France May Censor Unlicensed Online Casinos

France may soon require that all search engines censor their results in order
to prevent the display of unlicensed online casinos to french citizens. This
method is similiar to what China has been trying to do with their search
results and Google has already refused to censor Google results in China.

The French Senate has approved an attachment to a national gaming law that
would block access to any online casino that does not meet the country’s
regulatory requirements. The french gaming bill would require that all
online gambling operators obtain french licensing and it would grant
domestic operators advantages over receiving french gaming licenses.
Foreign operators would need to establish a physical presences for
their online casinos within France in order to qualify for a license.

This proposed law is already being protested by various gaming organizations,
and french organizations will definately join in the protest when they find
out that french residents are going to face censorship just like people in China.

France is testing it’s ability to censor it’s own citizens because other
governments have gotten away with it. China actively censors what their
citizens can access over the Internet, and even Australia has recently
blacklisted a number of gambling, pornographic, and violent sites
which has prevented visitors from accessing these sites via Aussie ISPs.

The censorship of the Internet to restrict citizens from accessing
online gambling sites seems to be common practice by politicians
with very little grasp on how the Internet works, and too much
concern over how to keep the government’s gambling monopoly.