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PayPal Dumped Cloud Company After It Refused To Monitor Customers' Files (fortune.com)
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.
I did not, in all likelihood, read the article.
Indeed. Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China. They may call themselves a "cloud company", but that is really stretching the definition. Paypal is not asking for any user-specific data, but just anonymized aggregate statistics about file types and traffic. Of course, if Seafile did that, they would 100% match the profile of illegal file sharing (because that is what they are), so they refuse and pretend to be a victim standing up for principles. Paypal was going to cut them off, no matter what, so at least this way they garner some free publicity. Whatever.
The misleading summary is pretty much expected now that Slashdot is a kook blog. Refusing to handle money transactions for criminals is responsible behavior, but if you pretend that refusing to be part of a criminal enterprise is an invasion of privacy, the foolish and misguided Libertarians will eat it right up, and go nuts on cue.
Seafile is a German company
No. Seafile is a Chinese company with a German subsidiary. They started in Beijing, helping college students illegally swap music and movies. Today, they also help German students do the same.