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PayPal has ceased processing MEGA customer payments
- artursapek 12y agoMan, why does Kim insist on all the special effects? I've never seen a blog post take so long to load.
- TillE 12y agoIt's not much worse than blogspot.
- thejosh 12y agoSeriously, how can you fuck up so badly on something so basic as rendering a blog post, when the name is Blogspot?
- Gracana 12y ago6.8MB page load. More than half of the 168 requests were for javascript files. The largest file was a 620kB (23k line) stylesheet. Those are some pretty wild numbers.
- moe 12y agoFor a whopping 2.6kb of text. Someone really ought to fire their webdesigner...
- aw3c2 12y agoI wouldn't be surprised if Kimble made it himself. He's 31337.
- hurin 12y agoLooks like a significant and concentrated effort to produce something nearly-unusable, there must be a microsoft patent they're infringing on.
- adamnemecek 12y agoSounds pretty mega to me alright.
- Geee 12y agoIt's seems that the mega.nz is a one huge app and it's loaded all at once on the first page load. You see that navigating the site and accessing the app itself is really fast without additional load times.
- artursapek 12y agoThat's pretty horrifying
- kuschku 12y agoActually, it’s a great solution. Because, as soon as you download the extension, or load the website once, from that moment on everything will be encrypted client side, to make sure MEGA will never be able to spy on their users.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoIt makes sense for the main app. The question is why their blog is part of the main app.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Phil_Latio 12y ago?
- empressplay 12y agoI mean that I'm surprised it took this long for the payment processors to cease dealing with MEGA. I was expecting this to happen much sooner.
- rainwolf 12y agoThat's easy: they were making money with it. Now for my question: what made them give up on all that revenue?
- thefreeman 12y agoMost obvious guess? MPAA and/or Rival cloud service lobby / complaints.
- marcosdumay 12y agoNSA and the war against cryptography.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- dmak 12y agoAnd can we get any source on that claim?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Arnt 12y agohttp://www.rechtsanwaltmoebius.de/urteil/lg-muenchen-6-kls-315-js-18225-94_urteil-kim-schmitz.html http://www.rechtsanwaltmoebius.de/urteil/lg-muenchen-6-kls-3... is the original text of his conviction for fraud in the nineties. Of course all that doesn't justify the way the US treats him now. Fairness and equality before the law are fine principles.
- hga 12y agoThis is a start, all unrelated to MegaUpload etc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Criminal_investigations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Criminal_investigat...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- gygygy 12y agoThis is why I desperately hope bitcoin would one day get adopted by the masses.
- howeyc 12y agoInteresting they call out other services the USA is okay with that also provide encryption. I believe all the other services the provider can access the data. Except maybe SpiderOak.
- ryan-c 12y agoCrashplan also has client side encryption, though the security of it is a little questionable (I cannot elaborate for legal reasons).
- sschueller 12y agoThis selective banning should be a concern in general especially with such monopolistic corporations like VISA/Mastercard. Are there no regulatory requirements to force VISA/master card to accept payments as long as the business is not illegal? Does anyone remember when donations to Wiki leaks got frozen?
- blfr 12y agoAre you expecting the same government which shattered original Mega to now force payment providers to serve new Mega? Even if they had the regulatory tools, why would they?
- nathanb 12y agoForcing someone to accept payments is the other side of the same coin. I don't want my government to strongarm credit companies into refusing to process payments for politically troublesome customers. But I also don't want my government to strongarm those same companies into processing those payments. If anything, this is just a wakeup call that the credit duopoly have more power than we realized. Kim Dotcom is nothing if not resilient. It is morally and ethically complicated to root for him in every aspect, but I fully expect him to come up with a clever solution to bypass this duopoly in a way that the average user can accept. I don't know if there's any question for which Bitcoin is an unqualified right answer, but this may be as close as I've seen it come.
- keslag 12y agoI disagree. If you only have 2 viable options for accepting payment world wide, then they need to accept all lawful transactions. Bitcoin isn't a viable option for Grandma.
- jMyles 12y ago> Bitcoin isn't a viable option for Grandma. And if there's no market pressure, it never will be.
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- RexRollman 12y agoSo what's next? The banning of payments to VPNs?
- falcolas 12y agoGiven the following quote: > a key concern was that MEGA has a unique model with its end-to-end encryption which leads to “unknowability of what is on the platform It's not outside the realm of possibility.
- narrowrail 12y agoEveryone seems to be taking Mega's statements as truth without question at all. Banning payment to VPNs would severely cripple lots of businesses in the U.S. and around the world. I don't believe it's a possibility, at all.
- forthefuture 12y agoI don't know the current levels of VPN usage, but I'd seriously doubt that there are any industries at all that rely upon people using someone else's IP. Using a VPN to get around content blackouts / licensing agreements in your country is not legal, so I'm sure you don't mean that.
- ab5tract 12y agoUnder what legal precedent can you declare that using a VPN for those purposes is illegal? I'm curious about actual cases, laws, and rulings. Is the claim that the DMCA anti-circumvention laws make it illegal? You do know that the DMCA is only a law in the US right? Which in general is the country people VPN _to_, not _from_?
- icebraining 12y agoBy circumventing such restrictions, the user violates the terms of the license granted by the site, and is therefore committing copyright infringement, except in the countries where just downloading is permitted.
- aluhut 12y agoHere is the post, for those who don't want or can't load the page: PayPal has ceased processing MEGA customer payments effective immediately. MEGA is aware of a report published by NetNames (partially funded from the MPAA supported Digital Citizens Alliance) that incorrectly claims MEGA's business to not be a legitimate cloud storage service. MEGA is aware that Senator Leahy (Vermont, Chair Senate Judiciary Committee) then pressured Visa and MasterCard to cease providing payment services to the companies named in that report. Visa and MasterCard then pressured PayPal to cease providing payment services to MEGA. MEGA provided extensive statistics and other evidence showing that MEGA's business is legitimate and legally compliant. After discussions that appeared to satisfy PayPal’s queries, MEGA authorised PayPal to share that material with Visa and MasterCard. Eventually PayPal made a non-negotiable decision to immediately terminate services to MEGA. PayPal has apologised for this situation and confirmed that MEGA management are upstanding and acting in good faith. PayPal acknowledged that the business is legitimate, but advised that a key concern was that MEGA has a unique model with its end-to-end encryption which leads to “unknowability of what is on the platform”. MEGA has demonstrated that it is as compliant with its legal obligations as USA cloud storage services operated by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Dropbox, Box, Spideroak etc, but PayPal has advised that MEGA's "unique encryption model" presents an insurmountable difficulty. The encryption models claimed by various USA and other entities apparently do not represent any problem to PayPal or the parties behind PayPal. MEGA supplies cloud storage services to more than 15 million registered customers in more than 200 countries. MEGA will not compromise its end-to-end user controlled encryption model and is proud to not be part of the USA business network that discriminates against legitimate international businesses. Until new payment systems are implemented, MEGA will temporarily not enforce its storage limits or suspend any accounts for non-payment and has extended existing subscriptions by 2 months free of charge.
- UnoriginalGuy 12y agoFor a country which calls itself, non-ironically, the "land of the free" it is quite disappointing how moneyed US politics and the US justice system is. It is pretty apparent in this case that a cartel of US companies has some powerful people in their pockets (namely Senators) and those individuals can wield their power to shut down legitimate businesses running abroad. In this case they will likely wind up shutting down a company, but without even going through any kind of court. Since the last time they spent millions on Megaupload going through courts, and still got nowhere (since their whole case was baseless).
- mysteriouswasp 12y agofor those who dont want to download >5 megs of assets, I took the content and put it on pastebin. http://pastebin.com/FBEjGTqV http://pastebin.com/FBEjGTqV
- Huselp 12y agoChrome's developer tools says "1.9 MB transferred" when loading the MEGA page with cache disabled. On the other hand, it says "7.1 MB transferred" when loading your Pastebin link.
- Joona 12y agoWhat other, user-friendly payment providers are there for MEGA to use? Edit: Ask HN: Paypal alternatives for vendors outside the US? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9123336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9123336
- higherpurpose 12y agoAs someone was saying on Twitter, you can legally buy guns in US, but end-to-end encryption is a big no no, because end-to-end encryption is umm...dangerous? It reminds me of another stupid law meant to ban body armor.
- woodman 12y agoNot with Paypal you can't, they'll shutdown your account for anything firearm related.
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- kevin_thibedeau 12y agoPrivate gun sales aren't recorded in the US.
- woodman 12y ago"Private" is not the best word to use here. Gun shops are required to maintain logs. Outside of that, transactions between individuals aren't involuntarily logged (the poorly named "gunshow loophole").
- venomsnake 12y agoCan't we classify banks as Title II utilities? They use a lot of telecommunication services.
- Selfcommit 12y agoThere is something funny about considering banks to be dumb pipes through which money travels.
- venomsnake 12y agoWell banks are too smart for the good of the society right now. I would like some form of Glass Steigl updated for the modern age that splits the banks in two parts - the utility - facilitating movement of money and the commercial part. The utility will be common carrier.
- jMyles 12y agoI think bitcoin sucks for a number of important technological and philosophical reasons, but when people ask what its killer features sure: this is one of them. And it's hugely important and hugely needed.
- poopsmithe 12y agoplz enlighten on these tech and philosophy reasons?
- commandar 12y agoAn offhand tech+philosophical reason would be the environmental impact of bitcoin mining.
- MildlySerious 12y agoDo you have any reason to assume that the infrastructure of banks is frendlier to the environment than Bitcoin mining is? The required logistics for thousands of buildings to be safely supplied with new fiat, the manual labour, enforcing security etc are probably way more demanding already. Now add the whole high frequency trading thing and all the efforts that surround it on top of that and we are probably good for another few years before Bitcoin mining is even worthy of being mentioned. Until then, I don't see we wouldn't have worked out a better proof of work system that's more friendly to the environment, should this really become a concern.
- icebraining 12y agoMost fiat currency is already digital, and the drawbacks of digital fiat that keep cash around are shared by Bitcoin, so that's a red herring. As for HFT, there are already companies doing it in BTC denominated markets, so that doesn't count either.
- shit_parade 12y agoThe air conditioning footprint of bank branches alone is going to be several magnitudes greater in terms of energy consumption than bitcoin mining, add in commuting hours for every bank employee and it isn't even a contest, people just parrot whatever news source they like without thinking, even people on HN, it is really very sad.
- beshrkayali 12y ago“unknowability of what is on the platform”. What's PayPal got to do with that anyway, considering that they admit the business is legitimate?
- sbarre 12y agoIt's a bullshit answer, so don't expect to find any real rationalization behind it.
- mike_hearn 12y agoIt doesn't matter that the business is legitimate. The US Treasury has almost unlimited power to fine or imprison people who move money on the flimsiest of pretexts - and they use it. Look up "Operation Chokehold" for an example but there are many more. PayPal is attempting to insulate itself from political pressure that can be brought to bear on them in future if they continue to serve Dotcom (and/or their banking partners). Nothing more complex than that. Rule of law does not apply in the banking world.
- EdwardDiego 12y ago> Look up "Operation Chokehold" for an example but there are many more. Did you mean Operation Chokepoint? I can't find anything for Chokehold, but Chokepoint yields a bunch of pressure on pay-day lenders.
- beshrkayali 12y agoI'm not sure what's Mega's involvement in moving money here, or maybe I don't get it. It seems more of not-being-able-to-bypass-encryption issue which is probably more alarming, since I'd infer that, if the US Treasury is the entity putting pressure on PayPal, then who's putting pressure on the US Treasury?
- smtddr 12y agoHere's where coinbase could make an interesting feature. Coinbase QuickPay A dropdown of popular companies. Select the one you want then enter the amount you want to pay this company in USD. A confirmation screen comes up asking you "Do you really want to pay $X dollars to $COMPANY ?" You select "yes", and from there coinbase does whatever it takes to transfer that value to that company. Completely hiding any concept of bitcoin. Of course, you'd have a QuickPay transaction history screen where you could select "Technical Nerd Details" on a transaction and see all that bitcoin stuff; but initially the transaction history will look just like your bank's transaction history. Showing just the companies, dates, USD amounts. I guess there needs to be some kinda one time email-verification between the merchant, coinbase and costumer at the beginning to prove which payments are coming from who. Coinbase would have to put metadata on the transaction; like maybe a hash of the email address or something that $COMPANY could verify on their side. Then I guess USgov gets banks to cease processing ACH from coinbase.....
- nathangrant 12y agoEven if Visa and others would allow this approach, it would still really limit Mega's ability to get funds to the point where its not a viable business I would think.
- driverdan 12y agoPayPal continues to show how shitty they are. Stop using them! To people who work there, why? How can you continue to work for an organization that does things like this?
- fnordfnordfnord 12y agoI've already done that once, and I'm still doing it as hard as I can.
- GigabyteCoin 12y ago> PayPal continues to show how shitty they are. Stop using them! I really wish I could... When I created my SaaS a few years back, I went all out with payment providers. I registered and implemented every single form of online payment I could find. PayPal, AlertPay, PayPay, MoneyBookers, LibertyReserve, Bitcoin. You name it, I made that form of payment available. I even accepted money orders via snail mail. In the ~2 years I gave all of the "other guys" a chance, 99.9% of my payments came via PayPal. I received 1 money order. Perhaps 3 people paid via LibertyReserve. 0 payments from all of the other providers mentioned. And over 5,000 payments via PayPal. Unfortunately, there is no other option if you want to sell stuff online. And this is coming from one of Bitcoins biggest proponents.
- bdcravens 12y agoStripe?
- GigabyteCoin 12y agoThey weren't available in my country when I started up. They're probably somewhat of an option today, sure. But I suspect they'd still only garner 10-20% of sales at best. First mover advantage and all that...
- tim333 12y agoDunno - Kim Dotcom is a convicted fraudster with a long track record of enabling illegal copying. Paypal are a private company. Why shouldn't they be able to chose not to work with unsavoury clients?
- tzakrajs 12y agoSmells like bullshit to me...
- simonblack 12y agoVISA, Mastercard and SWIFT have damaged their own brands by showing themselves not be neutral but controlled politically. By not being neutral, it shows they cannot be trusted and dependable for all users. Other entities will arise that are neutral around the world and will replace VISA, mastercard and SWIFT.
- mkramlich 12y agoBitcoin
- MBCook 12y ago> VISA, MasterCard and SWIFT have damaged their own brands... Do you honestly think anyone outside HN and other very tech heavy crowds knows about this? Do you think they'd care? If this has done anything (and I kind of doubt it) I would say it's helped them politicaly a little tiny bit.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoIndeed. The only other political action by VISA and MasterCard I remember is them blocking payments to Wikileaks, for which they were rightfully subjected to a global DDoS attack.
- xacaxulu 12y agoAmerica on the wrong side of history....again. Yawn.
- marcoagner 12y agoIt's time for plan B :)
- junto 12y agoPayPal, Visa and MasterCard are slowly piping custom to altcoins though. I guess that is a good thing.