![]() ![]() We were able to connect with PayPal and discuss our concerns about the situation. When we asked what we need to do to be pre-approved, they emailed back and said that they are “not granting pre-approval at this time.”Īfter this, Roz reached out to EFF. We have asked repeatedly for an explanation of this behavior, but we have been stonewalled at every turn, and have received only form emails telling us that we needed to be “pre-approved” for an account. There wasn’t even a phone number.Īs Roz and Nir Arbel explained in a blog post, No reasons were provided for this decision. Funds could be withdrawn, but Soulseek would not be able to receive donations through PayPal. Within an hour, Soulseek received an email from PayPal stating that the account was being permanently limited. Roz was assured that it would be escalated and dealt with immediately. This time she heard from a representative of the company that the questionnaire had been received, but nobody inside PayPal had looked at it. It was now October, and Soulseek had been limping along without donations from MasterCard users. For example, Soulseek has a DMCA agent and a policy of blocking user accounts that get repeated copyright infringement notifications.Ī week went by with no word from PayPal. Soulseek has existed for as long as it has in large part because it has complied with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provisions. ![]() Most of the questions related to copyright infringement and whether the site was taking the necessary precautions to stay on the right side of the law. ![]() Roz and Nir answered the questions promptly (see below for a list of the questions) and sent the questionnaire back. Roz was assured that service would be reinstated within 48 hours after the questionnaire was completed and returned. Roz hadn’t seen any questionnaire from PayPal, so they sent a new one over. Through that agent, Roz learned that PayPal had sent Soulseek a questionnaire because, as Roz reported hearing from the PayPal representative, MasterCard was coming down on PayPal regarding filesharing networks. Roz called PayPal, and spoke to a general support agent. I spoke with Roz in November and she briefed me on what happened. Instead, Roz Arbel, who runs the site with her husband Nir, heard from users who were unable to send in donations using MasterCard. While hardly profitable, this has been enough to keep the servers running and the software updated for many years.Īnd that was all fine, until the summer of 2015. Without ads or fees, the service relies on the good will of the community to contribute back to keeping Soulseek going. Instead, users can join the network, connect with one another, and share files directly. Soulseek describes itself as “an ad-free, spyware free, just plain free file sharing network for Windows, Mac and Linux.” The passion project of a husband and wife team, Soulseek itself doesn’t host files for users. In addition, we think of Soulseek’s situation as indicative of a larger trend of Web censorship, as websites that haven’t violated any laws are choked of funds-a situation that was disastrous for WikiLeaks and is currently tightening a noose around the electronic neck of. But we’re also concerned: it’s not scalable for EFF to intervene whenever a law-abiding website is shut off from a payment provider (as we have done with an online bookseller and a short story archive ). PayPal did the right thing by restoring Soulseek’s account, and we commend them for that. We got in touch with Paypal and helped convince them to reinstate the network. When its donors were cut off from making payments to Soulseek, the network struggled to figure out what it had done wrong-or even get a response from PayPal to its questions. Soulseek, a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, faced a Kafkaesque battle with PayPal. At least that was the case for one long-standing peer-to-peer network, which had its payment processing shut down after more than 14 years of being a loyal PayPal customer. ![]() Does your business follow copyright law to the best of its ability? Not good enough. ![]()
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