AfterDawn: News

PayPal bans ISP started by Pirate Bay founders

PayPal has banned PRQ, the ISP begun by Pirate Bay founders, from its services.

After three years of partnership, PayPal froze the assets of the company for 180 days and has effectively shut them down.



The ISP was started in 2004 with the motto that it is 'bullet-proof,' meaning if the site is legal in Sweden, it will host and defend it.

Because of their defense of sites like The Pirate Bay, PRQ is raided at least once per year with authorities looking to shut down sites used to share unauthorized files. PRQ is even infamous for accepting cash as a form of payment for companies that need to leave no paper trail.

Without PayPal, it appears that PRQ will need to find other methods of payment from its sites, with Bitcoins being accepted now while they work on their Visa/Mastercard merchant account.

"That was it for us, that made us decide to discontinue PayPal forever. It's sad that PayPal decided to f*ck us after three years of service," PRQ concluded (via Freak).

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 25 Dec 2012 17:38

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• 4 comments

• Red_Forman

  What can you expect from a Washington D.C backed company? PayPal has been on the forefront of corporate-govermental intermingling and cooperation, like Facebook and Apple is today. It was one of the first to ban users and sites with pornographic or other 'immoral' content. The furry and snuff sites being one such group I remember them banning back in the day. The CEOs were quite close to the Bush Administration, now the Obama one too.
  

  I'll stick my foot up your ass.

  25.12.2012 22:25 #1

• KillerBug

  I'm surprised they were even allowing payment through paypal...they have been banning everyone who doesn't have a US flag and a SOPA affiliation.
  

  
  

  26.12.2012 09:15 #2

• SmaryJerry (unverified)

  Paypal has been a shit service for years. I never understood why no other online payment sites have sprung up that can actually run a business that just accepts payments/creditcards.

  26.12.2012 13:28 #3

• Steel-Ice

  Originally posted by SmaryJerry: Paypal has been a shit service for years. I never understood why no other online payment sites have sprung up that can actually run a business that just accepts payments/creditcards. Because everybody trusts paypal with their money. Especially when dealing with people on ebay. They act as the mediator in any dispute and will give the money to the party that was wronged. (Although ebay owns paypal.)
  
  Any other online money service will have a hard time building a reputation like paypal. Despite paypal questionable decisions to suspend accounts to businesses they don't agree with.
  

  27.12.2012 00:13 #4