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PayPal Freezes Cryptome's Account

grimwell sends in the news that after Cryptome's little run-in with Microsoft and NetSol, the activist site has now had its funds frozen by PayPal. Cryptome founder John Young notes, "Google lists thousands of instances of this asymmetrical high-handedness." "We have reviewed your PayPal Account, and due to the excessive risk involved, we would like to begin parting ways in a manner that is least disruptive to your business."

10 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Paypal AUP only states sales of infringing goods by kaptink · · Score: 3, Informative

    Paypals AUP states as part of its AUP "prohibited activities" that you may not receive payments relating to the *sales* of goods that "infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction". Keyword here being sales. Given that cryptome does not actually sell anything and paypal is used for donations only makes this act by paypal to be somewhat unwarranted I would have thought. Even tho companies tend to do as they please. Will be interested to see what happens.

    --
    Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
  2. Re:What's a Paypal? by spottedkangaroo · · Score: 3, Informative
    you don't have to have a paypal account to make a payment with paypal. You can make a payment *through* paypal as a regular old boring ccard transaction.

    It's the merchants that really get shafted...

    I noticed that paypal is really the only option for selling software in the webos appstore. That's pretty depressing imo.

    --
    Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
  3. Re:Paypal AUP only states sales of infringing good by mikkelm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes you do. Unless specifically configured to do otherwise, funds transferred to your PayPal account will remain there as available balance.

  4. Re:What's a Paypal? by ktandaeo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Banks do this all the time. Any merchant provider can stop your processing and withhold all your money due to "risk" at any time.

    Federally-regulated means nothing.

  5. Re:Oh great. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Their T & C say they can even keep the money without refund, so interest is the last of your worries.

    (the Xorg foundation lost $5k in this manner.)

  6. fool by unity100 · · Score: 4, Informative

    as long as there are fools like you who naively believe that crap, we can get out of this mess.

    1 million americans risked losing their homes. lets say these were bought from $500,000 at the market's prime. now their value is devalued to $300,000. it makes $200,000 per house difference. multiply it with 1 million houses at risk, it makes $300 bn. it means that the total loss from this was $300 bn.

    go even further, and TRIPLE the risk. make it $900 bn.

    america itself provided more than $1.2 trillion to banks. europe provided similar ~$1 trillion amount. switzerland and other countries provided separate amounts to their banks.

    it means that as of now, the governments worldwide covered approx SEVEN times the loss in this crisis.

    then WHY the fuck we are not getting out of it ? despite ALL potential losses are covered in multiples ?

    BECAUSE IT ISNT A HOUSING CRISIS.

    it is a crisis of investment tools. the banks have created bonds indexed on these houses, and then moved to create EXTRA assets indexed on those bonds and so on. in the end, they created WATER VAPOR assets, which were traded at around SIXTY times the entire worth of all houses they were based upon.

    this means wall street banks peddled worthless paper that is inflated over SIXTY times of what value they should have to people around the world. even leaving aside the big fraud that is creating derived assets over other derived assets in the first place.

    and the SOLE reason this has happened is, because bush administration left banks unregulated, didnt even touch them, and let them do this immense fraud. while whole world has been trusting that since usa was a G5 country, its banking and finance mechanisms would work properly. it didnt. because fraud was allowed.

    as said, as long as there are fools like you who still doesnt know how they really been screwed, and as long as there are fools like the one modded you insightful, this fraud is bound to repeat.

  7. Re:What's a Paypal? by rhook · · Score: 3, Informative

    You should check these guys out, they setup a competing system because of how screwed up paypals policies are. They're also FDIC insured. https://www.gunpal.com/gp?req=about

  8. Paypal may not be evil in all cases by jonwil · · Score: 3, Informative

    I dont know the specifics of this case but in some cases they may do the "freeze the account until a full ID check has been done" because they have detected activity that would require the filing of a US government "suspicious activity report". Because normal PayPal sign-up does not involve carrying out the ID check you get with regular banks, anytime transactions happen that would require a SAR (which requires disclosing full details of the account holder), PayPal has to freeze the account and conduct the ID check so they can file the SAR.

    Any transaction over $10,000 requires a SAR, as does a series of transactions between A and B that total to more than $10,000. There are other triggers but I cant find any sources of info on those.

  9. Re:What's a Paypal? by lawpoop · · Score: 5, Informative

    And regulation never stopped them. We have plenty of regulations on banks, and take a look at their condition right now. Regulation didn't prevent the recent collapses.

    This is the exact opposite of the truth. In the late 1998, congress moved to weaken the Glass-Steagall act, which prevented banks from engaged in the risky securities trading that got them in trouble and caused this recent financial implosion. The Glass-Steagall act was passed after Great Depression when banks got themselves into exactly the same sorts of trouble they are in right now.

    In short, regulations kept exactly the situation we're in now from happening for some 70 years. Yes, regulations do work. Not just any arbitrary hammerings, but rules specifically designed to prevent bad, foolish things from happening. If the Glass-Steagall act had been in effect this whole time, we would have never had the tarp and never had to bail out the banks. The old rules didn't apply any longer, and the bankers went nuts dreaming up ever more clever schemes to make money out of nothing. The banking sector lacked regulation.

    --
    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
    -- Pablo Picasso
  10. Try GunPal Instead by Kartoffel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not trying to advertize, but if PalPal's politics rub you the wrong way, try GunPal instead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUNPAL https://www.gunpal.com/?