There will still be aggressive Norwegians all over the online poker sites, hoovering up my money :-)

Probably worth clarifying that Norway aren't members of the EU, so won't fall foul of EU competition laws if they go ahead. Unlike France, who like to try protect the state gambling monopoly.

I have lived in Norway for 20 years, and one characteristic Norwegians have is that they:

a - don't like anyone telling them what the ought to do

b - enjoy swimming against the tide and finding their own way of doing things

Remember Norway has not joined the EEC and large sections of the population support trashing the existing agreements in the belief that they can persuade the EEC to give them better terms!

There is an old law in Norway saying that gambling debts cannot be forcibly collected (unlike a lot of other debts, that can be collected using more or less pleasant methods like confiscating part of your income, or social welfare). Due to this, and the growing concern that some people have a less controlled approach to online gambling (and may waste more money than they have, and thus not only get debt, but also not have enough money to pay for their food), they want to add a controlling element at the only place it's possible.

Instead of setting up a Chinese-style national firewall, they tell the banking and credit-card companies that they want Norwegian cards stopped from being usable on such gambling sites. You may want to ridicule this, but I consider it quite sensible, especially since our National "lottery"-company has strict rules against gambling by credit.

As others have stated, we're not a member of the EU, and given the load of crap regulations the EU has been forcing upon us by means of the EEC, there is a growing feeling that we should abandon the EEC aswell. Given how much we donate to the EU over the EEC agreement (you might want to check donations per capita), I suspect it would be a bigger blow for EU than for Norway if we left the EEC.

A little research might be a good thing for the Register to apply to this article, wouldn't it?

//Svein

How did this ministry take over regulation of gambling? All those parish bingo nights?

One nitpick: Norway is in the EFTA, not the EEC. Technically speaking the EEC doesn't exist and, again technically speaking, the EFTA is a seperate entity to the EU. However the EU has a lot of clout on the EFTA and, in any case, has bilateral agreements with Norway and Switzerland (another country that is starting to wonder if its relationship witht he EU is really worth it thanks to the EU's attempts to interfere in their tax laws).

At least you lot have the option. There isn't a single party in the UK that even mentions the EU anymore, despite the fact that it's doing most of the work now.

Since there is absolutely no way to know if you're being cheated (bogus deck of cards by the computer for instance), it is reasonable to ban online gambling as a likely cheat.

ridicule any government from trying to end a social problem, especially if it's culturally based incompatibility with on line gambling. The problem with what the US is doing is it isn't doing anything of the sort, it's merely protectionism for a few extremely rich gambling/resort corporations, they don't mind you spending the food money, but you have to do it with their employers companies. This doesn't really look to be that sort of behavior so it doesn't really rank with the US style hypocrisy/corrupt anti-gambling fiasco.