The State of Minnesota in the United States have taken legal action and asked Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to the 200 websites which have been blacklisted.

The Director of Minnesota Department of Public Safety wrote letters to 11 ISPs and national and regional telephone providers asking them to block access to more than 200 websites which are claimed to have been providing illegal gambling services to the Minnesota population.

John Willems, Director of Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division, wrote in his letter that the ISPs and the telephone providers should not “allow your systems to be used for the transmission of gambling information”.

The online gaming sites, namely online bingo, which have been targeted by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety are – Lucky Player Bingo, Newcastle Bingo, Miss Bingo, Easy Odds Bingo, Foxy Bingo, KS Bingo, Lucky Surf Bingo, Ruby Bingo and Tinkle Bingo.

The names of other online gambling sites that have been blacklisted include the Full Tilt Poker, but with the exception of Poker Stars which incidentally has a huge US based clientele.

It is a wonder that how is it that Ladbrokes Casino, Bet Fred, William Hill Casino and Foxy Bingo are on the blacklist compiled by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, since all these sites specifically exclude patrons from the US.

This so called list has been slammed by the UK based sites because they feel that they have been wrongly accused of operating their sites illegally in spite of having high security measures to block players including IP blocking and credit card checks.

The ISPs and the telephone providers who are singled out are AT&T Internet Services, Charter Communications, Comcast Cable, DirecTV, Dish Network, Embarg and Sprint/Nextel, Frontier Communications, Qwest, Verison Wireless and Wildblue Communications.

The undesirable effects of being blacklisted is that the adverse hit on the Search Engine Optimisation or SEO of these sites and the ability of some of the customers outside the US to access these sites will be further restricted since much internet traffic is routed through the networks in the US.

In the above scenario it is doubtful that the ISPs and the telephone providers will take it lying down and are likely to block these sites since it is morally unfair. Also rest apart, the fact is that the blocking of the sites is recommended to be illegal under the US Constitution.

Pat Garofalo, Minnesota Senator, came to the aid of the blacklisted sites and introduced legislation to have the controversial letter withdrawn. He said – “The Department of Public Safety has to have better things to do with their time than to go after a college kid in his dorm room or some guy sitting in his basement spending a couple of hours playing online poker. Demanding that a private – sector Internet Service Provider block access to websites is not proper function of our state government”.

He further added that – “I’m certainly not condoning online gambling but I have serious concerns about government banning access to web sites. This is the kind of thing they do in communist China, not the United State of America”.

“Besides, how about we focus on balancing the state’s $6.4 billion budget deficit and not harassing Minnesotans anymore than Democrat legislative leaders are already trying to do” – was his parting retort.

Written for onlinebingoreviews.com by Joy

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Written for OnlineBingoReviews.com by Joy