It would seem paypal are now going to strictly require ALL file sharing sites they find to go through some pre approval.
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Activities Requiring Approval
PayPal requires pre-approval to accept payments for certain services as set out in 5 above and detailed in the chart below.
Service Requiring Pre-Approval Contact Information
Airlines, scheduled or non-scheduled charters, jets, air taxi operators, collecting donations as a charity or non-profit organization; dealing in jewels, precious metals and stones; acting as a money transmitter or selling stored value cards; selling stocks, bonds, securities, options, futures (forex) or an investment interest in any entity or property; or providing escrow services. Please send contact information, business website URL and a brief business summary to
compliance@paypal.com
Offering online dating services; providing file sharing services or access to newsgroups; or selling alcoholic beverages. Please send contact information, business website URL and brief business summary to
aup@paypal.com
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Paypal seems to simply want much more stringent measures imposed for any filesharing sites that it finds. Once it locates a filesharing site (apparently just came across ours due to spike in turnover) its billing will be held on hold until it goes through a lot of examination. However for now it would seem we must accept that paypal's services are locked for an unknown period up to 180days and will be for all other filehosts that will not have gone through pre approval.
This is simply paypal procedure now, and if you are a filehost you will need to go through this, from the looks for the procedure it will be a lengthy and on going one. They had led us to believe that it was a simple review, however it would seem that any review now of a filehost will lead to a hold on funds until a pre-approval has been done. Those just starting to use PP without first going through this will soon be required to do so.
Even those only wishing to pay out via paypal will still have to meet these conditions if they have large revenue and need to pay out lots of funds, since they will need to show their business model during the review.
To get through pre -approval we have heard (not from paypal directly but other sources) that they will need access to all dmca records and have evidence of deletion, however that is just the begining of it. The other details we have heard go MUCH further still. There is also a new rule that an account holder have their account terminated after 1 dmca - so if you are letting other people upload things to your account then be sure they have the legal right to do so. Also some other new rules.
Although squillion was not found to be in breach of any specific paypal tos, it still has to go through the pre-approval and that is not something that an eta can be put upon this is not a simple task.
Along with this news, we heard now from other billing companies that much much tougher regulations will need to be met or visa/mastercard will be cut off also.
These new measures include access to dmca logs and access to account holder information that generates dmca reports, and the ability to demand termination on the spot these accounts. This is coming down from the top so i am guessing this is why paypal are implementing the same strict push into their pre-approval policy too right now.
We expect most filehosts will be without paypal in the coming days until they have gone through this new process too.
We will do our best as always to comply with all the new rules however for now i see a lot of disruption coming to the entire industry until all new measures are met.
We will be putting up alternative billing as soon as possible, but will understand if persons for their own sake need to move to new filehosts until this is in place.
Like i mentioned before we are already working on a transparent dmca removal system so that billing companies will be able to see exactly the entire dmca removal process in action and removal is taking place.
It is understood that for any kind of visa/mastercard billing filehosting sites will need to give almost complete transparency to the inner workings of their businesses at almost an admin level. If any filehost wants to continue billing with visa/mastercard it would seem they will soon need to comply with these things.
