Your page is blocked due to a security policy that prohibits access to category Gambling.
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Yesterday I was at the coffee shop near my apartment where I usually write, and I fired up my site to write a new post about checkraise bluffing or something like that. But instead of my usual friendly green interface, I got a white screen with two lines of text:
Your page is blocked due to a security policy that prohibits access to category
Gambling.
Really? I tried some other poker-related sites. A couple of them were blocked too. Then I wondered if the word “poker” in the URL was triggering it. Nope, found some sites with poker in the URL that weren’t blocked.
Apparently someone at some net nanny operation saw fit to add my site specifically to their list of objectionable content. I’m somewhat dismayed. I find it hard to believe that any thinking person would pursue my admittedly wonky articles about pot control or preflop play and conclude that coffee shop owners worldwide would want to protect their customers from me.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t really think that a thinking person did this. Or, at least, that whoever did this was thinking too hard at the time they did it. Which is, ultimately, what irks me. Unthinking censorship is a dangerous thing… far more dangerous, in my opinion, than a few articles about controlling your monkey tilt. I had a whole rant planned, but I imagine I’d largely be preaching to a choir, so I’ll leave most of it unsaid.
I will say that I’m concerned about how habituated we’ve become, especially in the past decade, to being “protected” from things. We’re now regularly searched not just at airports, but at bus stations, concerts, clubs, and tourist attractions. I went to see the Statue of Liberty with my nephew last year, and we were searched not once, but twice before we were allowed on the ferry. Searched to see the Statue of Liberty. Oh the irony.
It’s now “standard practice” to get drug tested before getting a new job, and sometimes randomly while we have the job as well. And our internet usage is monitored, directed, and blocked by our employers, our government, and now apparently our coffee shops. Color me dubious.
So, please, if you run a coffee shop, please please resist the urge to net nanny up your internet. Don’t be part of the problem, be part of the solution.
If your favorite internet connection has blocked Noted Poker Authority, don’t despair! You can still read the site freely by subscribing to the full feed RSS in a feedreader such as Bloglines. You can subscribe to the comments feed also, as well as various feeds on the message board. So you can read almost the entire site without ever hitting the server. Nanny will never know.
And if you don’t want to use a feedreader, you can always subscribe by email as well.
Tags: censorship, coffee shops, net nanny, poker, Statue of Liberty my ass

Another option to work around the nannies would be to make use of TOR, the onion router. As all of your TOR traffic is encrypted in transit, and neither leaves nor enters on ports 80/443, the nannies won’t even know that you’re using the web. Some might figure out that you’re using TOR, but in that case the best option is to just leave the establishment after barking at the management.
It’s highly unusual for me, but I, too, will leave the rant unranted. For now.
I hope this post only shows up once — my internet connection is falling part under the snow today…