PayPal policy - you are guilty until proven innocent - is not acceptable by BrainKing any longer

BrainKing is a multilingual site (my favorite description) and since it is actively used by players from many countries around the world, it was always one of our primary goals to allow them to purchase higher membership levels and give them a choice of as many different payment methods as possible (unlike of sites which are focused only to local audience). And, since the internet is continuously evolving, new payment ways emerge, while others can either disappear or change their behavior and policy so much, that they become disadvantageous and unacceptable. Today's article is, unfortunately, about the latter.

BrainKing users, who read our Server News, are already aware of my plan to stop accepting payments via PayPal. The problem, which is the direct cause of the current status, appeared 10 days ago when I received a Notification of Limited Account Access email from PayPal (and although my first idea was that it's just one of the well known scam letters, it really was a genuine PayPal message). The email contains the following excerpts:

"The PayPal Acceptable Use Policy requires merchants involved in gaming activities, including games of skill, to receive approval for such transactions. The business conducted at your website www.brainking.com is covered by this policy, and we therefore require additional information to ensure your transactions are in compliance with both legal and credit card association regulations."

It's funny, huh? Everybody knows that BrainKing is not, never was and never will be a gambling (or gaming) site, and we had even highlighted this important detail in this blog site several times - for instance, this article explains that BrainKing has nothing to do with gambling although some web directories list it at a gambling category, or we didn't forget to mention in this article that our version of Online Poker can be played only with free chips and never for a real money. However, PayPal employees obviously don't bother to find more information - there, we can see "online poker" at your home page and, of course, backgammon and other games can be played for money too. So, you are the bad guy and now it's your turn to prove the opposite!

"To facilitate this review of your business, we request that you provide: (1) a legal opinion stating why the games available on your website are not considered gambling activities in the jurisdictions they are offered; and (2) the methods you employ to block users from jurisdictions where playing non-gambling related games for money is prohibited."

Can you see the absurdity of this paragraph? They want me to provide documents which simply cannot exist because no legal authority would give you a statement of something you do not do. It is understandable that real gambling sites need a license for this kind of business - but why would "play for fun" game sites need a similar "anti-license"?

OK, OK. I had decided not to give up that fast and sent a response to PayPal (which was not an easy task at all, I will describe it later) which contained my attempt to describe why BrainKing is not a gambling site and why we don't need any kind of license or legal opinions. After 2 days I receive the following reply:

"Thank you for contacting PayPal with regards the warning on your account. We understand that no gambling (games of chance) is taking place on your account, however as there is a level of skill involved by players and they have to make a payment to play these games we require you to provide details of the games offered on your website http://brainking.com/ and the methods you employ to block users from jurisdictions where playing non-gambling related games for money is prohibited."

I didn't believe my eyes. They have to make a payment to play these games? The home page of BrainKing is very clear at this subject: The basic membership is FREE - you can register a free account, play the games and pay nothing at all! There is no trial period - you can use the free account as long as you want to. And if you are satisfied with our services, you can easily upgrade to a higher membership level and unlock a huge amount of members only advantages and new features. However, please note that this request does not ask me to provide a legal document - just to provide details. Very well, that should have been much easier. So I sat down and created a long and descriptive document, including screenshots, references to ICRA and similar stuff, and uploaded the result to the Resolution Center of my PayPal account. Every sane person would expect a "case closed" response, however, I guess it's not a big surprise what I actually received the next day:

"To facilitate this review of your business, we request that you provide: (1) a legal opinion stating why the games available on your website are not considered gambling activities in the jurisdictions they are offered; and (2) the methods you employ to block users from jurisdictions where playing non-gambling related games for money is prohibited."

Oh well. Should I laugh maniacally or simply fall on the floor and froth at the mouth? The whole effort was for nothing. Actually, after reading horror stories at http://www.paypalsucks.com/ and similar independent sites, I knew that there was a small chance to win this ridiculous case, but I don't like to give up without a fight. Furthermore, if nothing else, I can gather an interesting material to warn other site owners who accept PayPal payments as well and don't know what could happen to them anytime and for any reason (or even without a reason at all).

This article seems to be longer than I expected. Let me post the second part tomorrow.
(to be continued)