Since the fuss around gambling started to happen in Australia, authorities became more active when supervising this industry. The Australian authorities started to ban the gambling operators and the websites that seem not to respect the law. The authorities responsible for regulating the gambling industry are represented by ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority). Lately, the offshore gambling websites are under the strict observation of ACMA, as many of them are performing outside the regulations of the country.
Many websites are now in question and at risk to get shut down quite soon. Gambling websites that use the Cocos Islands (the Keeling Islands) Internet domain (.cc) are suspected of violating the Australian law. Even though these Islands are part of the official Australian territory, the territory has its own web country code, which makes the gambling websites more difficult to track. Plus, the physical location of the websites that are using the Islands’ domain can be found in different parts of the world, ranging from the Caribbean to Eastern Europe.
The Cocos Islands are not the only places where people take advantage of the individual Internet domain in order to run activities that work outside the law. Many other territories and domains are used for hiding the tracks of casino-style websites or gambling-related websites. Another territory under the jurisdiction of Australia that is often used for the same purpose is called the Christmas Island.
Legal background for regulations
The websites are checked thoroughly and compared with the regulations of the Interactive Gambling Act (IGA) that was launched in 2001. This Act is the one that establishes clearly the limitations of gambling online. Each website that wants to provide any sort of gambling content should obtain an appropriate license in his sense. The legality of the website will be controlled by ACMA. Websites that do not respect the regulations stated in IGA or that they prohibit the law in any way will be shut down until further notice. The action of the Australian authorities keeps people away from using unlawful gambling services and suffering the consequences after.
Online gambling operators are trying to fool the authorities and activate as unregulated websites by gaining access to the Cocos Islands’ domain. It has been decided that gambling services that try to offer services without an approval or a certificate in this sense should be treated as criminal offenses until the respective gambling provider registers in the closest local jurisdiction.
Because of the fact that the companies that run online activities in gambling do not have an actual physical presence in Australia, authorities can find it difficult to close a case. Some of the gambling websites that work under these domains implemented payments in cryptocurrency so that the transactions are more difficult to trace. One example is Justbet who uses Bitcoin for transactions and a .cx domain. The operator was recently under investigation to check if any law breaches were present. The same goes with any other betting operator that recently changed the domains in order to fool the authorities.