Paypal Forces E-Book Publisher To Censor Erotic Content 301
hey! writes "On February 18 of this year, global giant payment processor PayPal sent eBook publisher Smashwords an ultimatum: if Smashwords didn't remove all eBooks with certain erotic content from its catalog in the next several days, PayPal would immediately stop handling payments. Smashword's TOS already precluded child pornography, but now PayPal wants them to also censor depictions of consenting, non-related adults acting out incest fantasies. Likewise, fantasy novels in which human characters transform into non-humans are affected if those characters have sex. ZDNet has a summary of the impact of these changes, which would among other things ban Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita. As outrage mounts, finger pointing is in full swing. Smashwords blames PayPal, and PayPal blames the banks it deals with. The crux seems to be that erotica buyers have a higher rate of 'chargebacks' — customers who buy stuff then demand their money back. Fair enough, but is a customer really more likely to return a book because it depicts one kind of fantasy between consenting adults vs. another? Perhaps the problem is just the quality of writing."
Note: as you can probably tell from the summary, the linked articles (while factual in nature) discuss subjects that may not be suitable for workplace reading.
First they come for this... (Score:1, Informative)
Shit like this is basically thinly veiled bigotry. It usually starts with this, but then they come for gay romance [journalfen.net], trying to get rid of every type of romance they don't like. Y'know, because anything that isn't heterosexual intercourse between cisgender white people is icky.
Maybe an opportunity for competitors (Score:4, Informative)
Seems like this is just the kind of break Dwolla [dwolla.com] needs to bring some much needed competition to the PayPal universe.
Only Idiots use PayPal (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's not enough... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's not enough... (Score:3, Informative)
"Free Market"
I don't think this term means what you think it means.
A free market does not mean you have the right to buy/sell whatever you want from/to anyone. What it really means is that PayPal has every right to do things like this so long as they don't violate certain rules (e.g. discrimination of protected groups, etc..), but you and the publisher have the right to take your business elsewhere. If enough users go elsewhere, then they either shut down (and there will be much rejoicing!) or alter their policies.
GoDaddy and their SOPA stance was a perfect example of the free market in action. They had every right to side with SOPA if that's what they think is right, but their customers had the right to tell them where to stick SOPA and move to a competing service.
All that said, PayPal can go pound sand for this and many other violations of common sense and decency. If PayPal is the only accepted payment method, I don't need it that badly...
Not News (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't something new or arbitrary, Paypal has an Acceptable Use Policy [paypal.com] and sexual material isn't accepted:
That of course doesn't make it any better, it shouldn't be Paypals business what people are buying over their system.
Re:It's not enough... (Score:5, Informative)
PayPal had in it's Acceptable Use Policy since ages forbidding any use of its services for erotics and some other stuff - no weapon "parts"...
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_full&locale.x=en_US [paypal.com]
Nothing new, actually.
Not trying to defend PayPal, but the underlying reason may be to avoid becoming part of something illegal somewhere. The erotic thing may have other reasons.
If you are using a functional bank account with any reasonable amount on it with PayPal, your own problem.
A - open account with bank
B - use it to open PayPal account
C - close bank account
D - always chose payments from Credit Cards @ PayPal
If you need to use PayPal to receive payments and a bank account - just keep your funds low on that account.
Re:It's in Paypal's nature. Just stop using them. (Score:5, Informative)
My business no longer uses PayPal and has a Mastercard/Visa merchant account and payment processor instead. PayPal were simply impenetrable when something went wrong with a payment. Refused payment from a good card? I couldn't find out why to help the customer... they'd only talk to the customer. When the customer called they'd just be fobbed off. I'd lose a customer, they wouldn't care. PayPal forces the user to duck and weave to avoid signing up for an account and surrendering unneeded information. PayPal were incapable of forwarding funds in any sort of prompt manner, preferring to pay the old cheque-clearance scam with 5-7 days of "free" money to invest. PayPal is at least partly regulated in Australia, but don't try to get a straight answer out of them about why they don't issue any sort of invoice for tax purposes. Don't get me started on their monopolist ethics.
I have all the visibility I need with the payment processor I use now, it clears once or twice a day, they provide much better paperwork for tax purposes, and they are actually cheaper.
Re:It's not enough... (Score:3, Informative)
I never worked in the same industry but I guess it is a bit obvious this is an issue. Basically what PayPal is saying is this distributor is at a higher risk because of their already documented history of charge backs. OK that I can deal with. Charge a higher premium to the distributor to compensate.
Credit card merchant banks already do this. Merchants pay more for "card not present" transactions (anything online) and certain types of businesses pay different discount rates. Hotels generally pay more than "regular" storefront merchants, for example. Restaurants and gas stations pay different rates. I think government agencies generally get the best rates but I'm not sure.
However, the rates for adult content merchants are already sky high (12-15% vs around 3% for non-adult merchants) because, surprise, there's a lot of fraud. Many banks have decided that they simply don't want to deal with it for ANY price. Paypal served adult merchants at one time but they stopped long ago, maybe 2004.