Government officials in the State of Minnesota announced this week that they have backed off in their efforts to prevent residents of the state from playing online poker and other forms of online gambling.

Officials from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division last month asked 11 Internet service providers (ISPs) to block state residents’ access to over 200 online gambling sites, including many online poker sites.

The officials cited a Federal law that requires so-called common carriers, a term usually applied to telephone companies but in this case applied to ISPs, to comply with requests to block telecommunications services used for illegal gambling.

Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division Director John Willems said that since telecommunications companies now provide more than just phone service, the requests were “a reasonable application of the law.”

He has changed his mind.

According to media reports, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division announced this week that it had contacted the ISPs again and rescinded its request that the ISPs block Minnesota residents’ access to online gambling sites.

No ISPs had complied with the request.

In addition, legal experts said Minnesota’s attempt to clamp down on Web gambling was fruitless, because savvy computer users could easily get around the ban, plus there are thousands of gambling sites and the state only targeted about 200.

Among the ISPs the state contacted are Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc. ???? Among the online poker rooms the state wanted to block access to are Full Tilt Poker, Hollywood Poker, Titan Poker, Party Poker, CD Poker, Players Only Poker, Bodog Poker and Everest Poker.

Some of those online poker rooms already banned Americans, exposing how the Minnesota officials poorly researched the issue.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)