
PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider - llambda
http://torrentfreak.com/paypal-bans-bittorrent-friendly-vpn-provider-120622/
======
crazygringo
People have long been worked up over net neutrality.

But what about payment neutrality? It seems like it's just as important, if
not more. Why don't we hear enough from people demanding laws that prevent
payment processors above a certain size from discriminating based on
categories of goods and services?

Why can't we make it illegal for MasterCard and Visa to stop processing
payments destined for Wikileaks, or PayPal to stop processing payments to VPN
providers? This seems to be to be a clear abuse of monopoly power or at least
market share, and there isn't even a whiff of transparent, due process in it.

~~~
citricsquid
Surely it would be backwards to dictate who payment processors can and cannot
do business with. There are risks involved with banking, a bank will not give
a mortgage to a minimum wage worker and we don't expect them to due to the
risks associated with such a mortgage, why should a payment processor be
expected to take the risks that banks are not?

~~~
gringomorcego
Uh, so it's okay for the US to _wink_ _wink_ at Amazon, Paypal and numerous
other financial payment providers when Wikileaks comes to play?

You sound like a true apologist. This stuff matters, it affects people's
lives, and it it has NOTHING to do with ROI. That's a bunch of BS.

This has to do with favors and stancing and has absolutely nothing to do with
profitability or providing a service.

I'll show myself the door when I hear about how many chargebacks the VPN was
getting.

~~~
citricsquid
You're conflating 2 unrelated issues here. It's not okay for the United States
government to request (secretly) for a private enterprise to engage in acts
that are detrimental to an individual or business because the United States is
unable to do anything themselves within the law, however I don't see how the
action taken against Wikileaks has any relevance to the action taken against
this business. What indication is there that the US requested this?

------
wcoenen
There appear to be a number of VPN providers accepting bitcoin:
<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Connectivity>

_edit_ : and the VPN service that the article talks about
(<https://torguard.net/>) already accepts bitcoin.

------
stfu
Not really a new problem. I remember using the pre-ipredator PirateBay VPN
provider and they got shoot down by PayPal as well. My current VPN sends me
PayPal payment invoices for bogus products apparently just to avoid getting in
trouble with PayPal. Running a VPN is not really a business I would want to be
in.

------
chris123
Just an invitation to competitors such as Bitcoin, etc.

------
einhverfr
I thought this quote was funny, "Most of our clients have been very patient
since almost everyone has been wronged by PayPal at some time or another,” he
added.

Yep, I can sympathize with that....

------
hastur
The funny thing is that PayPal was originally intended to provide safe,
transnational money exchange beyond the control of governments. (Somewhat like
Bitcoin today.) So they wanted to be a solution to a problem.

Now PayPal is part of the problem.

~~~
ef4
Yeah, they got big enough fast enough that it wasn't practical to squash them.
So they got incorporated into the system instead.

If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond
governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized.

~~~
joering2
> If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond
> governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized.

ok, but can you explain why Bitcoin is not starting to fill out this shoe
already??

~~~
kristofferR
Tons of reasons. Here's a few:

* Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away.

* You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster, lighter apps are coming)

* Slow, a transaction can take 10-20 minutes to finish (which means that you can't get instant order confirmations/digital product delivery like people are used to when paying with Paypal/Credit Cards).

~~~
kiba
_Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just
link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away._

Transfering money is suppose to be instant and easy with bitinstant.

 _You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and
if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow
application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster,
lighter apps are coming)_

For the main client, this is defintely a problem. There's already bitcoin
clients that doesn't relies on downloading several GB of the blockchain.

 _Slow, a transaction can take 10-20 minutes to finish (which means that you
can't get instant order confirmations/digital product delivery like people are
used to when paying with Paypal/Credit Cards)._

There's a company called ringcoin that provide instant confirmation service
for bitcoin.

------
hastur
We can't force PayPal to do anything. They're not breaking the law and law
should not be amended to make this behavior illegal.

Just don't use PayPal. I don't.

~~~
zem
surely freezing thousands of dollars of someone else's money should be made
illegal

