After five weeks of controversy and criticism, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation’s online gambling website is finally back up and running.

PlayNow.com, billed as “North America’s First Online Gambling Website”, had been offline following a security breach that permitted viewing of (and in a handful of cases, hands-on access to) other customers’ information and accounts.

An external investigation as well as BCLC’s own efforts identified and fixed the software flaw, but the website was kept offline for a few extra hours last night for additional testing. We were able to see the site first thing this morning (but alas, not play — we’re not BC residents).