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I'm a single employee who works in IT and doesn't make those decisions, but I can say that in some of the cases I've seen (such as when Xorg's account was frozen for a while) it was because PayPal was forced to do so by the government. After the Patriot Act, a whole slew of new oversight was put in to try and stop money laundering. And if you're a non-profit, you need to submit paperwork to PayPal to prove you're a non-profit. If you don't have that paperwork on file, and current, PayPal is legally required to freeze and account and report it.

Sadly these cases get reported as PayPal arbitrarily shutting down accounts because they have open source, and when the accounts are reinstanted that isn't reported on.

Working at PayPal, I'm exposed to our disputes department and how much policy is involved there. Nothing is done on a whim. Buyers and sellers have disputes all the time. There is tons of legislation involved. And if you side too much protecting buyers, then sellers get pissed and vice-versa.

As for Wikileaks, PayPal doesn't take political stances. From the official statement: - https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/12/paypal-statement-regarding-wikileaks/

"PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action."

If you violate the terms of service with any institution, they're likely not going to do business with you.

Software developers and charities need ways to accept payment. That is a necessary evil that isn't going to go away. The parent AC apparently felt that evil meant they weren't going to pay more than 90 cents for the bundle. But I think most people will find that whether you go through PayPal, Amazon, Google, or some merchant bank, the transactions are handled in roughly the same fashion. They're all heavily regulated and operate in a fairly standard fashion.

Also, where was this original claim that they're refuting? I don't see it. As I understood (as of yesterday), the issue WAS that PayPal froze their accounts for non-compliance in this respect

from PayPal's blog:

"We recently placed a temporary limitation of the Courage to Resist organization’s PayPal account as they had not complied to our stated policy requiring non profits to associate a bank account with their PayPal account (for the vast majority of non-profits, this is not an issue)."

So PayPal is claiming that this was only because they wouldn't 'link' a bank account with their PayPal account. No explanation of why this only happened after 3 years and coincidentally closely followed CTR sponsoring Manning.

Next you have CTR's spokesman saying that after the account suspension, they did provide the bank info, but that PayPal wanted even more - the permission to withdraw funds directly from the bank account. This is the relevant part that PayPal has not addressed. Did they actually request this? If so, they haven't mentioned it in their blog post. They simply cite the 'link an account', not grant us debit authorization on said account.

No one is going to give a 3rd party processor that type of permission and it is not in PayPals User Agreement. They specifically say they will take you to collections if you owe them money but do not remotely mention they will dock your account directly.

From the PayPal User Agreement Actions They May Take

"10.3 Reimbursement for Your Liability. In the event that you are liable for any amounts owed to PayPal, PayPal may immediately remove such amounts from your Balance. If you do not have a Balance that is sufficient to cover your liability, your Account will have a negative Balance and you will be required to immediately add funds to your Balance to eliminate the negative Balance. If you do not do so, PayPal may engage in collection efforts to recover such amounts from you."

So even if you OWE THEM MONEY they aren't saying they can go directly into your bank account and take it. Yet they asked for this very permission of CTR.

Then you apparently didnt actually read the earlier story, where the explaination boils down to,

• CTR claimed nonprofit status with paypal
• Paypal has a policy requiring a bank account to be associated with such accounts
• Paypal warned CTR that they were not in compliance with said requirements
• CTR ignored said warnings, and had their account frozen

Source for claims (here)

We recently placed a temporary limitation of the Courage to Resist organization’s PayPal account as they had not complied to our stated policy requiring non profits to associate a bank account with their PayPal account (for the vast majority of non-profits, this is not an issue).

In a press release issued today, the Courage to Resist organization claimed that their resistance to follow our policy is because PayPal sought to withdraw funds from their checking account. To be clear: PayPal cannot take such action without the authorization of an account holder, nor does it ever take such unauthorized actions.

But no, CTR and slashdots sourceless claims are totally more credible than that. And its totally bogus for Paypal to ask CTR to follow the same requirements as everyone else.

I can agree the unfreezing has a tenuous link with Manning-- all the attention around this non-story has made paypal choose the path of least resistance, which is to reinstate the account and lift the restrictions.

It seems that "in a wake of protest"PayPal has unfrozen the Courage to Resist account.

And further readings shows Paypal now says it was a misunderstanding and all is well now.

Amusingly, their statement refers to the "Courage to Resist PayPal" account...

And further readings shows Paypal now says it was a misunderstanding and all is well now.

**ALL organizations collecting for disaster relief in Haiti are eligible to receive fee waivers. Please send an e-mail to nonprofit@paypal.com for fee waiver consideration.

Too bad they don't mention this on the http://www.paypal.com/ page.