The Italian authorities made the headlines last with a new aggressive move aimed at blocking Italian players from Internet gaming activities.

For some months now a war of words has been going on after the Italians arbitrarily enacted a blockade of 684 internet gaming sites back in February. 68 of the sites were licensed by the Malta Lotteries and Gaming Authority. In a bid to bypass the blockade, the LGA linked its website to all the Maltese gaming sites using a web anonymiser that disguises the websites' IP addresses.

Now the Italians have upped the ante by blacking out the Lotteries and Gaming Authority's official website - the last remaining link to Italian gaming sites registered in Malta

The LGA website is now no longer accessible from Italian territory, after Italy's state administration for monopolies, the AAMS, warned the site had no authorisation to collect bets and blocked it from Italian ISPs..

LGA chief executive Mario Galea, who at the time was in Italy addressing the European Forum of Gaming Regulators, made a strong statement criticising the Italian action to delegates: "We cannot accept that the good, the bad and the ugly are thrown in the same basket. Malta's websites are regulated by the official Maltese authority," Galea said.

The blockade action started when the Italian government blocked all foreign gaming sites from the UK to Malta, claiming it was protecting Italian gamers from "phishing" - the fraudulent acquisition of passwords and credit card details.

Threats of legal action under European Union law were made by major international gambling groups, and critics of the Italian move said that the real motive was to protect the Italian government's EUR 1.8 billion gambling monopoly.

In the confusing legal melee that followed, a Malta licensee, Astrabet was initially successful in obtaining a ruling that the blockade be lifted in its case, but this has apparently since been revoked by an Italian appeals court after a further challenge by the AAMS.

However, while the appeal by AAMs was accepted, the request for a suspension of the ruling was not, which means that technically access to Astrabet should be open to Italians - it is not.

Italian ISPs have little choice in the matter when the AAMS adds new sites to its blockade list - any Italian ISP that does not comply risks a daily fine of EUR 180 000.

Malta is awaiting a response from the European Commission on it's investigations into whether infringement procedures should be commenced against Italy. The European Commission has apparently requested information from the Italians on the restrictions imposed on online betting and gaming and the justification for these.

Maltese wins case against government at European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights last week awarded former Maltacom chairman Maurice Zarb Adami 7,752 euros holding that there had been a violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights, read in conjunction with Article 4 § 3 (d) (prohibition of slavery and forced labour) of the Convention.

Mr Zarb Adami, a pharmacist was placed on the list of jurors in Malta from 1971 and remained on the list until at least 2002. Between 1971 and 1997 he served as both a juror and foreman in three different sets of criminal proceedings.

In 1997 he was called again to serve as a juror, but failed to appear and was fined approximately EUR 240.

As the applicant failed to pay the fine, he was summoned before the Criminal Court. He pleaded that the fine imposed on him was discriminatory in terms of Article 45 of the Constitution and Article 14 of the Convention, taken in conjunction with Article 4 § 3 (d), as other people in his position were not subjected to the burdens and duties of jury service and the law and/or the domestic practice exempted women from jury service, but not men.

His case was referred to the First Hall of the Civil Court, before which the applicant alleged that the Maltese system penalised men and favoured women; during the preceding five years only 3.05% of women had served as jurors as opposed to 96.95% of men.

Moreover, the burden of jury service was not equitably distributed; in 1997 the list of jurors represented only 3.4% of the list of voters. On 5 February 1999 the First Hall of the Civil Court rejected the applicant's claims.

He appealed, stressing that jury service was a burden, as jurors were required to leave their work to attend court hearings regularly. It also imposed a moral burden to judge the innocence or guilt of a person. His appeal was rejected.

In 2003, as a lecturer at the University of Malta, the applicant unsuccessfully sought exemption from jury service, under Article 604(1) of the Criminal Code (CC).

Having been summoned once again to serve as a juror in another trial, in 2004 the applicant requested to be exempted from jury service under Article 607 of the CC. His application was refused.

On 18 April 2005 the applicant again requested to be exempted from jury service, relying on Article 604 (1) of the CC, which provides an exemption for full-time lecturers at the University. On 25 April 2005 his request was accepted.

The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 22 April 2002.

Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:

Nicolas Bratza (British), President,

Josep Casadevall (Andorran),

Kristaq Traja (Albanian),

Lech Garlicki (Polish),

Javier Borrego Borrego (Spanish),

Ljiljana Mijovi? (citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina), judges,

Justice Joseph Filletti (Maltese), ad hoc judge,