"Fake it till you make it" as unfair competition? Interesting theory, but it seems like it would cause a lot of damage in the startup world.
The law would do a lot of damage to the startup world if it were enforced as written.
Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
41–50 of 180 posts
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#42Interestingly enough, Stripe and WePay are not named while Balanced and Square are. Can anyone comment on why?
IANAL: They are Payment Processors, technically serviced by banks, and not a Money Services Business. The difference between them and say AirBnBs transactional payment service is a technicality, but I'm not a lawyer.
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#43Even though I'm not a huge Greenspan fan (are there any?), I find this money transmitter stuff incredibly fascinating. I haven't reviewed the relevant legal code, but I strongly suspect that Greenspan is right in that: (1) there are lots of little annoying laws related to money transmitters that makes it very difficult to get new payment stuff off the ground (2) If you have deep pockets and good lawyers you can prett…
Ahh, is this why all these tech giants use a non-money credit system for their stores and networks: Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon(?), ... there must be many more.
Money transmission means moving money from one person to another. If you could use your Xbox to send money to a friend who also has an Xbox, then Microsoft would need a money transmitter license. Selling products, services, or "credits" for products or services, is not money transmission and doesn't require any kind of financial license.
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#44Interestingly enough, Stripe and WePay are not named while Balanced and Square are. Can anyone comment on why?
1. They might actually know what they are doing or 2. they aren't doing payments of the sort that needs this sort of license.
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#45Reason for including YC in this nonsense: The YCFunds share common management and are venture capital funds invested in a number of unlicensed money transmitters. Can that really hold up? Can an investor be held liable for the decisions of a company they invested in? By that logic, what's to stop someone from suing Facebook shareholders?
The whole reason for this mess is that VCs refused to invest in his "legal" startup (didn't want to waste money on compliance costs?) and invested in a bunch of "illegal" competing companies instead.
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#46It seems really odd to me that AirBnb is being included in this list.
57. Defendant Airbnb, Inc. allows its customers to rent the homes of other
customers for varying durations, in lieu of a hotel. To process each
transaction it holds onto the customer’s funds, and remits those funds
to the property owner at the conclusion of the stay, minus its fee.
Is the point of this to show the absurdity of the scope of the Money Transmission Act?
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#47I don't have time to read much of the lawsuit, but is Think Computer suing for some sort of injunction to require all the companies listed to use Face Cash as only it has a California Money Transfer Act license? And for those double taking at the name, Aaron Greenspan is the CEO of Think Computer. http://www.thinkcomputer.com/
From reading the complaint, it seems more likely that the expected result here is something like: * State is forced to fairly enforce the rules that caused Think Computer so much trouble (re money transmitter regulations) * Fairly enforcing the rules causes incredible amounts of grief & overhead for companies large enough to comply, and drives smaller companies out of business * The grief drives those larger companie…
>The grief drives those larger companies (and investors into the smaller companies) to push for these laws to actually get fixed
Huh? The law just got rid of many of their competitors, and they're going to push to change the law?
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#48Perhaps I'm new here, but any chance the title might get 's/Greenspan/Aaron Greenspan/'? I got real confused as to why Alan Greenspan might be suing tech companies...
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#49Did anyone read the part where he explains that he is not being represented by a lawyer? ("REQUEST FOR CIVIL LOCAL RULE 3-9(b) EXEMPTION AND RETIREMENT.") That seems a very unusual decision indeed. Does anyone have any idea why he would do it that way? Is it probably a money issue?
Re: Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others
#50I don't have time to read much of the lawsuit, but is Think Computer suing for some sort of injunction to require all the companies listed to use Face Cash as only it has a California Money Transfer Act license? And for those double taking at the name, Aaron Greenspan is the CEO of Think Computer. http://www.thinkcomputer.com/
From reading the complaint, it seems more likely that the expected result here is something like: * State is forced to fairly enforce the rules that caused Think Computer so much trouble (re money transmitter regulations) * Fairly enforcing the rules causes incredible amounts of grief & overhead for companies large enough to comply, and drives smaller companies out of business * The grief drives those larger companie…
>The grief drives those larger companies (and investors into the smaller companies) to push for these laws to actually get fixed
Huh? They're going to push to change a law that prevents smaller companies from competing with them?