CNET online news reported on May 1st that the state authorities has issued a 7 page blacklist of gambling sites to internet providers and instructed them to block their customers access.

These instructions came from the Department of Public Safety, and are supposedly based on the grounds that gambling is illegal in Minnesota. They also seem to ignore any first amendment rights to free speech.

This move is not unique. It has been tried – and failed – before.

The list of sites runs to about two hundred which is hardly comprehensive. It includes such big names as Bodog Poker but not Poker Stars, and also includes many online casinos. It also includes sites that do not accept players from America, such as CD Poker.

Given the almost haphazard composition of the blacklist, this move by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety is hard to take seriously. When you consider that a similar move from Pennsylvania some years back was overturned on appeal to the Supreme Court, there must be some other consideration behind this.

It would be pointless to speculate what that reason could be. Whatever it is will come out eventually. The important thing to note here is that this move has not, and could not, have any real impact on online gambling in Minnesota.

Any savvy internet gambler that wishes to continue playing at a site on that list will find it very easy to do so. And savvy internet gamblers already know this. The thrust of this news story will serve only to alienate further those non-gambling citizens of Minnesota, and create an unnecessary workload on ISPs and gambling sites, while doing nothing to stop online gambling in the State.

That leaves us with a choice of conclusions; we can either conclude that all of the above is already known to the fine free-speech hating public safety officials of Minnesota, and they are therefore doing this in order to further some other, unknown, end, or we can conclude that they are morons.

Having said that, I suppose taht both the above conclusions could be true.

Let’s wait and see.