Statements like "PayPal, which is ultimately owned by Glenn Greenwald backer Pierre Omidyar ..." which are pretty obviously false (Omidyar owns <10% of the company) make me further skeptical of this article.
While they could potentially argue the circumstances are not correctly interpreted or were not legal to dictate and agree to in the first place (and therefore not enforcible), can they afford the time and legal costs to do so especially given how long Paypal (or other large organisation they are in a similar position with) can afford to let things drag on for?
I don't really know much about this sort of thing, but I'm guessing that Paypal must be insanely low cost compared to their competitors or something, because I can't imagine anyone deliberately choosing Paypal unless it were really cheap to do so.
Paypal is convenient and well known, that's all. They are in fact expensive and extremely unrecommended for anything else than personal low-frequency convenient payments imho.
just my 2 cents.
> On 7 January 2011, a minor amendment was made to the EAR (Federal Register Vol. 76, No. 5, p. 1059). Publicly available mass-market encryption object code software (with symmetric key length exceeding 64 bits), and publicly available encryption object code of which the corresponding source code falls under License Exception TSU (i.e., when the source code is publicly available), are no longer subject to the EAR. The amendment includes some minor specific revisions.
Since ProtonMail is javascript crypto, their encryption source code is available and therefore is allowed, right?
Could you point to some analysis of that? I can see many people shouting "javascript crypto!" which I agree seems to be the only way they can do what they claim in a cross-platform manner, but I see no such detail of what they are doing (or planning to do) in that regard. All the funding advert page stats if "end to end" not "end to end using technology X".
> why are people even still using [PayPal]?
Momentum due to critical user mass, and lack of alternatives in many places, most likely. Other payment processors are not as available globally, charge more, or are even less trusted then PayPal. Bitcoin is too unstable for my tastes, and not something I see Joe Public using en-mass in the near future.
Using Bitcoin for this would make sense though: I would guess that most (if not all) those paying in are users of the currency already or would be willing and technically informed enough to join in for just this purpose.
> Are they even US citizens?
While that probably should be relevant, I doubt it is something that PayPal really consider. They have concerns in the US and are not going to risk having them frozen by going up against US law over this any more than I am going to sue PayPal over a few tens of $ - it would cost too much in time, legal fees, and so forth. Where something might contravene US law in any way they'll block now and ask questions later mainly because they don't want those enforcing US law to do similar (slap PayPal now, ask questions later).
I live in England. Let's say I want to go to see something about the Buena Vista Social Club, and that it is held in London. (London, England).
I am not allowed to use PayPal to pay, because Cuba.
People have tried and failed to buy dresses that are called "cuba".
If the actual law was being involved, we'd see some kind of legal notice at the very least. And even then it would be a BS request that could easily be challenged.
(I realise that the issue is actually money transmitting)
So, rather than shut down an account, since PayPal doesn't necessarily have the details, they should just bundle up what they think is the incriminating evidence, toss it over the wall to the US Attorney and ask "This legal, bro?" If yes, done. If not, then the government can toss it back over the wall and say "Shut it down, dawg."
We might have better-considered laws if the government actually had to deal with half the consequences of passing said laws.
