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Mason claims to be concerned about how the composition of the board will be perceived by the opponents of gaming
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"claims"? If you are implying he has some other motive then just come out and say it.
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What they pay attention to is infighting. Read the criticism section of the PPA Wikipedia article. There's nothing about the board. Rather, it's about Mason.
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Why the [censored] do you care what anonymous person put in a wiki article? Change it if you don't like it! I guess you do care a lot though and that is what has prompted you to bait Mason here.
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I invite Mason to make his case that the PPA board composition empowers our opponents in any way, because he hasn't yet. He's entitled to his opinion, of course. However, he states this as incontrovertible fact; he's very emphatic about it, but he has yet to prove it.
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I have discussed this aspect of the board composition before which Mason has agreed with, so refer to that. But I'll lay it out here again:
1) A board dominated by affiliate farm interests allows our enemies to paint the PPA as not an organization 600K strong or whatever representing average Joe players, but rather as the mouthpiece of a certain segment of the online poker industry.
2) Such affiliates are at the highest risk of prosecution under the IUGEA as they are facilitating the transfer of funds and deriving a profit that doesn't come from their own individual play. While others here have said in the past "great! let em try to prosecute!" so as to have a test case, the fact is that our enemies would then be able to point to the PPA as having individuals on its board under criminal indictment. Not something good for PR purposes IMO.
And I will say again that if it would in fact be such a great thing, then CP mag and Allyn Schulman and Linda Johnson should wage an "I dare you to prosecute us!" campaign and try to bring it about for the good of the goals of the PPA. And don't bring up CP's being willing to fight on the advertising from online cardrooms, because that is a separate issue.
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There is another issue concerning the board composition. Specifically, are we players adequately represented?
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And I've laid out this case as well before in detail. Many if not most of you seem to disagree. But that is primarily because of the pending legislation and judicial initiatives. If those fail this year, giving the PPA a 2 year track record of no legislative gains, then I suspect more posters here will question not only the board's composition, but its overall goals as well, as online poker in the form we have it now, is not the only form of poker most of us care about. Most of us have a wider range of goals, and some of them take a much longer timeframe to work on, which is why if they aren't worked on now, even while placing a priority on the pending legislation, that it will take longer yet to achieve them.
And let's note something else as well, which is that Mason's concerns about the PPA have not only to do with the board, but also transparency. So what about that???
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So, I'm at a loss. Pappas is working hard for your right to play. I'm working hard for your right to play. You all are working hard for your right to play. Mason, OTOH, hasn't even submitted the 2+2 LLC comments on the UIGEA regs yet. If 2+2 LLC had submitted their comments by now, perhaps it would have worked to encourage other businesses to submit theirs. Even the Chamber of Commerce has submitted comments that help us. I do know that if 2+2 LLC and its authors don't submit comments by Dec. 12th, it will be difficult for them to claim a right to an opinion on what the rest of us are doing.
I wonder what Mason does think we should all do about the current situation regarding online poker. He's not articulated an alternate vision by which we work without ulitizing PPA. I hope it at least involves commenting on the UIGEA regs before Dec. 12th.
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We all appreciate the efforts of Mr. Pappas and yourself. But now you aren't content with that and are demanding that 2+2 take certain specific steps. So it seems that despite the lack of substantive responses in the thread started by Berge to answer the question I put in a different thread,
Does the PPA need 2+2? , that the answer is "yes the PPA does need 2+2 and in fact demands its help in the way it wishes apart from their allowing the use of this forum to help the efforts of the PPA".
And now I am going to restate something I have said before in that thread:
"I just want to note again that either the PPA doesn't need 2p2, in which case all this arguing and discussion is pointless, or they do need 2p2, in which case *
even if the criticisms and demands of Mason and posters like myself are totally unreasonable* you who disagree will seek to remove the source of those criticisms by working for board change and better transparency. Of course believing that the PPA does need 2p2 but refusing for reasons of pride/ego/whatever not to meet critics half-way is also an option. Just don't keep bitching at those of us who refuse to accept the PPA as it is, even while we note that the PPA has made visible improvements of late."