Finland strategy to ban online gambling
The new borders of the Internet started with the online gambling. Internet meant, at its beginning, freedom of information, products and services. Now, it keeps from less to less this initial meaning.
I am a fun of the online gambling, especially online poker, but now I see it like an animal in a forest hunted from all the sides by the hunters/authorities, and having from less to less place to move. Unfortunately the real reason is not the same with the official one. If they care about children, pathological gamblers or unfair online casinos, there are possible laws that can be implemented. And there will be no more pornography, violence in movies, alcohol, a.s.o. The real reason is that the money have to be kept in the respective countries. Why to let a foreign company to collect the money from the citizens of a country, when the government of that country can collect the money by taxes from the local casinos, or even exercise a monopoly on the gambling games and collect directly the money.
Finland confirms my prediction for online gambling for this year but, after the previous experience with Germany, they adopt a different and more subtle strategy, especially for online poker. In accordance with a Finnish draft law from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and commissioned from the University of Joensuu, the losses claimed by Finnish online gamblers would be taken back from the online poker rooms, or from the payment processing companies. This way the online gambling operators will be forced to block the Finnish players
Finland is the 4th country in the world with about €150 million in gambling expenditures annually.
If I am right and the main reason for the ban of the online gambling is the will of the states to keep the money within the respective countries, I think the e-commerce itself is in great danger, especially from the countries that have a negative balance for e-commerce.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
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