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Comment by dmaclay | Hacker News Reader

Even high-profile complaints will only ever result in case by case resolutions.

Now if someone was able to start a business where they bought the rights to seized google checkout accounts at say 10 cents to the dollar and (now representing sufficient monetary sums to make action worthwhile) launched serious legal campaigns to retrieve the funds, then google would revise their policies.

If I were owed money by google in this way, I'd happily give 90% to a third party, just to see google get nailed (particularly if it helped force a policy change so that no more 'little guys' were victimised).

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And how would you protect from fraudsters using your service?

The 10 cents to the dollar allows you to absorb some fraud. You also check the applicants records, and for those cases where there is too much uncertainty offer payment only after a successful lawsuit (you my want to pay out 25 cents to the dollar in these cases to reflect the reduced risk).

I'm not sure if you understand what the fraud ratio is. Especially in the beginning, you should expect 99 out of 100 users to be fraudulent.

Basically, in order to make this idea successful, you have to solve the fraud problem a lot better than Google does... which seems unlikely.

There's a famous music sharing group where you can only become a member if someone vouches for you. If someone snitches, then they are thrown out of the group along with the person who vouched for them. (Or something like that.)

This sort of system seems like the right idea for preventing fraudulent sellers.

That seems absurdly easy to game... but even if it worked, wouldn't Google or PayPal be doing it?

i like this system of enterance .please vouche away. harden rock.

I suspect you're right, dmaclay, but high-profile complaints might inspire more people to complain publically which might build the base for a class-action lawsuit like the one against PayPal. Or maybe reform. (Ha!)

That's my hope, anyway.

Thanks, Amy, for sticking to making your point, and not just going along with the PR game of "Yay, they fixed it, they're great again, group hug!"

Your degree of differentiation (e.g. individuals at Google versus Google, Inc.) does a great service to the community and puts legitimate pressure on Google in a sensible way while avoiding the Internet ad hominem culture.

Thanks. :)

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