PayPal, Visa, MasterCard Prepare To Block Payments To Pirate Sites In France

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 11, 2015 @11:43PM from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The French government is deciding whether to allow PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and other payments processors the right to refrain from executing transactions to pirate sites if copyright holders (MPAA, RIAA, PSR for Music) file a complaint. All pirate sites will be added to a blacklist, controlled by copyright holders, and not by a French court. A similar unofficial agreement between copyright holders and payment processors is actively being enforced in countries like the U.S. and the U.K.

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It's a bit tricky by Swistak · 2015-09-12 01:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's a tricky situation. The problem with paid pirated sites is that some users (read: my father-in-law for example) assume that since they pay - it must be legit. So they pay ~3$ and get infinite number of movies streamed. Because they look legit, and accept payments people fall for it, and then they are often blackmailed to pay more with threat of litigation.
So yes. I think if something is illegal it should get payments blocked.