Sites serving Australians

[josh_x]

Hey,

In 2001 the Australian government passed the interactive gambling act, which says:

"The IGA targets the providers of interactive gambling services, not their potential or actual customers. The IGA makes it an offence to provide an interactive gambling service to a customer physically present in Australia.
# This offence applies to all interactive gambling service providers, whether based in Australia or offshore, whether Australian or foreign owned.
# This offence carries a maximum penalty of $220,000 per day for individuals and $1.1 million per day for bodies corporate."

To the best of my understanding this would seem that all sites are breaking Australian law by accepting players from Australia. Are they simply aware of this but do not care because they are out of Australian jurisdiction and so can do what they want?

Thanks for any help in making me understand this issue,

[ShipitFMA]

Australian sites don't accept australian players. You can play at ANY site based overseas...IMO you wouldn't want to play at any of the sites from australia anyway

[josh_x]

Are there even Australian based sites? That's not what i'm concerned about though. The key bit is:

"The IGA targets the providers of interactive gambling services, not their potential or actual customers. The IGA makes it an offence to provide an interactive gambling service to a customer physically present in Australia.
# This offence applies to all interactive gambling service providers, whether based in Australia or offshore, whether Australian or foreign owned.
# This offence carries a maximum penalty of $220,000 per day for individuals and $1.1 million per day for bodies corporate."

Which it would seem means that all poker sites are breaking australian law by allowing australians to play there. Since the sites aren't so stupid as to be unaware, either they don't care because they can't be prosecuted, or for some reason i dont know it isn't illegal.

[PaulG]

I believe that in QLD there is a $3000 fine against the individual and in WA there is a $10000 fine.

Yet, in QLD, you can play table games at home with no house profit.

[ShipitFMA]

Yes there are a few Australian based sites floating around that don't even let Aussies access their websites

Not sure what to make of the rest of this, I'd be interested to see what this actually means though. I mean Australia doesn't really put in alot of effort to enforce this if it is indeed true.

I've no idea what PaulG is talking about...Is he referring to a RAKED home game?

[ChrisV]

I'm Australian. I think the situation is just that nobody outside Australia gives a toss about what Australian law says.

[Josem]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm Australian. I think the situation is just that nobody outside Australia gives a toss about what Australian law says.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's fairly accurate.

There was an article by Senator Helen Coonan (Minister for IT etc.) entitled "The virtual war on war, hate and violence" in the (Sydney) Daily Telegraph on 26 January 2007. It outlined the Aust. Govt's efforts in regulating those items online - policies that were literally the opposite of the Aust Govt's efforts in regulating online gaming.

The article is not available online.