PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#21

Post by ehsanu1 » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 10:17 PM UTC

rictic wrote: post #18

sltkr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also impossible to charge recurring fees, and unlike Paypal etc, transactions take at least 10 minutes on average to clear (and around an hour if you want a decent amount of security). For TorGuard that is probably acceptable, but in situations where you want to give your customers immediate access to your service, it's far from ideal.

If you're giving someone access to a service that you can revoke (e.g. web hosting, VPN, etc), it doesn't seem like there's any practical risk in optimistically giving someone access once you see the spend hit the bitcoin network. It's not infeasible to do that in a matter of seconds. If you're shipping something physical you're not going to be working on a timescale less than an hour anyways. Really the only time th…

Buying a download is another case - can't revoke that.

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#22

Post by joering2 » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 10:55 PM UTC

ef4 wrote: post #15

hastur wrote: post #8

The funny thing is that PayPal was originally intended to provide safe, transnational money exchange beyond the control of governments. (Somewhat like Bitcoin today.) So they wanted to be a solution to a problem. Now PayPal is part of the problem.

Yeah, they got big enough fast enough that it wasn't practical to squash them. So they got incorporated into the system instead. If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized.

> If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized.

ok, but can you explain why Bitcoin is not starting to fill out this shoe already??

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#23

Post by zhoutong » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 11:22 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #20

rictic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're giving someone access to a service that you can revoke (e.g. web hosting, VPN, etc), it doesn't seem like there's any practical risk in optimistically giving someone access once you see the spend hit the bitcoin network. It's not infeasible to do that in a matter of seconds. If you're shipping something physical you're not going to be working on a timescale less than an hour anyways. Really the only time th…

Someone can chain fake btc transactions to your system granting themselves an infinite supply of access on short-lived accounts if you accept an immediate validation.

No one can ever fake transactions out of thin air. Bitcoin is cryptography. The requirement for confirmation is due to possible double spending, which will cost far more than a VPN account to do it successfully (to cheat a 0-confirmation system).

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#24

Post by kristofferR » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 11:47 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #22

ef4 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they got big enough fast enough that it wasn't practical to squash them. So they got incorporated into the system instead. If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized.

> If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized. ok, but can you explain why Bitcoin is not starting to fill out this shoe already??

Tons of reasons. Here's a few:

* Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away.

* You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster, lighter apps are coming)

* Slow, a transaction can take 10-20 minutes to finish (which means that you can't get instant order confirmations/digital product delivery like people are used to when paying with Paypal/Credit Cards).

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#25

Post by DanBC » Sun, Jun 24, 2012, 12:49 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #2

People have long been worked up over net neutrality. But what about payment neutrality? It seems like it's just as important, if not more. Why don't we hear enough from people demanding laws that prevent payment processors above a certain size from discriminating based on categories of goods and services? Why can't we make it illegal for MasterCard and Visa to stop processing payments destined for Wikileaks, or PayPa…

Because there are strict laws in place to prevent money laundering and there are fierce protections to help reduce fraud.

Asking money services to handle payments for anyone is problematic.

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#26

Post by rictic » Sun, Jun 24, 2012, 12:51 AM UTC

zhoutong wrote: post #23

cookiecaper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone can chain fake btc transactions to your system granting themselves an infinite supply of access on short-lived accounts if you accept an immediate validation.

No one can ever fake transactions out of thin air. Bitcoin is cryptography. The requirement for confirmation is due to possible double spending, which will cost far more than a VPN account to do it successfully (to cheat a 0-confirmation system).

Yes. A reliable double spend attack would require many millions of dollars worth of machines, and would be noticeable and verifiable (you could provably say "hey I just got a double spend from this account for this amount"). This means that you're unlikely to get the money in that case (depending on what the community wanted to do in response) but you could reasonably expect to know if people are issuing double spends. I don't think it is in the interest of miners (the ones who have already invested, in sum, millions in mining machines) to collude for double spends except on incredibly valuable transactions, as it would undermine the value of Bitcoin, which they are profiting from and have significant investment in.

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#27

Post by rictic » Sun, Jun 24, 2012, 1:04 AM UTC

ehsanu1 wrote: post #21

rictic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're giving someone access to a service that you can revoke (e.g. web hosting, VPN, etc), it doesn't seem like there's any practical risk in optimistically giving someone access once you see the spend hit the bitcoin network. It's not infeasible to do that in a matter of seconds. If you're shipping something physical you're not going to be working on a timescale less than an hour anyways. Really the only time th…

Buying a download is another case - can't revoke that.

True, there's something of a tradeoff to make there in terms of waiting vs risk. This is the case with existing payment systems to some extent as well, isn't it? Blizzard for example recently took some heat with regard to fully activating digital downloads of Diablo 3, saying that it typically takes around a day, but may take as long as 72 hours. Speculation was that this was a response to spammers fraudulently buying short-lived accounts (perhaps with stolen credit card numbers, or issuing chargebacks).

1] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/diablo-iii-digital-pur...

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#28

Post by scalable » Sun, Jun 24, 2012, 1:08 AM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #20

rictic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're giving someone access to a service that you can revoke (e.g. web hosting, VPN, etc), it doesn't seem like there's any practical risk in optimistically giving someone access once you see the spend hit the bitcoin network. It's not infeasible to do that in a matter of seconds. If you're shipping something physical you're not going to be working on a timescale less than an hour anyways. Really the only time th…

Someone can chain fake btc transactions to your system granting themselves an infinite supply of access on short-lived accounts if you accept an immediate validation.

This is a problem that can easily be dealt with if/when it arises.

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#29

Post by scalable » Sun, Jun 24, 2012, 1:11 AM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #11

crazygringo wrote: post #2

People have long been worked up over net neutrality. But what about payment neutrality? It seems like it's just as important, if not more. Why don't we hear enough from people demanding laws that prevent payment processors above a certain size from discriminating based on categories of goods and services? Why can't we make it illegal for MasterCard and Visa to stop processing payments destined for Wikileaks, or PayPa…

Doesn't Paypal censor payments for certain types of books now, too?

https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KE...

"UPDATE (3/13/12): After public pressure, PayPal has revised their policy censoring publishers of erotic ebooks."

Re: PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly VPN Provider

#30

Post by kiba » Sun, Jun 24, 2012, 2:02 AM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #24

joering2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anybody finally does manage to create a transnational money beyond governments, it's going to need to be highly decentralized. ok, but can you explain why Bitcoin is not starting to fill out this shoe already??

Tons of reasons. Here's a few: * Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away. * You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster, lighter apps are…

Hard to use, you need to exchange "real" money to use it - you can't just link up your bank account like on Paypal and start using it right away.

Transfering money is suppose to be instant and easy with bitinstant.

You either need to totally trust a 3rd party provider with your money (and if they lose/steal it - that's your problem) or run a clunky and slow application on your computer which requires several GBs of HD space (faster, lighter apps are coming)

For the main client, this is defintely a problem. There's already bitcoin clients that doesn't relies on downloading several GB of the blockchain.

Slow, a transaction can take 10-20 minutes to finish (which means that you can't get instant order confirmations/digital product delivery like people are used to when paying with Paypal/Credit Cards).

There's a company called ringcoin that provide instant confirmation service for bitcoin.