fuzzy post-it

crowvo:

“Obscene” is broad and is generally saved for cases of pedophilia being spread. Paypal has no right to enforce other people’s copyright–however, it is their duty to enforce it at the request of a company. So, for example, if Disney says “hey this fucker is breaching our copyright”, they have every right to slap you with that fine because Disney’s legal department will probably go after Paypal for allowing it. The final part most likely reaches to cases where someone might be peddling porn, kiddie porn, incest porn, or bestiality where it is not legal to do so.

uhh disney has the right to take you to court and ask for monetary damages if they so please (though they will probably not win much favor with a judge)

that is not the same as paypal proactively claiming that they have the right to just take your money from your account and keep it for themselves

So this might be relevant to people who are ALREADY riding in legally dubious/illegal territory. Guess what? All of that already affects them regardless of which service they use. What matters is how it’s enforced; Paypal won’t be enforcing it unless the copyright holder files a claim to them, since if they did try to enforce every case it’d be an obscene cost to them (anyone remember the RIAA?).

try reading the thing you’re complaining nobody read

the RIAA actually went through the legal system. paypal is saying:

PayPal may deduct such damages directly from any existing Balance in the offending Account or any other Account you control.

i.e., you agree that if you break the rules, they can just take your money. no court, no judgment, no effort on their part. they just take your money.

oh and even better

You acknowledge and agree that $2,500.00 USD per violation … is presently a reasonable minimum estimate of PayPal’s actual damages

$2500 is the minimum. so they are free, according to this agreement, to take more. how much more? who knows! they don’t say. they do say actual damages are “extremely hard to estimate”.

i’m a little suspicious that this would actually stand up in court, but i imagine most of the people that this would affect would have trouble affording a lawyer after they’ve had thousands of dollars taken away

You will find this EXACT ToS on pretty much 99% of all websites. Tumblr has one very similar, for example, but doesn’t enforce it unless the directly affected party reports it or enough people report it. Just the other day I saw a post with people bawling about how their kiddie porn ship was being mass deleted off Tumblr.

OK except we’re not talking about whether they should ban it or not; we’re talking about how they will just take your money if you do it anyway

also tumblr’s ToS allows porn, but asks that you flag your blog nsfw if you regularly post porn. and it doesn’t use the vague catch-all of “obscenity” anywhere. so it’s actually not much like paypal’s terms at all.

It’s not a perfect service, BUT you are not gonna find a single payment service that allows you to distribute porn or copyrighted material. Because if they did, they’d be breaking the law and putting their asses on the line. Instead, they usually just turn a blind eye until someone reports it.

porn is not illegal, and all material is copyrighted. i don’t know what you think the goalposts are any more but they are out into the stratosphere damn

also you know what payment services allow you to buy basically whatever you want without question and somehow aren’t liable if you buy something illegal? banks. so it’s kinda weird that paypal feels the need to aggressively moderate what you use it for. (i don’t actually know why this is; i suspect it’s a combination of fraud, too-stringent terms written by lawyers who don’t much care about indie artists, and byzantine credit card merchant agreements.)