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blocking access to "bridge for money" by IP access


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It is not missing, but we block connections from some US states from this facility. Currently AR/AZ/DE/FL/IA/LA/MD/TN.

For what it is worth, I almost went nuts for about a week over this play for money thing. I live in Northern VA and I dial in to a modem pool. A little over half the time I do not get the play for money option (even though I dial only VA phone numbers). Turns out, that a lot of my VA numbers connect to a maryland ISP, and MD is one of the blocked states. When this happens, BBO then blocks the money game access. Not sure what this means for others, if I want to play for money when this happens, I have to disconnect and dial in again (and sometiems again and again).

 

So it is the location of the service provider not your phyical location that decides if you can play. In reality I think it should be where you are physically located, but there is no way to tell that I guess.

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So it is the location of the service provider not your phyical location that decides if you can play. In reality I think it should be where you are physically located, but there is no way to tell that I guess.

I'm not sure why you'd want to block customers based on IP address anyway. Sure, you're displaying best effort in not offering your service in certain states, but is it really helpful from a legal point of view?

 

If somebody from say, Maryland, wanted to play Money Bridge he or she could just setup a proxy on a machine in a different state and be done with it. Now if that came to light and BBO got sued, would it help them that they tried to block ISPs in that state from using the service?

 

Did your lawyers actually advise you to take this technical measure? To me it looks rather pointless. Doesn't a simple disclaimer suffice? Adult entertainment sites use only a disclaimer, and I haven't heard that any one of them got sued for offering content to underaged individuals.

 

Relating this to Ben's story: if a customer in Maryland finds out that half of the time he's actually dialing in via Virginia and in that case is able to play Real Money Bridge, what is the legal situation here?

 

--Sigi

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I can't stop a whole lot of things, but I don't mind trying (as long as I don't work up a sweat doing so).

 

There are 8M ways to evade the rules (whether the rules say "no chatting w/partner during a tourney" or "No drinking until you are 21").

 

I have no idea why certain localities do things the way they do, but I don't mind attempting to honor their desires.

 

 

This isnt this complicated at the moment, though. If it is not legal for you, do not play.

Let us worry about the lawyers, etc.

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