South Africans are not permitted to gamble on online casinos and sports betting platforms that are not licensed locally, unregulated sites likely have the odds heavily stacked against the player, and banks are legally obligated to confiscate any winnings detected.
“Given that there are regulated and licensed local online gambling options, anyone using an illegal, overseas site to play hard and fast with their finances, is at the very least being extremely reckless,” says Sasha Booth-Beharilal, chair of ISPA, SA’s official internet Industry Representative Body (IRB).
Online gambling on the whole is a risky pursuit offering little upside as it hoovers up R75bn of South Africans’ incomes annually. Gambling illegally magnifies that risk and South African punters would be well-advised to, at least, keep it local.
ISPA looks forward to collaborating with all role players to mitigate the specific online harm of illegal gambling. The strong-arm approach of blocking suspect websites is problematic because South African law prevents ISPs from intercepting or monitoring customer traffic.
Unfortunately, the local gambling industry has tried to pin the responsibility for blocking unlicensed international gambling sites on the South African internet industry.
“ISPA’s position is that blocking any internet content should be done only as part of a clear legislative framework that balances the rights of South Africans to communicate against the potential harm problematic content might cause,” explains Booth Beharilal.
Such a framework also needs to deal with the costs of implementing blocking. Some types of blocking, such as domain name blocks, have a relatively low cost for ISPs, but are also easy for end-users to bypass.
More vigorous blocking techniques such as deep-packet inspection are harder for consumers to defeat, but have a significant financial and network performance cost for operators and represent a significant erosion of the privacy rights of network users.
ISPA recognises that there are situations where it might be useful for there to be legal mechanisms for some websites to be blocked, but South Africa is a democracy with a deep respect for the rights of its citizens to access information.
“South Africans must not have their communications interfered with, and any internet censorship must carefully balance their rights.
“ISPA does, however, look forward to working with policy-makers and other stakeholders on the development of a sensible and balanced framework for dealing with illegal gambling,” concludes Booth-Beharilal.
Founded in 1996, ISPA is the only internet Industry Representative Body (IRB) officially recognised by the SA Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT). ISPA advocates for an open, free, and competitive internet landscape.
