The government created a blacklist supposedly with child porn sites, and will force internet providers to ban any access to the sites on the list. The list has been leaked by someone, and we now see most of the real money poker sites are the list, so all it takes now is for the government to proceed with their "child porn" blacklist, and online poker will be no more in Australia.
There is obviously huge backlash in Australia over the idea of "censoring" our internet, firstly because the list contains a lot more than just child porn, and secondly because of the lack of control the public has to monitor what sites the government can add in the future if it's already not just child porn. In other countries where this has happened, blacklists end up with sites that talk badly about the government/royals of that country. Effectively Australians may lose an avenue for freedom of speech if this goes ahead, as nothing would really stop them banning forums, blogs or anti-government sites.
Here are a few links:
2+2 Poker Legislation:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57...orship-438875/
Poker specific article about the blacklist:
http://www.cio.com.au/article/296460...rnet_blacklist
Australian broadband site with good ongoing coverage of the blacklist:
http://whirlpool.net.au
I'd really like to make sure poker followers are aware just how close they are to losing the entire Australian market, which might be as much as 400,000 players in total according to the 2nd article. So I'm hoping you can give this a mention.