Quebec government to appeal ISP blocking decision of provincial supreme court
News on 27 Aug 2018
News on 27 Aug 2018
The Canadian provincial government of Quebec’s efforts to eliminate competition to its Loto Quebec online gambling enterprise via ISP blocking laws may not be dead yet.
Our readers will recall that despite public complaints the provincial government pushed through Bill 74 in 2016, a measure that allowed for ISP blocking of competitive websites at the behest of the state-owned Loto Quebec online gambling enterprise Espacejeux.
The government framed this essentially anti-competitive legislation as a law designed to protect public health on problem gambling grounds.
Had it been successfully implemented, Bill 74 could have resulted in ISP bans on 2,200 websites, preventing 8.2 million Quebecers from accessing those sites.
However, challenged in court by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), an industry body which includes several ISPs, the government lost the case, with the Quebec Supreme Court observing that the government’s claim that online gambling ISP blocking was a public health issue was “disingenuous.”
The CWTA filing argues that the sort of ISP bans enshrined in Bill 74 went against the concept of net neutrality, were expensive in application and ineffective in implementation. Justice Pierre Nollet, presiding, did not mince his words in noting that Bill 74 was not only against the public interest, but was also a clear violation of the Canadian Radio-Television Commission Act.
The judge was not taken in by the government public health argument, saying of the bill: “Its pith and substance is to prevent online gambling not set up and operated by the province from being ‘communicated’ by ISPs and not the protection of consumers or their health.”
