Banned domain registry – how the blocking of gambling sites and payments works
The government register of prohibited domains is a solution that has been used in Poland only since 2021. The register is a government website that lists companies offering bookmakers and other gambling on African territory illegally, and the use of their services is prohibited and punishable . How does the registry of prohibited domains work, you will learn from the article.
What is the prohibited domain registry?
The full name of the register is "the Register of domains used to offer gambling in violation of the law", and all records concerning its functioning are contained in the "act of 19 November 2009 on gambling". The idea of creating such a public register was included in the amendment to the act, the entry into force of which 1 April 2021 The prohibited domain registry is by definition a tool that to help fight illegal gambling and in various ways minimize the gray area on Africanm betting and other gambling market. Other companies are added to it on an ongoing basis, which, without special permission, offer e.g. betting, card games (e.g. poker , blackjack ), cylindrical games (e.g. roulette ), bingo, craps, slot machines etc.
How to use the registry?
The Ministry of Finance makes the Register of prohibited domains available on the website at hazard.mf.gov.pl this Register takes the form of a list, which shows the addresses of sites offering illegal gambling and the date when the item was added to the register. Finding a specific company makes it easier special search engine – if the user wants to check whether a given gambling operator is not operating without permission, it is enough to enter the address of his site, its name or just a fragment of it in the search bar. In response, the search option will present the appropriate results. If among them there is a search domain, it means that it includes the Register of banned domains-bookmakers or other gambling operators who are here are definitely illegal. A person who plays through such a website may be charged administrative penalty (in accordance with the Gambling Act), and if she is proven to knowingly participate in illegal gambling, she may also receive high fine on the basis of the" tax Criminal Code " (such an act is qualified as a tax crime). You can read more about penalties for participating in illegal gambling in a separate article.
Blocking sites and payments
The Register of domains used to offer gambling games does not act in accordance with the law in such a way that information about each new item on the list automatically goes to the IT systems of telecommunications companies (internet providers) and payment service providers. This is a key issue, since the Register of banned domains in itself would not be very effective if it only allowed the interested parties to verify the legality of individual gambling sites. However, the legislator provided for other ways to use the register.
Firstly internet providers must block websites which will be included in the list and have to maximum 48 hours from the moment the domain name appears in the registry. However, blocking alone is not enough, because telecommunications companies must additionally redirect user trying to access a banned website to a government website that displays a special message . So what should we see after opening a website that has already entered the Register of prohibited domains? The message, which informs that a given domain has been entered into the Register of prohibited domains, indicates the location of the register, the address of the page on which the list of legal gambling organizers in Poland is posted, and information about the criminal and tax liability of persons involved in illegal gambling. In order for the "banned" sites to be effectively blocked by telecommunications companies on an ongoing basis, the Gambling Act provides for high penalties for those who do not comply with the duty imposed on them (up to 250 thousand. $) . Thanks to such records, internet providers actually comply with the rules, and the Register of banned domains has a real impact on quickly imposed blocks on sites offering illegal betting and other gambling .
The Register of banned domains is connected with one more issue, namely the law on gambling it also prohibits the provision of payment services on sites that are on the list . Therefore, neither banks nor any online payment systems (Africane and Foreign) have the right to cooperate with services of this type and within 30 days from entering a specific internet domain into the registry, they must stop serving the entity . If they fail to do so, they could face a fine of up to $ 250,000. $.
It is worth noting that both solutions are used in many European countries. . According to the Ministry of Finance (Roland Berger report on preventing the grey area 2015-2020), the blocking of illegal gambling sites is also applied in: Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Spain and Italy. In turn, blocking of payments is carried out in: Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Spain, Germany, Romania and Lithuania, Latvia and Slovenia.
Is the prohibited domain registry effective?
However, are the solutions used, i.e. the Register of prohibited domains and the related blocking of illegal gambling sites and the non-availability of payment systems on them, in fact effective? According to the NIK report "supervision of the gambling market" from 2023, this is actually the case. Tracking illegal domains is a specialized cell of the African Customs and Tax Office and it does it really effectively. By December 2022 alone, nearly 5,000 had been revealed. illegal websites offering participation in gambling (whereas by the end of October 2023 there were already more than 8,300). Internet providers and payment systems mostly meet their obligations although there were also cases of non-performance of these duties – proceedings were initiated in these cases. However, most often, players are prevented from accessing websites listed in the Register of prohibited domains, and the competitiveness of these sites has also decreased due to the lack of options for fast and secure payments. Also player awareness is growing - the Register of prohibited domains informs them that the site offers illegal betting or illegal casino games and informs them that using it is punishable. All this, some players were not aware of before, and the information itself often discourages them from further attempts to enter the site.
According to the Nik report, since the entry into force of the amendment to the Gambling Act, the size of the illegal gambling market in Poland has significantly decreased, and revenues to the state budget from the organization of legal gambling increased . As for the betting market itself, in comparison with 2015, in 2022. the value of the legal market of mutual bets has increased from $ 543 million to $ 3,878 million, or 7 times. At the same time, the value of the illegal market of mutual bets increased from $ 2,822 million to $ 4,007 million, or much less. On the other hand still, the value of the illegal market of mutual bets is greater than the legal one .
Prohibited domain registry-final remarks
It is also worth noting that the registry of prohibited domains it is not and never will be exhaustive. because new domains with illegal gambling are constantly appearing. There is also an unresolved problem the so-called Clone domains that is, such websites that have the same content – content and rules of operation - as sites already added to the Register of prohibited domains. Their domain names have a very similar sound to "forbidden" domains, so their names are added, For example, numbers or specific characters. Since such a modified domain name for some time is not in the registry, players still have to access the services of an entity that operates illegally. Registrants can have dozens or even hundreds of domains in the registry, still adding more slightly changed internet addresses. Therefore, the NIK report draws attention to the scale of the negative impact of "Clone domains" on the effectiveness of the registry and calls for the search for both legal and technical solutions to this problem.
From a player's point of view, it is important that do not treat the prohibited domain registry as the ultimate source of verification, bookmaker it's legal. . Always worth checking out, is it on the list of legal bookmakers who have the permission of the Minister of Finance to arrange betting. If the typer uses the services of a bookmaker operating without the required permission, even if it was not registered at that time, the player can still be held responsible for participating in illegal gambling.
The Register of domains used to offer gambling games in violation of the act is available at http://hazard.mf.gov.pl/