Topic: How Paypal is becoming the 'Moral Police' for the Internet (Read 4012 times)

KEWL


They've been very reasonable to deal with afik as long as you aren't directly funding terrorists or trying move drugs via them they don't give toss (they do have rules somewhere but aren't known for actively policing them in anyway) as they're simply being paid to provide a service. Oh and guns are the other nono unless you're exporting them from China.

Hey, they gave Bitcoinica and Bitinstant their full blessing, so...

Their servers are located in China, whose government isn't very fond of gambling, porn and a myriad of other things I'd imagine. Decentralized p2p currency is the only way.

"A Lodging of Wayfaring Men" by Paul Rosenberg is necessary reading for those interested in the true power of an extranational currency.

Isn't this why Bitcoin is the perfect option?

Think of all the bitcoin exchanges around the world, Intersango, BTCChina MtGox and so on. They all comply with their local laws, all they do is exchange bitcoin for local currency, usually in only a single country (Intersango and MtGox have multiple currencies so it's more work for the).

Once someone has bitcoin, then money transfer is divorced from what you're using it for. Once it's in bitcoin then it's out in the wild.

Quite easily (with a little time) bitcoin could replace PayPal, perhaps Ebay will still be #1 but they'll eventually accept bitcoin. If they don't it doesn't matter as all other sites WILL.

We're rebuilding the financial system, and if paypal/ebay don't want to get involved then they miss out, we continue without them anyway.

Let say for example, I want to send money to China(from the UK). What are my options?

I could do a wire(SWIFT), which takes about 8 working days and costs between 25-40GBP
I could use WesternUnion, which takes about 1 hour and they charge ~20% (ouch!)
Or I could use bitcoin, takes about 1-2 days and charge is ~1-2%(exchange fees).

For the bitcoin option, I put GBP into my Intersango account(I'm in the UK so it's quick and free), buy bitcoin, send to my account in BTCChina, buy RMB(Chinese currency) and send the funds to my wifes account.

Bitcoin is the great intermediary!

I couldn't find alipay's Acceptable Use Policy on their web site.  I'm just curious if they have similar restrictions to paypal and paymate as to what you're allowed to buy.

Upon reading the article, I can envision it as the poster child of how Bitcoin can become a preferred payment option.

I've been using http://global.alipay.com/ospay/home.html for eight years now and have yet to have any kind of issue with them. This is an English language version of https://www.alipay.com/ and are fast on their way to becoming a proper paypal alternative as they also offer irreversible transactions.

Paypal isn't the only one that close accounts
http://seethroughstudios.com/2012/02/28/and-now-paymate-have-closed-out-account/

Not sure this fits in this thread - but this could be read with USA or Paypal as the villain. Someone needs to introduce this cigar guy to bitcoin:

http://cphpost.dk/news/international/us-snubs-out-legal-cigar-transaction

The more things like this happen, the larger the opportunity.

Yes, but everything started small. This is something many people forget. A lot of the technology we see today, or inventions we use to better our lives, is stuff that once was just an idea, it was made a reality, and then people believed in it, and started using it.

The more people start using bitcoin, the more popular it will become, until it's just another of the technologies we use on a daily basis.

Because the awareness of Bitcoin is simply not there yet. Give it time. I ran a search for Bitcoin on http://www.paypalsucks.com/ and all that came up is someone trying to sell a limited PayPal account with approximately 2K USD for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still minuscule even when compared to other Free Libre Open Source Software projects. For example for Bitcoin to have a market share comparable to GNU / Linux on the desktop the price of a single Bitcoin would need to be approximately $15,000 US

Great idea, just sent them a message

That site looks like it's just to promote a book for sale.

Why isn't there a Bitcoin donation option available on this page? http://www.screw-paypal.com/bottom_nav_homepage/donate.html

Who's in charge of this? This is a perfect site to bring awareness to Bitcoin.

~Bruno~

Ebay is also acting as the moral police.  They do not allow me to sell empty boxes (that are clearly labeled as empty), they have canceled auctions for VINTAGE computers with shareware on them because of suspected copyright violations, canceled auctions for ORGINAL windows disks and finally they have closed auctions for not using their catalog (for example hard drives) even when the catalog contained inaccurate information.   Of course ebay and paypal are one company.   

It is more like they will get an additional audience consisting of:
1) Bitcoin users very small and yes this is where the chicken and egg problem applies
2) PayPal haters. There is a lot more to these than (1) and if they hate PayPal enough they will go out of their way to learn about Bitcoin.
3) Those who do not have a Credit Card and / or cannot get a PayPal account even much greater than (1) and (2) combined and again they will go out of their way to learn about Bitcoin.

Their audience is going to need to be familiar with bitcoin in order for it to work really well. Yeah, it's a chicken and egg problem.

I am not going to suggest divorcing the "evil bitch" but an affair on the side with the Bitcoin bitch can make a lot of sense here.

Every evil bitch story about paypal makes Bitcoin and alternative payment platform stronger and stronger...until we reach critical mass of anger. Then it's too late.