Slashdot Mirror
Paypal Deals Blow To Freenet
hankaholic writes "I was checking into the latest progress of the Freenet project when I noticed a disturbing note on their homepage: 'Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy" [...] all of the projects subscriptions have been canceled which is a significant setback. Other means of accepting donations, including E-Gold, are still active.' Paypal is sending them a check for their remaining balance. The news update on the Freenet homepage also includes contact information for some people at Paypal."
This is eBay's house, they get to set the rules.
Since their takeover of the company, PayPal's free-wheeling days abruptly ended. PayPal can no longer be used to fund online gambling of any kind, it can't even be used to fund porn of any kind.
Now, online gambling is of questionable legality in all fifty states and many other places in the world where real gambling is prohibited or heavily restricted. However, most forms of pornography are legal in nearly all parts of the world except where the government is heavily controled by religious influence.
Here in the USA, the government's nowhere close to banning porn.
I think eBay's concern is keeping the PayPal name from being soiled by anything contraversial becase if anybody says "Boycott PayPal... they're helping fund Thing X!", then that indirectly means a boycott of eBay.
to determine with whom they do business. As long as they send Freenet the balance and don't steal, I see nothing (catastrophically) wrong with this.
I was thrown into being part of a scheme whereas some individual would transfer $2000 in to my account, then transfer $1500 out (account was "hacked") and then they never took the time to figure out what was going on. Then, the $2000 credit was revoked by PayPal and I was left with $1500 which they insisted I pay.
I blocked them from my bank account, wrote a letter to the President of PayPal, and have never used it since. It's a shame - it was a good service while it lasted.
I have never liked their business practices, but I can't say I wouldn't like to see them suffer a little.
Boycott PayPal? While it's difficult for some PayPal clients to just drop them any PP user whose primary role is technological (and therefore is equipped to do the work needed to replace them) should cease their relationship with PP as soon as possible. It would be offensive if Slashdot continued to use them after such an outlandish stunt.
Now, having said that, I'd like to hear Pay Pal's side of the story first...
closed minded is as closed minded does
eBay's clear modus operandi for PayPal ever since they got their hands on it is "high availablity". They made sure PayPal got out of any and all questionably legal transactions, and even those that might cause credible anti-something groups to declare a boycott of PayPal.
The reason for eBay's aquisition of the business clearly wasn't because they thought PayPal would be profitable. However, they saw a problem as the money transfer services of the web's free-wheeling days started to fall... if PayPal were ever to shut down for any reason, eBay's transaction volume would suddenly pulmet with it, wiping out eBay too. They bought it to make sure nothing funny happens with it.
Freenet seems to have steped over the line of things eBay doesn't want to see. It's not that they did anything eBay thinks itself is wrong... they're scared of anything any politically active group might call wrong leading to boycotts. Hello, ??AAs...
I made my contribution to the Freenet political movement by calling that number and leaving a polite voicemail about my concerns. Others should do the same! We can slashdot a voice mailbox!
I left a message at Hani Durzy's voicemail box... the number leads directly there since he's out of office...
After all these reports of complaints why are people still letting their money "sit" in paypal. I mean soon as money gets deposited in my account I withdraw it, granted Im not a large operation. But couldnt these groups withdraw fund at least once a day to minimize the damage of paypal "freezing" an account.
Just my opinion...
--
I'm going to support Kerry right until I vote against him on November 2
To a lot of slashdotters that would be a reason to do business with them.
Well this thread will contain hundreds of anecdotes and 0 posts about how this will actually hurt Freenet other than to say something brilliant along the lines of "if you aren't with us you are against us." Paypal is not a monopoly. Sack up and move on.
"going by textbook rule rather than rule and exercising discretion"
I disagree. They are using discretion. But instead of clearly explaining their position they are using ambiguous terms to disguise seemingly ad hoc decisions as standard operating policy. Their so-called policies are just another form of "anonymous proxy".
Look up any better business bureau report for almost any company - if you based your shopping habits on this fact alone - you'd never shop anywhere.
Paypal also has a long history of being business saviour and small business boom tool. Paypal has a long history of neing an easy way to donate to causes quickly - many many noble causes.
Just because people don't make a site paypalisthebestthingsinceslicedbread.com doesn't mean they are all bad.
It is the ONLY way I accept credit cards for eBay auctions. I sell 200+ items a month 75%+ pay with paypal 50% of those paying with credit cards. A merchant account (which places liability on me) is more costly and requires an ENORMOUS upfront cost - plus the funds are not nearly as instanteously mine.
I have to be sent a check from a merchant account, I have the money on a spendable debit card as soon the money is deposited at paypal.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
ebay, who owns payal now, will fold an auction if it feels the temperature outside is wrong.
It's not hard to envision a scenario where the RIAA called somebody up at ebay and said, "Hey, look, we have found a couple of illegal mp3s on freenet and we are going to sue you because you are helping sponser illegal filesharing."
ebay being ebay folded like a cheap card table.
I haven't been on freenet for a while so I do not know what is on there. But it works for your favorite *AA
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Yeah, but compare the good-to-bad ratio of Paypal to, say, Amazon.com. Just because you're huge, doesn't mean you need to be a customer relations disaster.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Paypal can attempt to take money out of your bank account, but the CANNOT freeze your bank account. They are not a bank and have no authority to do anything.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
I'm actually more concerned with the lack of prosecution. These scammers often register domain names and leave a long paper trail. When I send a notification to a company of a fraudulant attempt, what do they do to attempt to prosecute the scammer? Do they contact the police? The FBI? Bring in their crack team of technology investigators? No. They tell you not to trust anyone. THAT'S NOT HELPFUL. What would be helpful is to pursue criminals who misuse your name in an attempt to steal money.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm not defending the heavy-handed operations of EBay/PayPal, but I also wouldn't want to look at things from only one perspective. I think people should be able to do whatever they want with their PayPal money, but really the best thing to do is immediately withdraw what you have as soon as you get it.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Talk about YMMV. It all comes down to how much you trust Paypal...
Exactly. And, in the opinion of a lot of people here, the few major transgressions of PayPal are enough to warrant a strong mistrust. I wouldn't trust anyone else that did this either, as soon as I found out about them. On top of that, it's more the mishandling of complaints than anything. If I have a gripe against paypal, and I present it, I damn well expect it to be resolved, not treated like a by-the-books, scripted response issue.
Hey, they're a business. They treat their customer like shit, they should expect the same from their potential customers. No excuses.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
If they freeze your account, and it's your only bank account, guess what? You are absolutely fucked! There is no way for you to get money out of your bank account until paypal unfreezes it.
YOU: [ringing bank]
BANK: Good afternoon, Whatever Bank.
YOU: Yes, I just tried accessing my money and it says my account is frozen.
BANK: Okay, can I have your account number please and verification?
YOU: [give info]
BANK: Ah, yes. It seems we received a call from a company in a different state this morning.
YOU: Okaaayyy...?
BANK: And they asked us to freeze your account for no particular reason. So we did.
YOU: Wait a second. You're saying that an unrelated third party is able to just call you up out of the blue and freeze my account in violation of my banking agreement?
BANK: Absolutely, sir. You see, we freeze all bank accounts at the request of any unknown third party.
YOU: So if I asked you to freeze your own personal account...?
BANK: You bastard. Now *my* money is frozen and I can't do anything until you authorize me to unfreeze it.
YOU: Hah, now you know what it's like.
BANK: Actually, we're just joking with you. You see, according to banking regulations, you are our customer. The only time we would ever freeze an account is if the bank is going to be out some money and we need to put a reserve on the money you already have with us.
YOU: But I read on Slashdot...
BANK: Yes, we've been getting calls about that all day. It seems that somebody on Slashdot has been spreading FUD.
YOU: Well, maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
BANK: Hey, it's Slashdot, isn't it? I'll fancy a guess and say that the person who said that didn't present any evidence to back it up?
YOU: Yeah, that's exactly right.
BANK: We have to deal with people like that all day. They make unsubstantiated claims about what PayPal can or can't do. Why, just the other day, a customer said that PayPal sold their home without them knowing it just so that PayPal could recover a chargeback!
YOU: Oh come on!
BANK: No, I'm serious. You'd be surprised what other people can come up with when the burden of proof is absent.
YOU: Actually, I probably wouldn't be. From time to time, I read Slashdot at -1.
BANK: [laughs] On Friday, someone said that the GNAA acquired this bank.
YOU: [laughing hysterically] Oh, that's a good one. Well, I guess my account can't be frozen then?
BANK: Of course not. At least not by PayPal. They would need a court order to do something like that.
YOU: Thanks, that's good to know.
BANK: No problem. Have a good afternoon!
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The writeup clearly says "Paypal is sending them a check for their remaining balance." So how is anybody being scammed? They are getting the money that is rightfully theres, and after that paypal no longer wishes to do business with them. I don't see the big deal.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Nazi-like authoritarian world?
Ah.. to be young, in college, and filled with absurd "ideas."
There is a reason paypal is NOT a bank (notice its not part of FDIC) they don't follow the rules of a bank
What really makes you realize what an authoritarian and censored world we live in is the type of things that you see on Freenet. How differently people speak when they have no fear of retribution in any manner.
Consider blogs: once your friends and family learn about it, what you say is usually a bit more constrained. Unfortunately, not in the way of "meaningful" but more in the way of "unrevealing" and/or "unoffensive."
I was on Freenet for a while, and it was very refreshing to see what all was spoken about. It's not THAT different from the web, it's just the atmosphere.
And the willingness to use copyrighted material for things. Personal pages with images that would get C&D orders on the web.
To his credit, when I contacted 782CDs's owner, Jim Lockwood, he apologized, and offered to let me send check in the future -- and even said that he'd ship the CDs before he got the check, on my word that I'd sent it. And now, 782Cds accepts both Paypal and credit cards directly.
I've had some good experiences doing similar things with ebay sellers who require Paypal - when I contacted them directly and explained that I refuse to give out my SS# online (or other info like my bank account numbers), they were good enough to accept Western Union money orders. Those who wouldn't I simply refused to do business with.
Call me paranoid if you wish, but I feel that by not opening myself up to risk by giving out my personal financial info online, I'm doing the best I can to avoid identity theft. YMMV,etc. Personally I'd rather avoid the whole potential mess as much as possible.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Let's see, here's what they say:
"Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack."
Freedom of speech also hinges on the responsibility of the speaker. If you can say it you should own it. Otherwise the lies have no accountability.
Adam Bridge
while i am appaled at how many frivilous lawsuits there are in the US as of late, why isnt it possible to just sue them in small claims court if its a sizeable sum?
Hell, sue them in small claims court or wherever over any sum they owe you! think about it, even if it is a small sum they owe you--it will cost them more to represent themselves so even if they win, it would be somewhat of a victory for the person sueing.
Correct me if i am wrong (and i very well may be) but they have to come to the court/state you are sueing them from.
just an idea for all of those people out there who have been scamed by ebay--i mean paypal.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
Almost certainly paypal had no choice in this manner. There are a great deal of government regulations about monetary transfers that prohibit anonymity. The failing war on drugs justified a great many rules restricting the anonymous flow of money (which didn't stop the drugs only encourage another criminal enterprise of money laundering) and the war on terror combined with the public prominence of the internet nailed the lid in anonymous monetary transfers.
Even if the significant government powers to stop and track sucpiscous monetary transactions don't explicitly bar paypal from allowing anonymous accounts (as the page suggests freenet was doing) the considerable influence of the government forces them to do so anyway. After all paypal relies on the patronage of credit card companies who we know would rather bow to government pressure than stick up for privacy. These E-gold type places can continue in the face of this opposition because they don't accept credit cards and they technically aren't transfering USD (rather ounces of gold) so probably fall under less restrictive laws. Most likely though they are simply too small to have been noticed yet.
Face it guys anonymous monetary transfers aren't going to be offered by a for profit company. Such companies have too much to lose by not allowing government scrutiny.
On a related note I wonder if Osama would pat up his 35 pounds of gold using E-gold.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
a) Most of the targets are in Romania or similarly difficult-to-get-at areas.
b) These types of SPAMs that attempt to get users to give up their usernames/passwords all spoof large domains that have large traffic. We dealt with on the order of 100k (100,000) reports a week from our users, often routed through thousands of different IP addresses. Even if law enforcement *could* get at the scammers out of country... do you REALLY think they'd follow up on each one of these?
Or might it not be more efficient (if only *sigh*) to just tell people not to be so dumb as to GIVE THEIR USERNAME AND PASSWORD OUT TO SOLICITATIONS?!?!
This, like nearly half of the YROs recently, have NOTHING to do with ANY rights, online or not. Paypal's a business, and decided it no longer wished to do business with a company who fell into a category that is against their terms of service. Paypal is sending them their money.
So what's the terrible, rights-infringing or rights-squashing act performed here?
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Thank you for making me rant; are you satisfied now?
Not yet, I want you to dance too.
PayPal might not seem like a big fry if you don't do a lot online, but when it comes to online transactions between entities too small to directly process credit cards, Paypal is in a monopoly position. Furthermore, as they have gone out of their way to not be a bank, they can pretty much do whatever pleases them irrespective of potential damage to their customers. Everyone that relies upon small internet transactions for either a portion of their income or a portion of their entertainment realizes that this is a ticking time bomb that's just waiting to blow up in all of our faces. It's not worse than Bush/Ashcroft or Microsoft, but to the people derive sizable percentages of their income using a service with exactly zero accountability it is a big story.
And finally, why would you comment on a story only to say that it isn't worth comment?
The ______ Agenda
If Paypal doesn't like the aims of the Freenet project, perhaps they may be within their legal rights to drop the account. But it's certainly not very ethical. Suppose other major corporations behaved the same way...
- "Sorry, sir, McDonalds will not sell you hamburgers because of your registered political party."
- "No, you can't buy a Ford automobile because records show that you have donated money to the ACLU."
- "Because you protested the war, you can't open a checking account with Bank of America."
- "SBC has disonnected your telephone service because you've written software that is released under the GPL."
Do you want to live in that world? Or do you want corporations to have to treat individuals in a nondiscriminatory fashion?[I'm obviously not claiming that the corporations I've named have any such policies; they were chosen arbitrarily as examples.]
I dropped eBay after being sniped out of more than a dozen auctions where I was leading until the last 15 seconds.
Without this meaning to sound as snotty as it will -- huh? What are you talking about? It's an AUCTION. You bid the most you're willing to pay and then ignore the auction until it's over. If it tops what you're willing to pay, you've lost nothing.
Of course, a lot of the time, you get stuff at a lower price if you make your bid in the last 10 seconds of an auction. And eBay should extend an auction by another 5 minutes when someone bids in the last 30 seconds. But if you want to boycott eBay because you aren't bidding enough, you're loony. The loony part was meant to sound snotty, not the other part.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Toad, the lead coder for Freenet, does most of the heavy lifting. He's doing it as a full-time job, and for what he's earning, some among us would probably consider it volunteering.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I note that none of what you say really applies to the case where donations are being accepted via credit card (as per Freenet accepting donations via Pay Pal). So long as you leave the received money in a holding account for a cooling-off period, there is no chance that a charge-back is going to cause you any direct loss. Also, it seems rather unlikely that a stolen credit card would be used to make a donation, and the cooling-off period would also cover that unlikely eventuality.
I've been thinking about getting a Paypal account for years. I've even started the sign up procedure twice. However, the user agreement is about 60 pages long, if you count all the documents that are incorporated by reference. There's no way I'm reading all that!
IAAAL - I am actually a lawyer
In some countries merchants are required by law to delete such information after a certain period of time. (Whether they actually do is another matter, of course).
the freenet site say that paypal promised them to send a check - however, if you read those stories about paypal scamming you will say that paypal has a nice record of unkept promises.
Ahh... written with a vagueness that defies any counter-argument. And the best part of all is that chuckleheads modded kVanQue up to "informative" when all he did was to repeat heresay with NO link to this implied preponderance of evidence mounting against PayPal. If it's common knowledge that PayPal is evil, then those that slam it don't need to cite their sources, apparently.
The question I pose is this: If kVanQue's statement above is such common knowledge that he need not support it with links or anecdotes, then how is this "Informative"? Surely restating common knowledge isn't particularly informative, now is it?
Yes, I am flaming the tinfoil hat crew.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I'm always surprised to see those kinds of remarks. Seems to me like it's comming from a viewpoint that establishes the business/marketrule of the capitalistic system above all else.
Alas, I neither agree, nor accept this as a premise: one can not absolve all practises like that on the grounds of pure capitalistic reasoning. Businesses that disregard their contracts do not live in a closed bubble, and the social impact is always there, which is why there are laws too.
And it doesn't matter if they say 'we can change it whenever we want'...well, duh, of course they would *like* that, but imagine companies or businessmen could say that whenever thyey want, then, clearly, clients or customers would soon have no rights at all. It's difficult enough as it is, to legaly fight a company that has the power to hire scores of the best lawyers.
Most companies still try it though, and even here you see a lot of them claiming that, if you purchase something online, you can not just change your mind and return it, or have to bear the costs of returning it when it's delivered damaged/not working, etc. Their defence is the same: "But it says so clearly in our contract!" Well, good try, but the courts (at least here) have ruled otherwise: it still remains an infringement of your rights, even if it's put a hundred times in the contract.
So, you see, it's not as simple as saying "it was in their contract, so they are in their right".
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
And why exactly did you let him keep using your service? I mean, the kid never paid, and directly violated your TOS. And you let this go on for 4 FUCKING MONTHS?! I'm sorry, but you have no reason to complain because you didn't do a damned thing about it and you even helped him out after all this. I don't mean this to come off as a troll, but I can't say I feel sorry for you at all.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
We had a kid who used our hosting service but never paid us.
A simple 401 page for accounts 30 days past due does the trick. Do not make the mistake of carrying non-paying accounts for months hoping to get paid. Get paying customers instead.
The truth shall set you free!
Even the US supreme court recognises the importance of anonymity in political speech. The Federalist Papers, precursor to the US Constitution, was written anonymously. If its authors were forced to "own" what they wrote the British would have jailed them in a split second and Americans would probably still be paying taxes to the queen of England.
Read the F**king terms of service!
/ ua/ use/index_frame-outside
Seriously, it's ALL in the Terms of Service.
I hate idiots that fail to read
instructions or terms of service,
and then blame their own ignorance
on the service provider or software
author with FUD and hatred.
Oh no, I opened an attachment from
an unknown or untrusted source!!
it must be microsofts fault!
That >
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen
is a damn huge list of what's acceptable
and what isn't, and what'll happen to you
if you violate the terms of service.
I suggest you actually READ it.
before you start bitchin' about how
"evil" Paypal is.
Discover does not do this. You can create a temporary credit card, but you can not put a limit on it. The only thing it does is let you set how long you want it to last (unless they've changed it in the last few months). I use MBNA and I like signing up for things that want my credit card in exchange for a free trial of something. I give them a $1 credit card, and no matter what, they can't charge me any more than a dollar if i forget to cancel or whatever.
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
Actually, one of the primary functions of verifying your bank information with them is such that you can recieve an EFT of your balance directly to your account. It also enables you to transfer funds from your bank account to your paypal account which can be useful depending on situation. I sell things frequently on Ebay and find this function to be quite convenient as after my auctions have cleared i just click a button and money magicly flows to my bank :)
That is a form of corporate censorship. This is also along the lines of the Moore/Disney thing. What you are seeing is corporations are starting to dictate what you can and can't do.
I think you misunderstood the Moore/Disney thing. The corporation isn't telling you what you can and can't do, it's telling you what it will and won't do. Disney wasn't saying "I forbid you to speak your mind!" They were saying "I'm not going to take your opinions and put my company name on them, then spend money distributing them with my infrastructure." They said this a year ago, and he knew it a year ago. He has since admitted this, and admitted that all his complaints in the media have been an attempt to drum up publicity.
If you want a country where companies have no right to refuse you service, I suggest you look outside the US. If Bellsouth/Verizon doesn't like what you're doing, then they should terminate your connection. It's their circuit. If they knowingly allow you to use their equipment and services in the commission of crimes, they can be held liable. If you think they've terminated your service unfairly, complain to the city, which is responsible for its utilities, or change to VoIP or get a cellphone. But the fact that companies have the right to stop providing their services to customers is hardly dystopian.
Please donate some $$$ to Freenet in any way you can.
Disclaimer: I'm not involved with the Freenet project, I'm just a semi-anonymous advocate.
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout