Minnesota Blocking Online Gambling Sites: Update

New information has emerged today regarding the attempt by Minnesota to block its citizens access to certain online gambling sites. The story so far: earlier this week, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety served notice to several ISP’s that they were to block access of state residents to a list (at that point unreleased) of 200 online gambling sites.

Now the list has been released and more public comment on the move has emerged, including additional thoughts on the matter from John Willems, Director of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division.

First, the list. You can view a PDF of the notice served to ISPs, which includes the blacklist, here. Included are the usual suspects - Full Tilt and Bodog to name a couple, but there’s also something odd about the list - it excludes big online poker names like Absolute and PokerStars while including dozens of properties that don’t even accept US action (Everest, Party).

This quality of the list led to the following comment from Joe Brennan Jr., iMEGA chairman: “We question how much thought was put into the selection of these sites. To propose censoring Minnesota residents’ Web access and not to know which sites are even in the US market makes me wonder just how seriously the DPS is taking this action. It comes off as a half-baked attempt at intimidation rather than thoughtful enforcement.”

PokerNewsDaily snagged an interview with John Willems where he gave a little additional insight into the list and purpose of the action. Willems told PND that the list was “selected at random” and that the intent of Minnesota was not to pursue individual gamblers.

“We’re not pursuing any of the bettors and we’re not keeping people from accessing their money,” Willems said. “We wanted to let everyone in the world know what we were up to in order to be transparent. We wanted to let them know that if we were successful, it might impact their ability to get funds they may have online. The last thing that we wanted to do was surprise everyone. Our actions have also increased the level of conversation on this topic.”

Updates as they occur.