operators and Minnesota online gamblers on notice and in advance,” says John Willems, director of AGED. “Disruption of these sites’ cash flow will negatively impact their business models. State residents with online escrow accounts should be aware that access to their accounts may be jeopardized and their funds in peril.”The move follows Kentucky’s move to have 141 gambling-related domain names to it last year.The eleven companies instructed to prohibit access between any computer in Minnesota and an online-gambling site were AT&T Internet Services, San Antonio; Charter Communications, St. Louis; Comcast Cable, Moorestown, N.J.; Direct TV, Los Angeles; Dish Network, Englewood., Colo.; Embarq and Sprint/Nextel, both of Overland Park, Kan.; Frontier Communications, Stamford, Conn.; Qwest, Denver; Verizon Wireless, Bedminster, N.J.; and Wildblue Communications, Greenwood Village, Colo.The state believes this is the first attempt by a state to employ this federal statute to restrict access to online gambling sites. The letters to the various companies cite U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 1084, (d) and were delivered on April 27. Congress enacted the statute in 1961 in recognition of the need for states to control illegal gambling activities and granted authority for use of the statue to state law enforcement agencies.In the written notices, AGED also provided the sites’ telephone numbers and requested access to those numbers by Minnesotans to be prohibited. For more than two decades, telecoms have shut down telephone numbers at the request of law enforcement agencies when believed to be involved in illegal activities, such as sports book-making telephone numbers.”In Minnesota, and for Minnesotans, the primary issues are legality, state self-governance and accountability,” says Willems. “In broader context, the long-running debate on online gambling continues to raise significant issues, including absence of policy and regulation, individual rights, societal impact, international fair-trade practices, and funding for criminal and terrorist organizations.”Undoubtedly this action will be fought out in the courts, much like the Kentucky action, with gambling organisations such as the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association in Washington, D.C consulting with First Amendment lawyers to evaluate their options, reports CNET.CNET also report “Minnesota’s move echoes what happened in Pennsylvania about six years ago. The Keystone State enacted a law permitting the state attorney general to deliver orders to Internet providers telling them to block possibly illegal Web sites.””But a federal judge in Philadelphia struck down the law in 2004 on First Amendment grounds, saying: “There is little evidence that the act has reduced the production of child pornography or the child sexual abuse associated with its creation. On the other hand, there is an abundance of evidence that implementation of the Act has resulted in massive suppression of speech protected by the First Amendment.””One reason the law failed to survive the court challenge was because of the way the modern Web is designed.”To read the CNET report in full, see:
news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10231683-38.html