Topic: UK Gambling Commission says UK based sites need a license! - page 5. (Read 11930 times)

I have had to pull my site www.bitcoinpunter.com today after the UK Gambling Commission contacted me to inform me I was breaking the law by advertising unlicenced betting sites and leaving myself open to prosecution.

Advertising unlawful gambling is a  criminal offence under section 330  of the Gambling Act 2005 (the Act).    
The Commission regulates gambling in Great Britain and has the power to prosecute offences under the Act.

 

It may appear to be less hassle short term but trust me they are losing their business long term if they are this unprincipled.

We have added Great Britain into our list of blocked regions because online gambling is illegal there. In the past we had blocked several US states for the same reason. Although, we are working with gambling commission to resolve the issue as soon as possible and meet the country regulations.

Bitcoin allows you to gamble and access these sites if they are illegal in your country. For example US players can't play much poker online but can do so with bitcoin. Thats the biggest reason people use it as you are not restricted to laws based in your country that may not allow you to access these sites or games .

You're absolutely right. The thing is, although there will be very little repercussion for directbetif they continued serving Brit IPs, I think they see it as not worth the hassle. The UKGC perhaps has them a little bit scared and they're protecting their business. Their lack of comment on the issue just confirms this. It's a slippery slope once bitcoin, a decentralized currency, starts to be ruled over like this

Bitcoin allows you to gamble and access these sites if they are illegal in your country. For example US players can't play much poker online but can do so with bitcoin. Thats the biggest reason people use it as you are not restricted to laws based in your country that may not allow you to access these sites or games .

Bitcoin may appeal a lot to anarchists and libertarians but it does nothing, nor will it ever, for reducing socially dominant human beings. Its a jungle.

My point is, why are any sites blocking British IPs just because the UK gambling commission said so? Especially if they are outside of the UK, what can a UK gambling commission really do about it? How do you even prove that;

1) A cryptocurrency is equivalent to money's worth
2) An IP is equivalent to a location
3) An anonymous transaction is linked to a person in the UK and a gambling related server
4) A gambling commission in the UK has control over a server outside of the UK

None of these things have been held up in court and, especially if you are outside of the UK, how do you even get summoned to a UK court of law?

Basically, if sites start blocking IPs any time any random commission decides so then there is no point to using cryptocurrency. If anyone, from any side, honestly thinks that banning UK IPs resolves a problem here then they are seriously short-sighted. It will just censor the mainstream from cryptocurrency, and other commissions from other countries will soon start telling other sites to do the same with other services.

Ultimately the only ones who will continue to use cryptocurrency will be using VPNs without the site's consent and causing more problems down the line. Frankly the fact that no one is seriously challenging this is disastrous to the survival of cryptocurrency. It has set the trend for the future. Cryptocurrency sites are happy to provide censorship of their services at the first sign of fear without even really questioning it.

There is no longer any point in using them.

I take it as positive that UK based online casinos will need a license to operate in UK and its territory.This will make the casinos owners more responsible and also will help to reduce fraudulent activities.These online casinos must be operated under some rules and regulations  to be more trustworthy.

My point is, why are any sites blocking British IPs just because the UK gambling commission said so? Especially if they are outside of the UK, what can a UK gambling commission really do about it? How do you even prove that;

1) A cryptocurrency is equivalent to money's worth
2) An IP is equivalent to a location
3) An anonymous transaction is linked to a person in the UK and a gambling related server
4) A gambling commission in the UK has control over a server outside of the UK

None of these things have been held up in court and, especially if you are outside of the UK, how do you even get summoned to a UK court of law?

Basically, if sites start blocking IPs any time any random commission decides so then there is no point to using cryptocurrency. If anyone, from any side, honestly thinks that banning UK IPs resolves a problem here then they are seriously short-sighted. It will just censor the mainstream from cryptocurrency, and other commissions from other countries will soon start telling other sites to do the same with other services.

Ultimately the only ones who will continue to use cryptocurrency will be using VPNs without the site's consent and causing more problems down the line. Frankly the fact that no one is seriously challenging this is disastrous to the survival of cryptocurrency. It has set the trend for the future. Cryptocurrency sites are happy to provide censorship of their services at the first sign of fear without even really questioning it.

There is no longer any point in using them.

Regardless of where the bookies are based, its customers are British. That's why they're only blocking UK IPs, and bitcoin sites are only following the other foreign bookmakers (188bet, sbobet, pinnacle) in leaving Britain since the new gambling laws require them to register under the UKGamingCommission's licensing system (and pay a hefty tax). The idea behind this is to protect British consumers apparently, though anyone who knows the first thing about betting knows you cannot win using British bookmakers alone. And I'd wager (no pun intnded) that there are fifa levels of corruption going on behind the scenes

Are Direct Bet and the Fairlay Bitcoin UK based?

If not, why are they blocking UK IPs?

I don't understand why everyone seems to be taking orders from the UK Gambling Commission all of a sudden without any explanation to end users.

Any more details on this would be appreciated.

Why is a casino's license significant to you when you want to gamble with bitcoin? I don't think that bitcoin casinos take steps towards being licensed. Provably fair gambling is the way to go. As of the legality, in most regions and countries it isn't illegal to gamble with bitcoin because of the lack of laws about it. Until this changes, we're probably not going to see many bitcoin casinos being blocked.

Any lawyer worth his salt will probably tell you to have a third party agent incorporate a casino on your behalf. Incorporating does very little for the actual user, it does help the owner establish a banking connection/trust and cash out though.

I think incorporation actually reduces the protection of investors/gamblers as the liaibility is shifted from operator to company. That being said it's a wise decision to incorporate but I can't personally see any reason for it benefiting users. Then again, I'm not a lawyer.

This means that when you incorporate a company/business in this way, in most cases, the liabilities will be shifted from the owners onto the corporation itself. So if/when the site gets hacked, or something similar causes the site to lose money then the owners would not be responsible, the corporation itself will need to bear the losses.

The owners would have this protection while still keeping the benefits of getting to keep any profits that are not reinvested into their company.

Assuming their security is strong enough to prevent people with malicious intent from stealing from the site, and assuming the owners are acting in an honest manner, then it will most likely have no visible effect on players/investors.

Legal actions will be taken no doubt about that and if a legal actions is taken on these unlicensed gambling sites than it will get them much more lost then their decision to stop accepting bets from the UK based players.
Basically unlicensed means illegal and everything that illegal will be seized down also that affiliates that promotes an unlicensed gambling sites are also at risk by this point if they UK gambling comission decided to take legal actions

This is completely false.

Seems there's a lot of misinformation and basic misunderstandings here. Whenever I see this topic come up in the non-BTC gambling world, I see the same vague and incorrect suggestions over and over.

Just because online gambling is legal in a country does not mean you can host an unlicensed site there. The UK has a very strict licensing regiment with master licenses costing around £500,000 per year. Hosting unlicensed games on a server there is a quick way to get booted by your hosting company who is required to comply with UK law.

It is, however, legal to serve games from offshore into the UK, if they are legal in the country where they're hosted. The key here under UK law is "where the bet is struck". The bet is considered to be struck where the server is. Since the UK abides by international trade laws (which the US refuses to sign onto), they have to allow their citizens to strike bets in another country so long as those bets are legal under that country's law.

Now here's where it gets interesting. There is no jurisdiction on earth where it's legal to host an online gambling site without a government-issued license, except for Costa Rica. Costa Rica requires something called a "data-processing license" but it is not strictly a license (more a way of incorporating) and is not subject to gambling regulation as such. The reason for this is that, for historical reasons and thanks to a byzantine Napoleonic legal structure, Costa Rica contradicts the rest of the world (except, interestingly, the United States) and considers the bet to be struck on the user's computer, not where the servers are. So they see nothing wrong with hosting a casino there. What you're not allowed to do in Costa Rica, if you host there, is take Costa Rican players. Because then you'd be breaking their law by running an on-shore casino. Funky, right?

It is certainly illegal to host a gaming site in Ireland without an Irish gaming license (this came into force several years ago; before that Ireland had no specific legislation on it and it wasn't prosecuted).

However, the vagaries of where a bet is "struck" leave open a number of interesting loopholes for the clever site operator. For example, some countries which require a license to host gambling have various amnesties in their laws to attract business, which allow back-office operations to be run there, even downloads to be served there, so long as the bet isn't struck there. Some will consider the location of the RNG to be where the bet is struck, and others consider it to be where the player connects to the game server (assuming those are two different machines). Hosting in Costa Rica is enormously expensive, the bandwidth is terrible and the service is nonexistent. So many companies host their primary website there and serve the games elsewhere.

The ONLY way you can be sure that what you're doing in a particular country is legal is to hire a gambling attorney in that country to advise you and, if possible, put an opinion on it in writing. The safest route for a casino not willing to pay for a governmental license is to get incorporated in Costa Rica for $1000 or so and serve the games and RNG from there; and then put your non-gambling stuff like videos, graphics, sounds, etc. on faster servers wherever you want. I like http://nohostsland.com for finding servers in odd parts of the world. But DO NOT consider sticking gambling services on one of these VPS's, or on a server anywhere in the EU without a proper license from the country you're serving from.

If you have the money, some countries which offer packaged license/hosting/banking arrangements are: Malta, Curacao, the Isle of Man, Kahnawake (First Nations, Canada), Belize, Antigua; and on the top shelf, the UK, Australia, France and Italy (primarily for domestic markets).

Also be aware that the UK classifies two types of offshore casinos: Those licensed in the EU or with a country whose gaming regime is recognized by the EU (e.g. Curacao), and those not recognized (e.g. Costa Rica). While it is not illegal for a Costa Rica casino to take UK players, it is illegal in the UK for Costa Rica based casinos to advertise in print, on radio or television. Again, lots of rules, so the best advice? Lawyer up and don't take advice that could land you in jail from anonymous people on the internet.