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Grrr
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of Hamilton, New-Zealand.
Dec 2000
time: 18:22
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More articles:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26041.html
quote:
Greek ban on gaming threatens Internet cafes
By John Lettice
Posted: 04/07/2002 at 12:49 GMT
A Register reader in Greece emails us claiming that the Greek government has effectively outlawed Internet cafes by "all LAN and Internet games and any kind of game that is supported by electrical, electronic or software means." If anybody so much as has something looking like a game on the screen, he tells us, the cafe manager is liable for arrest.
All of this makes some kind of perverted sense. Computers in Internet cafes are gaming machines, sort of. Or at least they have that potential, and Greece has already shown signs of considering them as such. More recently, Greece banned all amusement and gambling machines, including the likes of Pac Man.
You pay for computers in Internet cafes, you can play games on them, so yes, there you go. And a little further research leads us to believe that Greece's position is maybe not so wildly eccentric as one might initially think. Here in the UK one does have to pay duty on gaming and amusement machines in public places. You can get a little more information about the position by tearing through this section of the 1995 Finance Act, but frankly we do not recommend it.
It would however seem logical to us for Internet cafe machines playing games to be classed somewhere within the amusement machines category, and therefore liable for duty. If they're not, then pubs installing computers instead of amusement machines could be on to a good wrinkle. So, some form of cafe tax? OK, but what, then, are we going to do about all of those people in pubs who'll sometime soon be whipping out their 3G phones in order to play online games?
In Greece, obviously, they'll just arrest the nearest bar manager, while in London's West End we foresee a variation on traffic wardens slapping Internetting Tickets on careless mobile gamers... ® |
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26939.html
quote:
Greek govt bans all computer games
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 03/09/2002 at 16:45 GMT
The government of Greece is making heroic efforts to humiliate the nation in front of the entire world, by banning all electronic games. That's right; something as innocent as playing computer chess on your laptop in a hotel lobby is now a crime with penalties of up to three months in stir and a fine of 10,000 euros.
The purpose behind this charming legislation is to crack down on Internet gambling (which already was illegal) -- or, rather, to enable legislators to enact their little public dance of righteous aversion to Internet gambling.
Improved enforcement of existing law is all that was needed, but there's a problem. Unfortunately, the Greek government is "incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines," according to an older article from the English-language Kathimerini newspaper, written while the bill was under consideration.
Now it's official. The legislature has concluded that all electronic games have got to go because the bureaucrats they're maintaining on the public payroll aren't swift enough to figure out the difference between video poker and TuXkart. Perhaps enforcing literacy requirements and sobriety regulations for government workers would have been a more productive approach, but it's too late for that now. ® |
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Bereta_Eder
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I do actually.
All I'm saying is that there's a lot of illegal gambling going on and that all those semi-underground "criminals" who used to have the one hand thieves centers have now opened up internet caffess and do the gambling from there.
The gov. solved the first problem with the one hand thieves and now it is in front of this one.
That doesn't mean that the law is "good". Even if it serves its purpose.
Last edited by Bereta_Eder on 04-09-2002 at 00:45
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Bereta_Eder
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And I tell you, in the internet caffee I sometimes frequent people are still shooting eachother in CS and Quake. :shrugs:
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ErikFromUSA
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Ok, did you relize that the brain uses electricity! So if you use your brane to play even a board game, by law you can be arrested. So inother words, they outlawed games period! That means no sports also! The Greek ass holes could aslo arrest people for having fun and just claim they were using electronic signals from thier brain to play games.
paiktis22, your a retard if you dont think this is a big deal!
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03-09-2002 23:26
Sure, whatever that means 
)
What does relize mean by the way?!
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