Paypal Bans Usenet Providers Over Piracy Concerns | Hacker News Reader

Paypal Bans Usenet Providers Over Piracy Concerns

torrentfreak.com

52 pointscleverjake46 comments

Chrome popped this up from the torrentfreak page:

Google Chrome has blocked access to this page on torrentfreak.com. Content from ox-d.traffiqexchange.com, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware. Malware is malicious software that causes things like identity theft, financial loss, and permanent file deletion. Learn more

I am not getting that with Chrome. Try accessing through vpn and see if you get the same warning.

I think this is coming from the (big name) ad network we're using.

Disabled the ads for now and will probably switch to Paypal donations... Oh wait...

Usenet is under attack.

A lot of TV/Movie companies are starting to send DMCA requests to usenet providers.

The other day SabMini a iOS client for sabnzbd had to remove support for sickbeard(a PVR for usenet)

I think we are seeing the systematic destruction of Usenet.

Usenet won't go away but just become harder. Releases won't be named correctly to avoid getting DMCA notices.

Looks like someone broke the first rule of Usenet...

I have seen no evidence of this destruction.

In the last two or three months I've found it increasingly difficult to find new postings under their titles on my Usenet provider. I wasn't sure initially if it was their search function that was broken/corrupted, but asking Helpdesk doesn't help when they cut you off if you ask for assistance on copyrighted material. Finding another term that doesn't give replies but that should be there, as an alternative, is rather tough.

Copyright bullies make me mad, but this does have the effect of sussing out the weaknesses in the system when all that is at stake is last weeks "Honey Boo Boo". Its like a trial run for the real deal.

By the time real hardcore censorship tries to become a world-wide phenomenon, the internet will already be well optimized to circumvent it.

If all that comes of this is a strengthening and legitimizing of bitcoin, its still a net win.

So Paypal's also sucking it from the MAFIAA, hardly surprising.

Please go back to Reddit.

If the internet was clearly winning this fight I would agree. I still partly do since if you had to pick something to do a trial run, this is a decent fit.

The legislators and pro-censorship international treaty writers are also getting a lot of practice. And they seem to be innovating faster and winning more battles than the internet.

I think they're just teaching a lesson that the internet has until recently been slow to learn. Centralization is bad. Single-pass bottle-necks like Paypal are worse.

Bitcoin is crazy until it isn't. Its a lot of effort and risk to buy access to a forum that has a few silly TV shows. Not so much when its a patented drug you need to survive that's only available in rich countries to the "right" people.

Hmm, I think I'm just more pessimistic than you are. I agree except for the part where you implied that the internet has recently been learning anything. Centralization is the big new thing. People talk about the solutions but none of them are really succeeding.

Bitcoin has a serious fight ahead of it. The US does not treat alternative currencies well historically once they cause any kind of trouble. It would likely have already happened if there was any single group or person that could be arrested to shut it down.

>It would likely have already happened if there was any single group or person that could be arrested to shut it down.

Exactly.

That's it's best defense sure, but there are other approaches that will be tried. It could quickly be illegal to accept bitcoins or exchange them or perhaps to convert them to dollars or vice versa. They hit liberty dollars with counterfeiting, wire fraud, mail fraud and all sorts of barely-applicable charges.

Bitcoin will always survive internationally but it can pretty easily be blocked from being a useful factor in this issue in the US. Historical precedent tells me that's extraordinarily likely. Hopefully I'm just too cynical.

When my paypal was broken into - it was immediately used to order from a EU based usenet provider.

Paypal reversed it for me, but I wonder how much of this is fraud related?

This is really bothersome that they're trying to monitor activity on these sites. Paypal has absolutely no place doing that.

Interesting in light of the questions asked by the EU about the control of payment providers. Those questions were specifically about WikiLeaks, but the same applies to usenet providers as well as private torrent sites.

If you're upset at Paypal's behavior and you're building a startup that involves payments, please look into at least offering the option of alternative payment providers.

Honest question. What are some alternatives that aren't likely to pull a paypal?

There's been buzz on HN about Stripe, Dwolla, and Bitcoin.

Of course, you shouldn't take my word for it; check them out yourself.

Well more business for Stripe (not that they needed it).

No centralized payment provider is immune from US law. Eventually Stripe will suffer the same fate.

Can you please point out the portion of US law you believe requires paypal to do this?

I expect he would think that it was the unwritten part called "strong-arming" by various interested parties.

I believe it's informally contained in the facilities allowing for discretionary enforcement of regulatory constraints.

It's not law it's agreements between powerful parties promoting each other's interests for their own benefit.

Might help Bitcoin as a decentralized payment provider then :)

Chrome warned me there is a malware connected site on that page.

Torrentfreak? I don't get any warnings in chrome. Also: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=torrentfr...

This is what Chrome told me:

Danger: Malware Ahead! Google Chrome has blocked access to this page on torrentfreak.com. Content from ox-d.traffiqexchange.com, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware.

Well, you can roll the dice. Depending on what OS you're on, that dice may be weighted differently...

So it's one of their advertisers. Main problem with 3rd party ad networks =/ Hope they sort it out.

For what it's worth, torrentfreak is pretty clean.

What you need is NoScript ;-)

Either adblock or ghostery is blocking that ad network, then.

Hit esc before the page finishes loading - kills the connection that loads whatever it is that connects to the flagged site.

If chrome detects malware it'll block it on its own.

I'm running chrome - this works on my machine™. The malware isn't the page so you're not prevented from navigating to it, it's in some ad dynamically loaded, which <esc> stops from happening. Unless your internet connection is quite a lot faster than mine, there's plenty of time in between page display and ad load => blocked page warning.

Thanks. Your suggestion worked for me.

Of course, it could also be that the site rotates ads and only loads the malware some of the time.

One of our ad networks (big name) screwed up.

Removed the ads, sorry for in convenience.

+1 for bitcoin.

I have to wonder if this is a big fuck-you to the world after the EU's moves against Visa over Wikileaks yesterday. "Sure you might be able to clamp down on them for policing content, but watch what we can do."

While my credit card company and bank allow me to purchase online without the intrusion and privacy violations that PayPal regularly insists on, I continue to see no reason to use PayPal.

I'm so glad we've moved past that boring old money. Remember the kind that could be used anywhere and for anything?

Now my money tells me what I can and can't spend it on!

There is an upside. The more BS like this that PayPal pulls the more people will stop using their service.

Usenet providers switching to Bitcoin in 3... 2... 1...

Well, maybe this will motivate BitCoin payment methods on these sites. I need to change providers anyway, I'm not happy with mine. Last time I looked, I had only found one provider that accepted BitCoin and they were considerably more expensive (more than the BitCoin markup I was ready to pay even).

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