information about cenzorship in Slovenia

[Fabian Keil]

Matej Kovacic <matej.kovacic at owca.info> wrote:
 
> I would just like to let you know that Slovenian government (Slovenia is 
> a member of European Union since last year) a week ago decided to block 
> two on-line gambling sites, because they do not have a licence to 
> operate in Slovenia.
> 
> There are several problems with this, the major is that Office for 
> Gaming Supervision sent a simple letter (not an official order!) to 
> ISP's to block the site (what about "mere conduit" doctrine???) and 
> major ISP's just did it. It is also funny, that European Court of 
> Justice ruled in 2003 that across-border gambling like that is legal, 
> because EU has free movement of services enacted (see case Gambelli). My 
> personal opinion is that this cenzorship is illegal in many ways, but 
> the problem is that ISP's dont want to oppose governemnt and they simply 
> don't care about their users's rights.

What is illegal about asking some providers to block some sites?
By the way, older members of the EU are (or were?) fond of
DNS blocks as well. NRW, Germany for example.

Also my impression is that the European Court didn't rule that
across-border gambling is legal in the whole EU, but that
restrictions are only allowed if they happen in the public interest:

|If a member state introduces restrictions on private games
|of chance, these must have the purpose of reducing the
|opportunities for gaming.
|
|In particular, this purpose is not achieved – reasoned the ECJ –
|if on the one hand a state prohibited private games of chance
|whilst on the other promoting state lotteries and games of chance
|in order to generate additional revenues for the Treasury. 
<http://www.bwin.ag/2004/default.aspx?lang=en&id=5>

(I'm aware what bwin Interactive Entertainment AG does,
but the description makes sense to me.)

> So I just wanted to let you know that illegal cenzorship is not just 
> something which is happening in China. And I hope a lot of people in 
> Slovenia know about Tor now and see it as good anti-cenzorship tool.

The Chinese government's censorship is done without
breaking Chinese law isn't it? Of course it still sucks,
but I don't see why it should be called illegal.

Fabian
-- 
http://www.fabiankeil.de/
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