Betfair on secret Australian government list of banned web-sites?
Online betting exchange operator, Betfair, has written to the Australian government over reports that its site was included in the government’s secret black-list of banned web-sites.
The secret list is maintained by the government’s Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and provided to select Internet software companies for
inclusion in their commercial software filters.
Under a programme started by the former government, the filters are made available free to ISP customers and are designed to help protect children, in particular, from objectionable content.
However the list was recently leaked on international whistle-blower site – www.wikileaks.org.
The leak has sparked a major political row and an official warning to popular Australian Internet discussion forum – whirlpool.net.au – where a link to the list had been published.
Minister for Communications, Stephen Conroy, bought into the row by denying that the published list was the same as ACMA’s secret list.
Some sources suggest that the list was extracted from one of the Internet software filter products, and minister Conroy appeared to suggest that is why the leaked black-list includes
more URLs or web-addresses on it than the 1000+ URL’s on the official list.
Certainly there is no doubt that Betfair.com is included in the list published at wikileaks and no doubt also, that Betfair is less than pleased.
Hugh McTaggart, media and communications manager for the local Betfair operation, which is a joint venture between Betfair (UK) and Crown, told eCommerce Report that the published list was probably a hoax.
“ We have, however, written to ACMA to ascertain if we’re on the real list. We can’t understand why we would be, but we have written to them to seek clarification” he said.
McTaggart said that the local Betfair.com.au site is effectively a splash page for the Betfair.com website in the UK where the exchange actually operates.
“It is widely acknowledged that this site houses products like poker and on-line in-play betting that are illegal to Australians but these are actively blocked by IP methods
and therefore unavailable to Australian customers.”
For more information go to
www.acma.gov.au
www.betfair.com.au
www.wikileaks.org
www.whirlpool.net.au
| 
