Brazil Moves to Introduce UIGEA Style Legislation

Online gaming continues to be a hot legislative issue this summer, and not just in the US. The latest arena where the battle of the legal status of online gaming is being waged: Brazil. Lawmakers in the burgeoning South American market recently introduced a draft of legislation that would essentially outlaw the processing of payments related to online gambling.

While the legislation still has quite some time to go before it becomes law, it appears that there’s at least some momentum for the law within the Brazilian legislature. Senator Magno Malta introduced the law in the spring of 2008, and the bill now moves on to the Communications and Technology Committee of the Brazilian Senate.

A companion piece of legislation seeks to not only block payment processing, but to apparently force Internet Service Providers in Brazil to block user’s access to gambling sites. If the final legislation emerges as an amalgam of the two bills, it would essentially amount to a complete blackout of online gambling in Brazil.

A similar payment processing ban introduced in Brazil in 2007, aimed at sports betting sites, failed to become law.

Senator Alves Filho, who introduced the companion legislation, directly stated in his draft that the bill was inspired by the “good results” produced by the introduction of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) passed in the United States. That bill had a far narrower aim - to restrict payment processing from online gambling sites - and is still facing numerous difficulties and legal challenges that are preventing a final implementation.