Well, it seems like the province of Quebec is now like China in terms of Internet freedom of speech. According to juju, they now passed a bill that allows the government to block any website that competes with Loto-Québec.
https://openmedia.org/en/quebec-mise-sur-la-censure-dinternet-que-contient-le-projet-de-loi-74-et-comment-peut-leliminer
Loto-Québec is the state-ran lottery company and Quebec laws make it illegal to compete against it unless a certain portion of the revenues are shared with Loto-Quebec and that the contest is in French. This is why so many chance-based contests on the Internet excludes Quebec province from eligible participants, since it's too much hassle to get around our stupid laws. But now it's worse because any website caught competing against Loto-Québec can be blocked at will by the government.
I know it just includes lottery-related stuff right now, via a website list, but IMHO if that bill is declared constitutional, then I think that opens the door for even more censorship by the government in the future and perhaps without people noticing. What if they started blocking or throttling any website that is not pro-liberal?
I was about to make a topic about that, but thanks DJ. This article sums it up pretty good:
https://openmedia.org/en/quebec-gambling-internet-censorship-what-bill-74-and-how-can-we-kill-it
The Québec government deems gambling websites such as poker sites a big threat to their own gambling site, so instead of competing with them like every good company should do they're trying to push their monopoly in any way possible. And that's definitely not a good thing.
Internet censorship for profit. That's even worse than China, really.
Edit: Here's the same article in French because bill 101 :P (https://openmedia.org/en/quebec-mise-sur-la-censure-dinternet-que-contient-le-projet-de-loi-74-et-comment-peut-leliminer) Anyway, that's the kind of thing that creeps up in the budget that will get voted no matter what and no one will notice...
TOR++ :ninja:
Or any other proxy for that matter; i dont think they block proxies?
Juju wasn't it votedin May already? I didn't know about the bill at the time because no one made noise about it until now
Codewalrus should set up a lottery that competes with Loto-Quebec so we can get this website banned from Quebec.
AND GOOGLE SHOULD DO THE SAME !
Well, if you want CW to go the same route as Omnimaga activity-wise, then making me leave would be the way to go :P. Everytime I left Omnimaga activity nosedived under 15 posts a day in a matter of months. :P
Shouldn't we say Free Quebec? :P (not as in free from Canada but from our corrupted governments? :P)
Although I must say that current governments are nowhere as bad as years ago.
Quote from: c4ooo on July 12, 2016, 12:47:10 PM
TOR++ :ninja:
Or any other proxy for that matter; i dont think they block proxies?
They shouldn't.
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on July 12, 2016, 01:32:37 PM
Juju wasn't it votedin May already? I didn't know about the bill at the time because no one made noise about it until now
May 2015, yes. Kind of thing that didn't made the news a lot, yeah, they prefer going on a crusade against pitbulls instead.
Quote from: gameblabla on July 12, 2016, 04:37:52 PM
Codewalrus should set up a lottery that competes with Loto-Quebec so we can get this website banned from Quebec.
AND GOOGLE SHOULD DO THE SAME !
Haha, we'd love to, but the two most active staff are from Quebec, and that would be pretty inconvenient. A better way to protest is getting Quebec's major ISPs to file a suit against the government. Although losing Google would probably be a good wake-up call.
And thats a government that calls itself progressive. Guess everyone is blinded by Trudeau's tolerance.
Eh, that has nothing to do with the Canadian government. Sure, both governments (provincial and federal levels, we're talking in this thread about the provincial one, led by Philippe Couillard) are led by the "Liberal Party", but I'm pretty sure it's not the same Liberal Party. They probably don't have anything to do with each other other than the name.
And the federal government allows the provincial government to do this?
The provincial governments are rather independent in making laws in fields they have provincial juridiction rather than the federal (there's a separation on who makes which laws, and it's rather arbitrary afaik), and the federal is usually going to bother only when it comes to their attention and they deem the bill unconstitutional. Like the bill 101 on official languages, which was a major law at the time (and still is), the federal did came and asked Quebec to modify the law. For Bill 74, I'm not sure they even heard of it. They probably will, under enough public pressure and/or someone is going to contest it with the federal government or the CRTC (or, if you will, the Canadian FCC).
Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on July 13, 2016, 09:05:12 PM
And the federal government allows the provincial government to do this?
It depends. In USA, marijuana is illegal on the federal government level, but they still allow states to legalize it at the state level. I don't know if federal police enforcement overrides state laws, though.
In Canada, IIRC, the Canadian government needs to approve stuff. I don't know if they are in charge of deciding what is anticonstitutional or not, though.
Seems like the ISPs are contesting the law before the Supreme Court, after all. The issue is pretty much what I mentioned in my above post, laws about telecommunication have federal juridiction, therefore the provincial can't do laws about that. For his defense, the Québec Minister of Finances states it's more related to health, which goes in provincial juridiction, because, well, gambling is considered in the health department. Oh, and it might also violate the law on Telecommunications of 1993 and its freedom of speech on Internet clause.
http://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/07/27/fournisseurs-internet-contestent-loi-jeu-en-ligne-_n_11224856.html?ncid=fcbklnkcahpmg00000009
Well that's good if they can win. I hope they do. IMHO it's up to the CRTC to decide, but also the fact that it needs to not violate the Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or whatever you mentionned.
On a side note, have Loto-Québec ever realized that the reason why fewer and fewer people are buying lottery tickets is because they keep increasing prices over and over? A Lotto 6/49 ticket used to cost $1, then it increased to $2 and now $3. Granted, they offer extra lots at the lower end of the spectrum, but it's still 3 times more expensive. Super 7 costed $2 and was replaced with Lotto Max which is almost identical, but costs $5. I rarely bought lottery tickets before, but I am even less likely to buy them now.
It could also be the aging product. Are younger people really attracted to lottery tickets and video lottery?