It seems as though the lands of Norway are being pillaged and plundered again, and not by the Vikings that founded them.
The Norwegian government passed the Payment Act of Norway last week, which will ban payment processing transactions from unlicensed online gaming sites starting June 1st. Any institution that handles payments will be punishable by law, including many of the e-wallet middleman sites commonly used to transfer funds through online poker commerce.
The intent of these regulations is to strengthen to the state owned gaming monopolies of payment processors Norsk Tipping and Rikstoto by severing ties with operators hosted in other countries that service Norwegian players. In layman terms, the point is to funnel all transactions through the Norwegian government’s back pocket.
The bill has already been met with justifiable resistance. Existing operators and financial institutions have already stated they will not follow the regulations. The European Commission (responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union’s treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union—thanks Wikipedia) also disagrees with the rulings, protesting that any site licensed to operate in other member states does not require licensing. Though Norway isn’t actually a member of the European Commission, they contest that since Norway belongs to the European Economic Area (agreement between Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein and the European Union (EU) that allows these countries to participate in the EU’s single market without joining the EU—xoxo Wikipedia), they are required to follow the commission’s regulation policies.
Monopoly used to be a game I played and never finished. Now, it has become the new mentality behind governments and their ideals with poker regulation. Decisions such as these further distance the people from their state, and leave behind a bleak horizon for our online poker freedoms.
