Norway Plans to Ban Illegal Online Gambling Websites
The government in Norway will impose a DNS ban on foreign online casinos and online gaming sites to ban illegal gambling sites in an effort to shield its citizens from potentially harmful gambling practices. The anticipated start date of this action is January 24, 2024.
The Gambling Act amendment was presented by the Ministry of Culture and Equality on October 20 and was approved by the cabinet on the same day.
More than two years ago, Norwegian officials started having consultations over DNS banning of illegal websites.
This bill would force internet providers to use technology that stops users from accessing unlawful websites via the domain name system (DNS), in an attempt to maintain the government’s monopoly on gambling. Norway Ban Illegal Gambling
This implies that users who attempt to access a website that has been banned will be sent to a landing page that explains the reasons behind the site’s prohibition on access.
We do this primarily to prevent and limit gambling problems and to look after vulnerable players and their relatives. If the foreign gambling companies had followed Norwegian law, this would not have been imposed on the internet providers. Therefore, we have to regulate this by targeting actors over whom we have jurisdiction.
Lubna Jaffery, Minister for Culture and Equality.
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However, the Authority is exempt from Norwegian secrecy laws, in contrast to the internet providers. The suggestion to reroute users to the organization’s server landing page would have unintentionally collected electronic user traces, such as IP address, visit time, and browser type.
As per the recommendations provided in the 2021 consultation, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority believes that this would go against the nation’s data legislation’ “data minimization” concept.
The ministry proposes that the landing page should be owned and operated by the internet providers and not by the Norwegian Lottery Authority, as was originally proposed in the consultation note of September 2021.
If the landing page is added to the internet provider’s server, personal information about the users who try to contact the website will be DNS banned
Addendum
In an effort to help prevent problems like residents gambling with unauthorized internet operators, the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) recently recommended that Norway adopt a licensing system, following the example of nations like Finland and Sweden.
