La Quadrature has sent its response to the consultation1See http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2011/online_gambling_en.htm on online gambling organised by the European Commission. Citizens and NGOs should join our effort in urging the EU public authorities to ban any form of website blocking.
The growing resort to Internet filtering in Europe – regardless of its purpose – leads to the development of an Internet censorship infrastructure which must be stopped. As La Quadrature outlines in its answer to the consultation, this is especially true in the case of the regulation of online gambling services, for which such measures are obviously disproportionate and unjustifiable. From a citizen viewpoint, recent Member States regulation has raised additional concerns that censorship of gambling websites was conducted for the benefit of players strongly tied to the political power.
As the EU Commission moves towards creating an EU-wide instrument for regulating online gambling, we call on policy-makers to abrogate any filtering scheme implemented in the name of online gambling regulation, and instead to promote less restrictive (and more efficient) measures such as payment blocking.
La Quadrature urges all citizens and NGOs committed to a free Internet to send their responses (however short) to the Commission, so as to denounce Net filtering.
(50) Are any of the methods mentioned above, or any other technical means, applied at national level to limit access to on-line gambling services or to restrict payment services? Are you aware of any cross-border initiative(s) aimed at enforcing such methods? How do you assess their effectiveness in the field of on-line gambling?
(51) What are your views on the relative merits of the methods mentioned above as well as any other technical means to limit access to gambling services or payment services? on filtering are due by the end of the week (31 July 2011), but submissions sent after the deadline will most probably be accepted. Send them at: MARKT-GAMBLING(AT)ec.europa.eu
Download La Quadrature du Net’s answer in PDF.
References
| ↑1 | See http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2011/online_gambling_en.htm |
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| ↑2 | The questions are the following: (50) Are any of the methods mentioned above, or any other technical means, applied at national level to limit access to on-line gambling services or to restrict payment services? Are you aware of any cross-border initiative(s) aimed at enforcing such methods? How do you assess their effectiveness in the field of on-line gambling? (51) What are your views on the relative merits of the methods mentioned above as well as any other technical means to limit access to gambling services or payment services? |