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I remember that several Xorg developers alleged that Paypal robbed Xorg. I think Xorg never got anything back. https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1417

I remember that several Xorg developers alleged that Paypal robbed Xorg. I think Xorg never got anything back. https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1417033.html https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1417033.html I recall reading a bible quote or might have been another religious book. It said, when a powerless man breaks the law, a crime has been committed, but when a powerful man breaks the law, the law was unclear.

tokenizerrr 10y ago
PayPal absolutely steal money from people. A community I run once tried a donation campaign to pay for hosting costs etc. At some point paypal decided this was fraud (right after someone sent a larger sum of money) and locked the account. Locking an account means they take the money, and there is no way to get it back, apparently. They kept coming up with excuses as to why no one was allowed to access the money and refused to refund people. I wanted to try my hand at fighting them a year later and the account was gone entirely. Bye money.
philipov 10y ago
Because when you have lots of money, you can afford to use the threat of expensive libel lawsuits to keep people in line. The prospect of dragging someone into litigation is enough of a chilling effect they don't even have to commit to it for it to be effective.
- conflagration 10y ago
  Like a Universal Health Care you could have a "Universal Law Care", a per se legal costs insurance for every natural person. You might have to pay low fares measured in daily rates calculated from your rate of income/wealth for any legal action you take, but nothing that would put your way of life at risk. With automated processes in law becoming more and more of a thing, it would be possible to handle cases faster and on a much finer grained basis, without sucking so much time and resources. Think of a fully-automated arbitration process. There would still be "manual law", where you could always escalate to, if you think Robo-Judge is wrong. Meanwhile wet-ware judicature would also get much more efficient/cheaper by help of automation (I think a wide-spread acceptance of teleconferencing into court would also help). In a scenario like this, such obvious fraud would not be a thing anymore imo. And we could be there soon (except maybe for the Universal Law Care part).
  - delinka 10y ago
    "Obvious" to whom? There's been a lawsuit filed, that doesn't mean it's "obvious." We are certainly aware of PayPal's history as slimy (and my inclination is to side with the plaintiff in this suit), but suppose the plaintiff also is aware of this reputation and is lying in an attempt to simply cause PayPal harm? How "obvious" is the alleged fraud in that case?
  - notahacker 10y ago
    Legal aid (and no-win, no-fee class action lawyers for "obvious" cases) already exists. But that doesn't mean that corporations don't have deeper pockets and a stronger interest in winning in many circumstances. And unless you've got hard AI, RoboJudge isn't going to understand the intricacies of how PayPal markets its donation service to consumers and distributes revenues and whether its disclaimers were sufficiently clear and obvious to its intended audience
M_Grey 10y ago
I don't know about the bible, but here's an old Russian proverb: Алты́нного во́ра ве́шают, а полти́нного че́ствуют. Translation: One hangs the thief who stole altyn(3 kopecks), and honors the one who stole poltinnik(50 kopecks).

tokenizerrr 10y ago

PayPal absolutely steal money from people. A community I run once tried a donation campaign to pay for hosting costs etc. At some point paypal decided this was fraud (right after someone sent a larger sum of money) and locked the account. Locking an account means they take the money, and there is no way to get it back, apparently. They kept coming up with excuses as to why no one was allowed to access the money and refused to refund people. I wanted to try my hand at fighting them a year later and the account was gone entirely. Bye money.

philipov 10y ago

Because when you have lots of money, you can afford to use the threat of expensive libel lawsuits to keep people in line. The prospect of dragging someone into litigation is enough of a chilling effect they don't even have to commit to it for it to be effective.

conflagration 10y ago
Like a Universal Health Care you could have a "Universal Law Care", a per se legal costs insurance for every natural person. You might have to pay low fares measured in daily rates calculated from your rate of income/wealth for any legal action you take, but nothing that would put your way of life at risk. With automated processes in law becoming more and more of a thing, it would be possible to handle cases faster and on a much finer grained basis, without sucking so much time and resources. Think of a fully-automated arbitration process. There would still be "manual law", where you could always escalate to, if you think Robo-Judge is wrong. Meanwhile wet-ware judicature would also get much more efficient/cheaper by help of automation (I think a wide-spread acceptance of teleconferencing into court would also help). In a scenario like this, such obvious fraud would not be a thing anymore imo. And we could be there soon (except maybe for the Universal Law Care part).
- delinka 10y ago
  "Obvious" to whom? There's been a lawsuit filed, that doesn't mean it's "obvious." We are certainly aware of PayPal's history as slimy (and my inclination is to side with the plaintiff in this suit), but suppose the plaintiff also is aware of this reputation and is lying in an attempt to simply cause PayPal harm? How "obvious" is the alleged fraud in that case?
- notahacker 10y ago
  Legal aid (and no-win, no-fee class action lawyers for "obvious" cases) already exists. But that doesn't mean that corporations don't have deeper pockets and a stronger interest in winning in many circumstances. And unless you've got hard AI, RoboJudge isn't going to understand the intricacies of how PayPal markets its donation service to consumers and distributes revenues and whether its disclaimers were sufficiently clear and obvious to its intended audience

M_Grey 10y ago

I don't know about the bible, but here's an old Russian proverb: Алты́нного во́ра ве́шают, а полти́нного че́ствуют. Translation: One hangs the thief who stole altyn(3 kopecks), and honors the one who stole poltinnik(50 kopecks).