Australian Black List

March 31, 2009

The Australian Government was determined to keep out those “adult” sites that they found offensive and a danger to their residents. They had discussed for a long time blocking sites that they found to be objectionable, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) created a list of sites that they thought should be banned from the country. They were allegedly supposed to be pornographic sites only, but if a recent leak is to be believed it would seem that poker is on that list as well.

According to wikileaks.com the Australian government has a list of online poker sites that they are now banning that they have listed under “adult” content. They have listed a ton of sites that are to be “secretly blocked” by the ISPs in this program that they are testing out. The current list is dated August 8th of last year, and has 2,395 domain names and URL’s that are to be blocked.

What was supposed to block out child pornography it is now also blocking places like bodoglife.com, fulltiltpoker.com, absolutepoker.com, betfair.com, ultimatebet.com, partypoker.com, williamhillcasino.com, goldenpalace.com, and the list goes on and on.

With the release of the list there was an immediate challenge by Australian authorities against the list. In fact, according to Wikileaks, their site was added to the blacklist literally days before they released the list so that the government could keep them from publishing the list. It is not known whether or not the list is accurate, and the ACMA says that the list is a fake. They say that there is only 1,061 names on the list and that poker is not on there.