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PayPal Dumped Cloud Company After It Refused To Monitor Customers' Files (fortune.com)

Posted by msmash on from the bad-pr-move dept.

German Dropbox rival Seafile claims PayPal dropped it as a customer after it refused to comply with the payment services company's demand to spy on its users' data. In a blog post, the company informed its customers that they can no longer pay for the service using PayPal -- the only payment method that Seafile currently relies on. CEO Silja Jackson told Fortune, "We're looking into alternative payment services, but currently we're running a cloud service and not getting paid." Founded in 2009, Seafile has over 250,000 users, many in universities. The service offers an open-source file-synchronization system that organizations can install on their own servers -- for a fee, if they want enterprise features -- and last October the firm decided to also start offering a paid version that's hosted on Seafile's German servers, for individuals and small businesses.

5 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. bitcoin solves exactly this problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Too bad its ruled by less than 20 chinese individuals.

  2. Others by The+Raven · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Makes me wonder what other cloud storage providers didn't say no.

    --
    "I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
  3. Is file-sharing wrong? by mi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China.

    Wow... So, file-sharing is wrong and "out of China" is an aggravating circumstance.

    And I read it on Slashdot, where people used to scream and fight anything suggesting that. And where referring to "out of $country" used to be a sign of "racism"...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  4. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Are you out of your mind? Seafile offers an open-source self-hosted cloud platform, optional closed source enterprise features and, in addition, cloud-hosting à la dropbox. I've never seen it used for piracy (and believe me I'd know if it was). And what has it being run out of China to do with anything?

  5. I've been modded down for saying Paypal is evil by frovingslosh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wow, Paypal might not have changed much, but maybe Slashdot is starting to change. I've been modded down in the past for suggesting that Paypal and the electronic bay of thieves were evil, apparently by people who like to use them and don't want to consider the moral implications. Now it comes out that Paypal, a private company, is trying to get access to files that I store on a German server (obviously I don't really, since I absolutely will never use Paypal), based on nothing more than the account was paid for through Paypal.

    I'm shocked! Shocked that Slashdot users might finally be waking up to some of the abuses of this company!

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.