It should say: Oracle breaks their commitment to accessibility, that they inherited when they acquired sun.
In other words, Oracle is going back on their word, and is perhaps about to show how dishonest, despicable, and evil they (apparently) are, or not, depending on whether they keep their word (or not).
Once you make a commitment, you can't "drop it".
You either uphold your promise, or you break it.
It looks like Oracle's about to break their promise.
It doesn't matter at all that people who worked for Sun originally made the promise. Oracle acquired Sun, so they acquired all their promises, obligations, and dirty laundry too.
Revising or 'dropping' a promise you made
is called reneging on obligations you made.
When a company says they're committed to something, they've made a promise.
They can't become "uncommitted" or "no longer committed" without either succeeding, or having lied in the first place.
No, because selling you internet service never meant a 100% guarantee of service to all "Internet" hosts with 100% uptime.
It's a civil matter, and your chances are basically 0 of pursuing action against VZN for that.
Connectivity issues can occur, caused by Verizon, the host, or any network in between.
If they pull your plug because you were spamming, or they block access to an IP because they were originating a DoS through their network, they haven't violated any agreement with you.
You might get certain network SLA, but not as a consumer/non-business user.
It only means service to the networks they're connected to, or that they buy transit to.
Which should be the majority of all internet (IPv4) hosts, but not necessarily every single host.
If you can prove Verizon blocked the site that worked during your 30 day trial period, you can probably use the opportunity to cancel the contract, due to significant modifications to the terms of the service
Maybe it was supposed to be 2 years, but them changing the service makes it end early.
Then, one day, you decide you don't like veal in your car, and begin inspecting everything you deliver for veal. You stop transporting food from places that serve veal.
No. It's like you just stop being willing to travel to a place that happens to serve veal, to hand deliver the order for your customers.
Because VZN hasn't been shown to be inspecting and blocking based on HTTP payloads.
Blocking an IP blocks all transfer, regardless of payload. It's not even site-specific (unless all the IPs blocked happened to be dedicated to the one site blocked, and don't share hosting with anything else).
You don't reveal why. You don't tell your customers it's because the restaurant also serves food that contains veal, you just refuse to go there when they ask you to go somewhere that serves veal... you take the order slip they hand you, drive off, and never return with the food they asked for (E.g. their 'packet' just disappears into the ether).
If you're nice you reply with a RST packet: you return and tell them, sorry, I couldn't take your order there, it is refused.
You don't actually tell them you were responsible for it being refused, or the reason, etc, etc, all you say is refused.
You haven't investigated the food in any way.
Although you somehow came to know the restaurant served veal.
The important thing is you blindly blocked all orders to the restaurant, and you aren't examining the order's payload, only its destination.
You happen to still be a neutral transporter of food (you don't inspect the bag, you don't read the contents of the order), but you do discriminate against some destinations.
Your reasons could vary from "restaurant serves a food that hurt someone sometime" (E.g. food poisnoning, customer died, salmonella.)
to more mundane reasons like... (E.g. the restaurant is too far away, too much gas used, out of range, not cost-effective -- TTL exceeded)
To extremely good reasons (E.g. restaurant is in a dangerous neighborhood, one of your drivers got shot or robbed trying to drive there to bring a food order+pickup, and it happened enough times, you made policy not to allow drivers to go there anymore).
Again, you're still neutral to the food itself -- but concerned about some destinations.
Verizon hasn't said why 4chan is blocked or represented that the service is improved some way by the block, they never said they blocked dangerous 'food'
Also, using the food analogy....
they haven't blocked the food, they put a barricade in front of the path they saw to getting the certain type of food.
Not only are there other foods that could be dangerous, but... there may still be other ways to get that food that is blocked.
They only blocked a path that was obvious to them.
That same food may be available from a secondary IP, as is common in a large load-balanced server farm.
Someone may use a HTTP or other proxy to also get at the same food.
I won't agree "common carrier status" is a valid argument. ISPs don't have common carrier status.
But there's another protection that applies to them, that should make the DMCA notice sender think twice, before going any further than sending a notice.
The DMCA does not apply to ISPs who merely route traffic (and don't host the content on their network, or their equipment)..
Contrary to popular misconception, the DMCA does not have just ONE safe harbor, it has two separate safe harbor provisions, and each one has different requirements, and applies under different circumstances.
One of the safe harbor provisions [US Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec 512, (c)] pertains to content providers, web hosters, etc,
companies that store content on behalf of their customers, and has the infamous provisions for notice and takedown requirements. These people must arrange for an agent to receive DMCA notices, and expeditiously remove content, in order to enjoy that particular safe harbor protection.
That one is the 512(c) safe harbor.
This is not the safe harbor that ISPs should rely on.
ISPs should rely on the 512(a) safe harbor, which does not require having an agent to receive notices of infringing content, and does not require doing anything with such notices, in order to enjoy the protections of this provision.
Because any copies of the material are "intermediate and transient," there are no notice and takedown procedures
US Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec 512, (c) http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512
" (c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks at Direction of Users."
versus
"(a) Transitory Digital Network Communications.... A service provider
shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in
subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for
infringement of copyright by reason of the provider's transmitting,
routing, or providing connections for,...."
The DMCA doesn't say anything about severing connectivity to
computers on a network. That's just what the wronged party wants (if they try to send a notice to an ISP that a user happens to subscribe to, or that their traffic happens to pass through), the collateral damage doesn't effect them, if the ISP cuts off innocent users in the process.
The current DMCA provides some decent protections for ISPs that don't have unjust requirements like takedown procedures.
Big **AA organizations ignore this fact, and send notices anyway.
Because (A) they wished the takedown procedure applied in all cases, or they may even be trying to get the law changed to do that...
(B) They rely on the misconception; they would like ISPs to think they must disconnect the user immediately on notice.
(C) They want to minimize the number of "outs" or legal protections any future counterparty might have -- by sending the notice, regardless
Verizon doesn't have the technical means to 'filter', what they are doing is not filtering.
Blocking another entity's ip prefix VS filtering content are completely different things.
They can only block 4chan in the short term.
If 4chan wishes, they can always (very easily) changes the IP addresses of their web servers.
With a minimal amount of effort, they can make it impossible for verizon to block them (short of short-circuiting DNS resolvers and poisoned DNS responses [e.g. hijacking 4chan's domain name, within the scope of their own DNS service])
They're not filtering content, they've intentionally broken connectivity to some IP address(es)
Probably due to DoS conditions, spam, or other issues.
ISPs blackhole spammers' and DoSers prefixes routinely.
Interesting (and ridiculous) that you think, just because the IPs in this case are also used by 4chan, that it means something different.
Uh, we should want them locked in as soon as possible.
New form factors can be developed, as long as they get standardized.
It's car manufacturers that want proprietary formats, so they can charge a boatload for proprietary replacement parts (VS pennies for commodity replacement parts).
It's like saying "Let's not lock-in computer ABIs or processor specs in the infancy of OS development" (today, in 2010)
Better to stick with proprietary OS APIs and proprietary network libraries, so users have to buy software specifically licensed against this computer's spec.
And so hardware manufacturers can make a boatload selling the only OS that will work with their hardware, or selling the only hardware that will work with their OS (rather)
So what stops PayPal from overdrawing your ING account, if they deem you to owe them something -- and thus incurring you a $30 overdraft charge, plus demand from ING to cover the deficiency?
Reversing payments to the Cleveland Indians is similarly an outrage.
Also... calling them Indians is so last century.
These days thay are called Native Americans or
Indigenous people within the United States
And reversing payments made to them is one of the most intolerant, disrespectful actions a company like PayPal could undertake.
They clearly need a big long spanking for this.
The racial profiling of "scammers" or "frausters" has got to stop.
PayPal also needs to get sanctions and fines levied against them for their mistreatment of nigerian people, due their noted refusals to deal with transactions in that great nation.
Yeah, because eBay banned them.
And all alternatives to PayPal, one by one.
The parent company that had bought BidPay from Western Union (who had previously purchased BP) closed them down for good on Dec 31, 2007.
PayPal has to pay a merchant fee for every CC transaction they process.
Bank withdrawls are cheaper.
Also, with a CC transaction, you have chargeback rights, with a bank account, the only case you can dispute a charge is ACH unauthorized transaction (where you sign an affidavit saying you didn't authorize the withdrawl).
The PayPal ToS says PayPal can withdraw from any bank account you add
in order to meet what PayPal deems your obligations to paypal, or to cover any debt you have to PayPal.
For example, if you are a merchant, you sell something, and withdraw the money.
If your PayPal balance is zero, and the person you sold the item to disputes the
transaction, and wins the dispute, PayPal will happily give your PP account a negative balance, and automatically initiate ACH withdrawls from your bank account, to cover the negative balance.
You have no control over this, and you authorize PayPal to withdraw from your bank account to cover any PayPal debt when signing up, so you can't sign an ACH unauthorized transaction affidavit against PayPal
So PP is in a much better position when people add their bank accounts.
As for credit cards... the end user has more control of these.
If PayPal does something you don't like, you can always send a written dispute to your CC company, and instantly reverse PayPal's charge (Chargeback), plus paypal gets hit with an (approximately) $50 chargeback fee.
And after making the chargeback, you can tell your CC to 'ban' PayPal or dishonor all future attempts by PayPal to charge your card.
Can't do that with a normal bank account, due to ACH rules...........
CRAs are smart, you don't have to report the SSN to them. If you don't know it, when filling out the form, you can just enter name and address.
The CRA will figure out who to tie it to.
If they're wrong, and attach it to the wrong person [e.g. multiple people with similar names and address bit different SSN], it will be up to the person the debt is erroneously attached to -- to fix it, next time they get their annual free credit report, they will have an opportunity to dispute with the CRA using the online form or mail-in form (but probably will have to dispute individually with all 2 or 3 CRAs that got it wrong).
It sounds like a possible double-whammy, FCBA, and FCRA (failure to give required proper notice before negative information is reported) violation on PayPal's part looming.
An e-mail message is not a proper/valid notice of a debt, and fraudulently constructing and attempting to collect on a non-debt, would also be a violation of FDCPA (Reporting false information on a consumer's credit report or threatening to do so in the process of collection).
PayPal is not a court, and their independent decision to award a counterparty their money back is not binding on you, and doesn't create obligations on your part, unless you signed an agreement to that effect (and maybe not even then -- since a creditor cannot legally have any individual sign over FCRA/FCBA dispute rights, as long as you are a consumer, and not a business) .
The sister should then probably do something like going to each credit reporting agency and dispute PayPal's report to that credit reporting agency, state that the amount reported is not owed, and demand the erroneous information be validated / removed.
And make sure to send PayPal certified mail disputing the amount of the debt within 60 days of the 1st statement you received that was in error.
The CRA then has a period of time, to investigate the reporting.
If PayPal then 'constructs' fraudulent information to 'validate' the debt, then
there is a FCRA violation.
Send PayPal a demand they strike the erroneous debt, certified mail demand letter.
Then if they persist, sue Paypal in small claims court, for statutory damages on both counts.
PayPal can potentially be in the hole >$1,000 in statutory fees, plus reasonable attorney costs, if they have indeed violated one of those laws...
You really should find some sort of proof that you exchanged the tickets, however.
Or file suit against in small claims the person you sold the tickets to, for slander, and get a lawyer to subpoena someone (or some people) who were there to stand as witness that the person at least attended the concert.
And also, perform discovery, (assuming you can figure out ticket numbers), to determine if those tickets were actually used.
But then, maybe all the hassle in attempting this isn't worth the $500...
They're paypal. The only way you can contact them is by e-mail (which they ignore), or through forms on their site (which you might get a response to in 3-6 months, if you are lucky) -- as for getting your hard-earned money back from your account they randomly chose to freeze, expect it to take 12 - 18 months, again if you are lucky.
If you are unlucky, 36 to 48 months, or (possibly) never.
Your luck depends little more than who you wind up talking to, how you talk to them, what sort of move they are in.
And the result of a few rolls of a D20 die.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you are worth more than $1 million X (number of your friends), nobody should adopt you, then.
It should say: Oracle breaks their commitment to accessibility, that they inherited when they acquired sun.
In other words, Oracle is going back on their word, and is perhaps about to show how dishonest, despicable, and evil they (apparently) are, or not, depending on whether they keep their word (or not).
Once you make a commitment, you can't "drop it". You either uphold your promise, or you break it.
It looks like Oracle's about to break their promise.
It doesn't matter at all that people who worked for Sun originally made the promise. Oracle acquired Sun, so they acquired all their promises, obligations, and dirty laundry too.
Revising or 'dropping' a promise you made is called reneging on obligations you made.
When a company says they're committed to something, they've made a promise. They can't become "uncommitted" or "no longer committed" without either succeeding, or having lied in the first place.
True, but that's where binding arbitration comes in.
No, because selling you internet service never meant a 100% guarantee of service to all "Internet" hosts with 100% uptime. It's a civil matter, and your chances are basically 0 of pursuing action against VZN for that.
Connectivity issues can occur, caused by Verizon, the host, or any network in between. If they pull your plug because you were spamming, or they block access to an IP because they were originating a DoS through their network, they haven't violated any agreement with you.
You might get certain network SLA, but not as a consumer/non-business user.
It only means service to the networks they're connected to, or that they buy transit to.
Which should be the majority of all internet (IPv4) hosts, but not necessarily every single host.
If you can prove Verizon blocked the site that worked during your 30 day trial period, you can probably use the opportunity to cancel the contract, due to significant modifications to the terms of the service
Maybe it was supposed to be 2 years, but them changing the service makes it end early.
Then, one day, you decide you don't like veal in your car, and begin inspecting everything you deliver for veal. You stop transporting food from places that serve veal.
No. It's like you just stop being willing to travel to a place that happens to serve veal, to hand deliver the order for your customers. Because VZN hasn't been shown to be inspecting and blocking based on HTTP payloads.
Blocking an IP blocks all transfer, regardless of payload. It's not even site-specific (unless all the IPs blocked happened to be dedicated to the one site blocked, and don't share hosting with anything else).
You don't reveal why. You don't tell your customers it's because the restaurant also serves food that contains veal, you just refuse to go there when they ask you to go somewhere that serves veal... you take the order slip they hand you, drive off, and never return with the food they asked for (E.g. their 'packet' just disappears into the ether).
If you're nice you reply with a RST packet: you return and tell them, sorry, I couldn't take your order there, it is refused.
You don't actually tell them you were responsible for it being refused, or the reason, etc, etc, all you say is refused.
You haven't investigated the food in any way. Although you somehow came to know the restaurant served veal.
The important thing is you blindly blocked all orders to the restaurant, and you aren't examining the order's payload, only its destination.
You happen to still be a neutral transporter of food (you don't inspect the bag, you don't read the contents of the order), but you do discriminate against some destinations.
Your reasons could vary from "restaurant serves a food that hurt someone sometime" (E.g. food poisnoning, customer died, salmonella.) to more mundane reasons like... (E.g. the restaurant is too far away, too much gas used, out of range, not cost-effective -- TTL exceeded)
To extremely good reasons (E.g. restaurant is in a dangerous neighborhood, one of your drivers got shot or robbed trying to drive there to bring a food order+pickup, and it happened enough times, you made policy not to allow drivers to go there anymore).
Again, you're still neutral to the food itself -- but concerned about some destinations.
Verizon hasn't said why 4chan is blocked or represented that the service is improved some way by the block, they never said they blocked dangerous 'food'
Also, using the food analogy.... they haven't blocked the food, they put a barricade in front of the path they saw to getting the certain type of food.
Not only are there other foods that could be dangerous, but... there may still be other ways to get that food that is blocked.
They only blocked a path that was obvious to them. That same food may be available from a secondary IP, as is common in a large load-balanced server farm.
Someone may use a HTTP or other proxy to also get at the same food.
I won't agree "common carrier status" is a valid argument. ISPs don't have common carrier status. But there's another protection that applies to them, that should make the DMCA notice sender think twice, before going any further than sending a notice.
The DMCA does not apply to ISPs who merely route traffic (and don't host the content on their network, or their equipment)..
Contrary to popular misconception, the DMCA does not have just ONE safe harbor, it has two separate safe harbor provisions, and each one has different requirements, and applies under different circumstances.
One of the safe harbor provisions [US Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec 512, (c)] pertains to content providers, web hosters, etc, companies that store content on behalf of their customers, and has the infamous provisions for notice and takedown requirements.
These people must arrange for an agent to receive DMCA notices, and expeditiously remove content, in order to enjoy that particular safe harbor protection.
That one is the 512(c) safe harbor.
This is not the safe harbor that ISPs should rely on.
ISPs should rely on the 512(a) safe harbor, which does not require having an agent to receive notices of infringing content, and does not require doing anything with such notices, in order to enjoy the protections of this provision.
US Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec 512, (c) ... A service provider ...."
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512 " (c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks
at Direction of Users." versus
"(a) Transitory Digital Network Communications.
shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in
subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for
infringement of copyright by reason of the provider's transmitting,
routing, or providing connections for,
The DMCA doesn't say anything about severing connectivity to computers on a network. That's just what the wronged party wants (if they try to send a notice to an ISP that a user happens to subscribe to, or that their traffic happens to pass through), the collateral damage doesn't effect them, if the ISP cuts off innocent users in the process.
The current DMCA provides some decent protections for ISPs that don't have unjust requirements like takedown procedures.
Big **AA organizations ignore this fact, and send notices anyway.
Because (A) they wished the takedown procedure applied in all cases, or they may even be trying to get the law changed to do that...
(B) They rely on the misconception; they would like ISPs to think they must disconnect the user immediately on notice.
(C) They want to minimize the number of "outs" or legal protections any future counterparty might have -- by sending the notice, regardless
(D) Scare tactic.
Verizon doesn't have the technical means to 'filter', what they are doing is not filtering.
Blocking another entity's ip prefix VS filtering content are completely different things.
They can only block 4chan in the short term. If 4chan wishes, they can always (very easily) changes the IP addresses of their web servers.
With a minimal amount of effort, they can make it impossible for verizon to block them (short of short-circuiting DNS resolvers and poisoned DNS responses [e.g. hijacking 4chan's domain name, within the scope of their own DNS service])
This represents an infringement of trade designed to favour Verizon's other business interests.
It's not infringement of trade. If that were Verizon's intentions, then they would be conducting tortious interference w/ business relationships.
But most likely they can produce a legitimate reason for blocking 4chan's IP ranges. It is not like ISPs do this sort of thing lightly.
The fact you want to assume Verizon is guilty of some crime, does not automatically mean they are guilty.
They're not filtering content, they've intentionally broken connectivity to some IP address(es)
Probably due to DoS conditions, spam, or other issues.
ISPs blackhole spammers' and DoSers prefixes routinely. Interesting (and ridiculous) that you think, just because the IPs in this case are also used by 4chan, that it means something different.
Common carrier was lost to ISPs a long time ago, they don't have that status as "neutral data routing service", and never did.
"Neutral data routing service" is only a concept that has come up recently, in regards to "network neutrality" concerns and considerations.
Uh, we should want them locked in as soon as possible.
New form factors can be developed, as long as they get standardized.
It's car manufacturers that want proprietary formats, so they can charge a boatload for proprietary replacement parts (VS pennies for commodity replacement parts).
It's like saying "Let's not lock-in computer ABIs or processor specs in the infancy of OS development" (today, in 2010)
Better to stick with proprietary OS APIs and proprietary network libraries, so users have to buy software specifically licensed against this computer's spec.
And so hardware manufacturers can make a boatload selling the only OS that will work with their hardware, or selling the only hardware that will work with their OS (rather)
E.g. HPUX good, Linux bad.
Ultrix/NonStop OS good, VxWorks bad.
Mac OS good, DOS bad.
AIX good, BSD bad.
OSF/1 good, SysV bad.
NeXTSTEP good, Windows bad.
iPhone OS good, ChromeOS bad.
Atari DOS good, BeOS bad.
Or get a really loud horn, and use liberally, so the "leader" goes a reasonable speed instead of stopping and blowing smoke at you.
So what stops PayPal from overdrawing your ING account, if they deem you to owe them something -- and thus incurring you a $30 overdraft charge, plus demand from ING to cover the deficiency?
Reversing payments to the Cleveland Indians is similarly an outrage.
Also... calling them Indians is so last century. These days thay are called Native Americans or Indigenous people within the United States
And reversing payments made to them is one of the most intolerant, disrespectful actions a company like PayPal could undertake.
They clearly need a big long spanking for this.
The racial profiling of "scammers" or "frausters" has got to stop.
PayPal also needs to get sanctions and fines levied against them for their mistreatment of nigerian people, due their noted refusals to deal with transactions in that great nation.
Yeah, because eBay banned them. And all alternatives to PayPal, one by one. The parent company that had bought BidPay from Western Union (who had previously purchased BP) closed them down for good on Dec 31, 2007.
PayPal has to pay a merchant fee for every CC transaction they process. Bank withdrawls are cheaper.
Also, with a CC transaction, you have chargeback rights, with a bank account, the only case you can dispute a charge is ACH unauthorized transaction (where you sign an affidavit saying you didn't authorize the withdrawl).
The PayPal ToS says PayPal can withdraw from any bank account you add in order to meet what PayPal deems your obligations to paypal, or to cover any debt you have to PayPal.
For example, if you are a merchant, you sell something, and withdraw the money.
If your PayPal balance is zero, and the person you sold the item to disputes the transaction, and wins the dispute, PayPal will happily give your PP account a negative balance, and automatically initiate ACH withdrawls from your bank account, to cover the negative balance.
You have no control over this, and you authorize PayPal to withdraw from your bank account to cover any PayPal debt when signing up, so you can't sign an ACH unauthorized transaction affidavit against PayPal
So PP is in a much better position when people add their bank accounts.
As for credit cards... the end user has more control of these. If PayPal does something you don't like, you can always send a written dispute to your CC company, and instantly reverse PayPal's charge (Chargeback), plus paypal gets hit with an (approximately) $50 chargeback fee.
And after making the chargeback, you can tell your CC to 'ban' PayPal or dishonor all future attempts by PayPal to charge your card. Can't do that with a normal bank account, due to ACH rules...........
CRAs are smart, you don't have to report the SSN to them. If you don't know it, when filling out the form, you can just enter name and address. The CRA will figure out who to tie it to.
If they're wrong, and attach it to the wrong person [e.g. multiple people with similar names and address bit different SSN], it will be up to the person the debt is erroneously attached to -- to fix it, next time they get their annual free credit report, they will have an opportunity to dispute with the CRA using the online form or mail-in form (but probably will have to dispute individually with all 2 or 3 CRAs that got it wrong).
It sounds like a possible double-whammy, FCBA, and FCRA (failure to give required proper notice before negative information is reported) violation on PayPal's part looming.
An e-mail message is not a proper/valid notice of a debt, and fraudulently constructing and attempting to collect on a non-debt, would also be a violation of FDCPA (Reporting false information on a consumer's credit report or threatening to do so in the process of collection).
PayPal is not a court, and their independent decision to award a counterparty their money back is not binding on you, and doesn't create obligations on your part, unless you signed an agreement to that effect (and maybe not even then -- since a creditor cannot legally have any individual sign over FCRA/FCBA dispute rights, as long as you are a consumer, and not a business) .
The sister should then probably do something like going to each credit reporting agency and dispute PayPal's report to that credit reporting agency, state that the amount reported is not owed, and demand the erroneous information be validated / removed.
And make sure to send PayPal certified mail disputing the amount of the debt within 60 days of the 1st statement you received that was in error.
The CRA then has a period of time, to investigate the reporting. If PayPal then 'constructs' fraudulent information to 'validate' the debt, then there is a FCRA violation.
Send PayPal a demand they strike the erroneous debt, certified mail demand letter.
Then if they persist, sue Paypal in small claims court, for statutory damages on both counts.
PayPal can potentially be in the hole >$1,000 in statutory fees, plus reasonable attorney costs, if they have indeed violated one of those laws...
You really should find some sort of proof that you exchanged the tickets, however.
Or file suit against in small claims the person you sold the tickets to, for slander, and get a lawyer to subpoena someone (or some people) who were there to stand as witness that the person at least attended the concert.
And also, perform discovery, (assuming you can figure out ticket numbers), to determine if those tickets were actually used.
But then, maybe all the hassle in attempting this isn't worth the $500...
Your question is equivalent to asking... "Is it an option on Internet Explorer?"
In response to alternative OSes to Windows.
And the answer is no, and no.
Just as Internet Explorer has been tied to Windows, eBay has been tied to PayPal.
eBay is PayPal, and they allow only PayPal.
In choosing an alternative to PayPal, you must also choose an alternative to eBay, due to eBay's product tying policies.
Pen and paper for diagrams.
Notebook/netbook for plain text.
Convert your hand-drawn diagrams later, using a scanner or re-draw using a graphics tablet after class.
Seller terms
The seller must legally be able to do business in the US, and have a US bank account (since Google is US-based).
The buyer does not have to be in the US.
Hehehe....
Nice.
However, PayPal doesn't have any call centers.
They're paypal. The only way you can contact them is by e-mail (which they ignore), or through forms on their site (which you might get a response to in 3-6 months, if you are lucky) -- as for getting your hard-earned money back from your account they randomly chose to freeze, expect it to take 12 - 18 months, again if you are lucky.
If you are unlucky, 36 to 48 months, or (possibly) never. Your luck depends little more than who you wind up talking to, how you talk to them, what sort of move they are in. And the result of a few rolls of a D20 die.
What about Google Checkout ?