PhotoDude.com

Mon. Sep 27, 2004

PayPal Becomes BigBrother

The worlds of terrorism, politics and online payments have had an odd collision. From TalkLeft: “This e-mail from paypal was in TalkLeft’s email box today. Shorter version: TalkLeft’s paypal account is restricted because of a link to a beheading video.”

Placing a link to an external source on your personal web site caused PayPal to freeze your account? Huh?

TalkLeft is run by criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt, a liberal from Denver. Meanwhile, somewhere near the San Francisco Bay, “super-cranky libertarian” Bill Quick got one of those “restricted account” e-mails, too. Paypal said “To appeal the limitation on your account, you will need to … Remove those items from your website that violate PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. For example, any link to images or videos of terrorsit [sic] executions;”

It would appear that whether you’re a righty or a lefty, Pappa PayPal don’t take no mess when it comes to your linkage. But when I look at what they claim is the applicable section of their Acceptable Use Policy, I find no legitimate beef:

PayPal believes that it is important to respect the diversity of beliefs of our members, and generally permits the use of PayPal to pay for anything the law allows. However, PayPal cannot condone the sale of items or support of organizations that promote hate, violence, or racial intolerance. In addition, PayPal is a worldwide company with many users residing in countries where the possession or sale of items associated with hate organizations is a criminal offense. Therefore, PayPal will judiciously disallow organizations that promote or glorify hatred, violence, or racial intolerance (such as the KKK, Nazis, neo-Nazis, and Aryan Nation), from using PayPal to accept payments.

PayPal also may, at its sole discretion, prohibit the sale of items which graphically portray violence or victims of violence, and lack substantial social, artistic or political value.

Merritt and Quick are not jihadists, they were not selling the video, or profiting from it in any way. They were pointing to it, and commenting on it, likely in a most negative manner. As bloggers are wont to do. I think PayPal is trying to claim that by linking to the beheading video, you “promote or glorify” or “support” ... “organizations that promote hate, violence, or racial intolerance.” And to anyone clued in to how the web works in 2004, that is a real stretch.

Is Reuters, Yahoo, or Google News guilty of promoting, glorifying, or supporting these “organizations” by publishing images and stories of their mayhem? PayPal would likely say, “of course not, that’s news.” Well, people with web sites talk about and comment on the news. And the Congressional Copyright Act of 1976 gives the legal right to reproduce a portion of the actual content on which you are making comment or criticism, under the clause “fair use.” But on the web, you don’t have to reproduce only an out of context portion, you can link to the entire content. Most people consider this a Good Thing, an added layer of transparency in commentary. PayPal, despite their Net-centric nature, has not caught on to that far-from-recent development.

So get that through your head. It’s not going away. That’s the new frequency, Kenneth: people with web sites talk about and comment on news events … and link to them. The fact people link to and talk about the violent hatred of others does not make them guilty of supporting violent hatred. Quite the opposite. And your policies will not alter their behavior (other than to make them go away from your business), nor will it stop hundreds of thousands of other blogs with PayPal buttons from linking to future horrors. You’re clearing grains of sand from the beach with a pair of tweezers, plus providing employment for however many tech geeks you have enforcing these policies and e-mailing offenders. But that’s about it.

PayPal is a private business, and has the right to do whatever they want on this issue. But their apparent reading of their own policies is sloppy loose, at best. And that sloppy looseness will cost them money, with no balancing benefit.

I think this is another example of how society often fails to understand the degrees of separation of such horrid acts, and blames the wrong party. Photographer Richard Drew caught flack for his image of a man falling from the WTC on 9/11, as did those that published it, when the real perpetrators were the fanatics who forced that man into that position with their attacks on innocents.

Now bloggers catch flack from PayPal because they link to a video that’s already linked thousands of other places, when the real perpetrators are the fanatics who beheaded the innocent and put the video on the Internet.

You can’t stop such ugliness, nor can you stop it from spreading via linkage, nor can you truly compartmentalize your business from it, if your business interacts with the world wide web. If PayPal wants to shut down Zarqawi’s account, I’m fine with that. To shut down the accounts of others because they condemn his group’s actions while linking to the video as an example is simply absurd.

But then, PayPal seems to have a run going on absurd acts: “On August 23, PayPal gave users via e-mail 30 days’ notice that it could levy a fine of $500 on those who violate its acceptable use policies. Its compliance team will strictly enforce the new acceptable use policy to implement the monetary fines on both buyers and sellers who use the transaction service to trade in items the San Jose, Calif.-based company has outlawed.”

Again, PayPal has every right to set their own rules, however silly, and cancel the account of anyone who breaks them. But the right to levy punitive fines has been reserved to our judicial system and other government entities.

The fact PayPal is attempting to elevate itself to that level of punitive act, and giving the perception of censoring even the links on its customer’s sites, is damn troubling.

I say that as a PayPal customer. You see no PayPal button or link on this page. I’ve never been comfortable with the whole “tip jar” concept, and I certainly am not going to tailor my content or my links to the whims of their business. But I do use PayPal to accept payment in my online print store.

And now I’ve got to look at other options. Because PayPal “customers” like me now face a clear threat that some day they will get an e-mail saying “unless you remove the link to [news event video/photo/story we don’t like] on ‘The Daily Whim,’ we’re locking down your entirely separate little online store, ‘PhotoDude Labs.’ Have a nice day, and let us know when you are prepared to bow down before our monopolistic might.”

Thanks, PayPal, for giving me more work to do, in order to avoid the possibility of being frozen or even fined for using your service … while simultaneously engaging in free speech.

Later: After what I’m sure was considerable “feedback” like the above, Bill Quick got another e-mail from PayPal admitting their error: “After a holistic review of the circumstances surrounding the limitation of your account, PayPal has determined that your account is not in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy.” Like I said, reading their AUP, I found no legitimate beef. Someone at PayPal must have finally come to the same conclusion.