Japan enacts bill to ban online casino ads

In a plenary meeting, the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of parliament, approved the bill to revise the law on the fight against gambling addiction, following its passage at the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, early this month.

The bill also calls on the central and local governments to take steps to make the public properly aware that gambling using online casinos is illegal.

The revised law will be promulgated by the end of this month and will come into effect three months after its promulgation.

The revised law stipulates that it is illegal to open and operate online casino sites and apps in Japan.

Any act to attract people to overseas online casinos will be banned, such as posting online ads and running affiliate websites designed to promote online casinos and making posts on social media about information that would arouse people's interest in such gambling.

Although the revised law has no penal provisions, it is aimed at encouraging internet service providers and social media operators to delete such ads and affiliate websites by clearly stating the illegality of online gambling.

The Internet Hotline Center, which is commissioned by the National Police Agency to monitor harmful information, is expected to issue requests to delete such content as illegal information.

According to an estimate by the NPA, some 3.37 million people in the country have used illegal online casinos, betting 1.2 trillion yen in total annually.

Most such casino sites are operated legally overseas, but betting with money from Japan through these sites constitutes a gambling offense under the Penal Code.

The NPA has asked the governments of the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao and other countries that grant licenses to online casino operators for cooperation to stop services targeting Japanese nationals by removing explanations in Japanese from casino sites and stating on the screen that it is illegal for Japanese people to use them.