More on the Minnesota / Online Gambling Situation

Published on April 30th, 2009 11:04 pm EST

poker king is in his thinking pose

Yesterday the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and the Alcohol Gambling Enforcement Division (AGED) announced that they had served written notice to 11 national and regional telephone and Internet service providers, advising them that they had 2-3 weeks to comply with an order to "prohibit access to nearly 200 online gambling websites".

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety charged that "online gambling is illegal in all U.S. states".

In addition to blocking access to the "nearly 200 online gambling websites", the order also requested that Minnesota residents be blocked from calling the phone numbers associated with each site.

Online gamblers, especially those residing in Minnesota, were understandably outraged by yesterday's news. Letter and phone campaigns have already begun, and multiple pro-poker organizations have already started to mobilize against the ridiculous actions of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and AGED.

The list of the sites that are to be blocked was released earlier today. The list clearly establishes that the people behind this proposed censorship have absolutely no clue what they are doing.

The list contains many sites that don't even accept US players.

Let me state that again - the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and Alcohol Gambling Enforcement Division are seeking to block Minnesota residents from accessing sites that DON'T ACCEPT US PLAYERS.

For instance, Party Casino, Titan Poker and Mansion Poker are all listed.

On the other hand, Pokerstars, which is the largest online poker room in the world (by far), isn't included on the list.

According to Pokernewsdaily.com, AGED director John Willems claims that the list of 200 sites was drawn "randomly".

The people behind this order clearly should have spent more time on research before they pushed forward with their requests.

We'll keep you posted as more information becomes available.

Here is a link to the list of the 200 sites (*.pdf)

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Filed Under: Poker Legal Issues