As Techdirt readers well know, one of the problems with measures brought in for "exceptional situations" -- be it fighting terrorism or tackling child pornography -- is that once in place, they have a habit of being applied more generally. A case in point is the blocking of Newzbin2 by BT in the UK. That was possible because BT had already installed its "Cleanfeed" system to block child pornography: once in place, this "specialized" censorship system could easily be deployed to block quite different sites.

Another, more recent, case from the EU involves Eurodac, a database with fingerprint information provided by asylum seekers there. Here's the original justification for storing them:

The database was originally established in 2000 so EU nations could check whether an asylum seeker had previously applied for asylum in another European country or was receiving social benefits from another EU country. According to EU law, asylum seekers can apply for asylum only in the EU nation where they first entered the bloc.

But the politicians have noticed that this biometric data could be handy in quite different circumstances:

such a rich source of existing data has recently sparked the interest of other parties. If the EU Commission's requests are followed, Eurodac fingerprint data will be accessible to police officers during investigations. The commission's proposal envisions national law enforcement agencies and Europe's supranational criminal police commission, Interpol, being able to access the database.

Of course, allowing the police to check people's fingerprints in this way would have serious implications for privacy. Indeed, Peter Hustinx, head of the European Data Protection Supervisor, has already weighed in on the subject:

"Just because data is being collected doesn't mean that it should be used for another purpose, especially since that can have a hugely negative effect on the lives of individuals," said Peter Hustinx, head of the European Data Protection Supervisor.

And that really is the nub of the issue: people who agree to provide highly-personal data for one purpose, may then find it being used for another, without being asked. And if the European Commission gets its way, even more data will be shared:

"The Commission would generally like to widen its collection of data and make available any information regarding criminal prosecutions," [Green Party MEP] Keller said. "One example is the so-called 'Smart Borders' package, which actually wasn't proposed this round but has been in the pipeline for a long time. The idea there is that in the future anyone from non-EU countries that would like to travel into the EU will be recorded electronically, which also includes fingerprints."

As more and more biometric data is collected around the world, this kind of function creep is likely to become increasingly common.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

The human body harbors many more microbial cells than human cells. There are at least 10,000 different types of organisms on (and in) a healthy person, and finding out how our bodies interact with these microbes could help us understand how diseases are transmitted (or perhaps created). It's a huge task to study trillions of cells, so some microbiome projects are turning to crowdfunding and citizen scientists to help out. Here are just a few interesting links on the nascent field of mapping our microbial friends.

• The American Gut project is looking to raise $400,000 to create an open source collection of data on the diversity of microbes in our digestive systems. This project is also looking for donations of biological samples to analyze.... [url]
• uBiome is also collecting samples from volunteers to analyze and create a map of human microbe diversity. The data will be HIPAA compliant, and no personal information will be released -- and you're already spreading your personal flora around everywhere you go anyway. [url]
• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has an on-going Human Microbiome Project that catalogs microbial communities that live on the human body. So far, this research has gathered data on the microbes living on 200+ healthy volunteers. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Over the past few days, there's been a lot of talk about the NY Times "paywall" and whether or not it's "working." It was kicked off by a Bloomberg piece arguing that things were going amazingly well with the paywall, proving the doubters wrong. I've actually had a surprising number of people contact me about that article, asking for my take on it -- so let's make a couple of upfront statements and then explore it:

1. First off, I agree that the performance of the NY Times paywall greatly exceeded my own expectations for it. I was quite harsh in predicting it would be a complete flop. I was wrong. It wasn't a flop. I explore why below.
2. That said, I don't think that it's been nearly as big a "success" as some are making it out to be, and I still think that it wasn't the best play that the NYT could have or should have made -- and it's doubtful that anyone else following in the NYT's footsteps would find similar results. And that's a pretty big problem, because even if you think the NYT's paywall should be judged a "success" it doesn't change the fact that its revenue continues to drop (and not just its print revenue -- digital revenue is struggling too). Perhaps the paywall may have limited the revenue collapse, but it has done little to create a new and sustainable business model.

Separately, it should be noted that the success "numbers" are based on an outside estimate from an analyst, and could be wildly off-base (in either direction). So, some grain of salt should be taken with the claims that the paywall made as much as it did. Now, let's do a bit of exploration.

Why has the paywall done better than expected:

• It's not really a paywall! This was a point we realized soon after the details were released, when it became clear that the paywall was so porous that no one would ever have to pay. Ever. As we noted, it's really the Emperor's New Paywall, in that it's completely invisible. If you don't want to pay, you just don't use javascript, or you remove the text after the ? at the end of the URL, or you open another browser, or you delete your cookies, or one of the half dozen or so other tricks that means you'll never ever face the paywall. In effect, the NYT's paywall is a donation system made to look like a paywall -- sort of like some museums with their "recommended donations" at the entrance. You never actually have to pay, but many people do out of convenience.
• They don't count links/earned media: This one is big. Since so much traffic comes via links these days, one of the major problems with paywalls is that they hurt this kind of traffic. For example, we try not to link to paywalled sites whenever possible -- but we will link to the NY Times, knowing that they let in any linked traffic, and it doesn't count against your "paywall meter." That at least meant that they weren't killing off important new sources of traffic, unlike many (if not most) other paywalls out there.
• The NY Times smartly figured out a way to get a ton of people signed up for free, to boost their early numbers. They did an ad deal with Lincoln, such that right as the paywall launched, anyone could get a free subscription by test driving a Lincoln. Who knows how many people actually took this up, but it bootstrapped the early numbers, and now everyone completely forgets about this (seriously, it's difficult to find any article that mentions this point any more).
• In the end, it appears that the NY Times is a paper that many people think is indispensable, and because they haven't bothered to look around and find out that you never actually have to pay, a lot of people have just paid up for the hell of it.

And... for why this still wasn't a particularly smart solution or the best possible move for the NY Times to make:

• As mentioned, overall results still suck. That's a pretty big deal. While the article claims that new subscriptions have finally started to outpace ad revenue declines, it seems unlikely that this will continue.
• Despite not blocking linked traffic, overall traffic hasn't been good. It's certainly not increasing.
• Proponents of paywalls insist that one key reason for a paywall is that it allows newspapers to charge advertisers more, since they better know their audience and can charge advertisers higher rates. It turns out that this is hogwash, and the NY Times has admitted that the paywall has had no impact on the rates they can charge for advertisements.
• And part of that may be because advertisers often tend to value scale and "mindshare" over targeting. Sure, they all claim to want premium audiences backed by data, but having dealt with way too many advertisers in my life, they always always always eventually go back to the scale question. And a paywall -- even a fake one like the NYT's -- tends to limit your ability to scale.
• And then there's my biggest issue in all of this. It's been entirely based on fooling users into thinking they need to pay, but not about adding more value for the users. As we've argued for years, there are plenty of opportunities to get users to pay, but it has to be about adding additional value beyond the content. It's why we've done things like providing additional scarce value for folks who choose to pay us. We don't block our content with a paywall, but we give people reasons to buy that provide them extra value (and feel free to do so, if you'd like).

Here's the crux of it: A solution based on giving people the same thing for a new, higher price only opens you up to disruption. A solution based on providing more value for your users that keeps them loyal to you is going to last a lot longer. The NY Times is, at the very least, in a unique position, in that many believe it provides coverage that can't be matched elsewhere. So they pay. But that's hard to say about almost any other newspaper (and for many, it's not even true of the NYT). We've been hearing more and more reports about other newspapers rushing into the paywall fold, only to find that almost no one signs up, and then they're left dealing with the aftermath of locked up content that only a few dozen people read. That's a disaster.

There are ways forward, but newspapers have to get beyond thinking there are only two choices: advertising and paywalls. The NY Times paywall has been more successful than many of us expected, but that hardly means it qualifies as a true "success story."

This is a complex story that took a fair bit of reading to follow all the twists and turns. It involves the story of Bo Xilai, the a top Chinese politician at the heart of a somewhat crazy scandal in China that resulted in his ouster from the Communist Party, along with accusations of his wife's involvement in the murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, following apparent threats to to expose a questionable money trail. One of the first publications to report on all of this was a site called Boxun News (site is published in Chinese), published by Weican Null Meng, who lives in the US, but covers political scandals in China.

One of the other things that Meng reported concerned world-famous actress Zhang Ziyi, who has starred in multiple films successful in the West, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Rush Hour 2, House of Flying Daggers and Memoirs of a Geisha. Ziyi got upset after Boxun (and others) reported that she had been linked romantically to Bo Xilai and other high level Communist Party officials in China -- and that those officials gave her massive amounts of money. Ziyi then sued Boxun, Meng and China Free Press and went on a press campaign saying that the stories called her a "six figure prostitute."

There have been some oddities with the lawsuit -- such as the inclusion of China Free Press. While Ziyi claims that CFP is one and the same as Boxun, CFP filed a response to the lawsuit noting that it's an entirely different operation, and that while it hosts Boxun News -- as it does for a number of other Chinese citizen journalist sites -- it has nothing to do with the site, and any such claims should be barred by Section 230 of the CDA. The fact that Ziyi's lawyers were unable to figure out that these are two different sites, where one is just hosting the other, suggests some weak due diligence heading into this case.

Meanwhile, Meng, the guy who actually published the report, is standing by it, claiming multiple sources confirmed it, and citing his track record in publishing news that later turned out to be true (including some of the other reports about Xilai). He hit back (represented by Marc Randazza) claiming that this is nothing more than a SLAPP suit designed to both silence him and expose his sources. As the case has gone on, Ziyi's lawyers have continued to seek more and more information in the process of discovery while also trying to block one of Meng's expert witnesses. The most recent move, however, is that Ziyi has refused to put up a bond, as required under California law, for the potential that she might owe money should the anti-SLAPP motion prevail. Meng is asking her to put up $200,000 for legal fees accrued, and uses the motion to argue, again, that this is a SLAPP suit. The key arguments are that the defamation claim has no chance of succeeding because they're both exaggerated beyond what Meng actually wrote and because he did not make the statements maliciously, as is required for defamation of a public figure (which Ziyi obviously is).

With respect to the Plaintiff being able to prove the statements false, the Plaintiff has a couple of insurmountable problems. First and foremost, the case boils down to two allegedly defamatory statements.

1) The Plaintiff (falsely) claims that the Defendant called her a “prostitute.” ... However, the record clearly reflects that the Defendant did no such thing.... In fact, the claim that she is a “prostitute” seems to have only been uttered by third parties, including Plaintiff's own counsel....

2) The Defendant (correctly) claims that Plaintiff was not permitted to leave China during a certain period of time....

With respect to the first statement, the record clearly reflects that this interpretation of the defendants’ statements is a fabrication. The Defendant, at worst, implied that Zhang Ziyi had wealthy boyfriends who lavished her with expensive gifts.... Given her public persona, and the fact that she is frequently unabashed about sharing her affections with wealthy paramour after wealthy paramour, this is almost certainly a given. Zhang Ziyi’s conduct could be less-than-charitably described as “gold-digging” ..., but it is a far cry from “prostitution.” If Ms. Ziyi intends to prove that she has never received any largesse or gifts from her series of wealthy boyfriends, then this will be an interesting trial to say the least.

As to the second statement, one must wonder what would be defamatory about claiming that a Chinese national found her travel privileges to be temporarily restricted. Given that the Chinese government is one of the most totalitarian regimes in the world, anyone prohibited from leaving the country would find themselves in good company, if not among some international heroes.... Even if the statement was held to have a defamatory meaning, and the defendant uttered the statements complained of, the plaintiff would still run into a legal impossibility – overcoming the actual malice standard in order for her case to survive.

The filing goes on to point out that Meng followed standard journalistic practices, found multiple sources, and even held back some of the more "salacious" details he could not confirm. Multiple journalism experts have supported his arguments that he followed accepted journalistic practices (or went beyond that). All of which will make it crazy difficult to argue that the report was published out of malice.

The filing also argues that Ziyi seems to be pursuing this case in a process designed to bankrupt Meng, while refusing to put up the required bond herself:

When the defendant moved to strike this case under CCP 425.16, the Plaintiff immediately took steps to start an expensive and relentless discovery campaign. Mr. Meng was deposed three times. Mr. Meng produced reams of documents. The Plaintiff conducted three expert depositions. Throughout all of this, the Plaintiff has not produced one shred of evidence that Meng’s statements were false. Even if she were to somehow do so, mere falsity is not enough: she must also prove that Meng harbored serious doubts about the accuracy of his published information and recklessly disregarded the truth. Nevertheless, the Plaintiff’s discovery campaign has done nothing more than create a rock-solid record that the Plaintiff could never overcome her legal burden. The Plaintiff has, in an effort to run up the bill on the Defendant, managed to disprove her own case so solidly, that the “reasonable possibility” standard was left behind long ago.

Meng argues that even if he won a SLAPP suit against Ziyi, she might never pay the attorneys fees, since she does not live in the US.

Plaintiff Zhang Ziyi is an international celebrity with means that far exceed those of Defendant Watson Meng.... A $200,000 bond will not deprive her of access to the courts, and will likely not even cover the costs of litigation. The Plaintiff does not reside in California, and in fact, resides in a country where the Defendant is persona non grata.... If this court were to grant a fee award to Defendant, he would not likely find justice if he attempted to enforce that award in a country whose government considers him to be a thorn in their side, and where there is no independent judiciary....

Because she does not reside in the State of California, Plaintiff should be required to post an undertaking so that Meng may be assured of recouping his fees and costs following the hearing on the Motion to Strike.... The purpose of Section 1030 is to ensure that a fee award against an out of state plaintiff is not difficult to collect, or fully illusory. The facts of this particular case are probably the most extreme example of the necessity of an undertaking under Section 1030. The Plaintiff is a mega-millionaire with unlimited means; the defendant is all but impecunious; and the defendant would have no reasonable way to collect a fee award, as the plaintiff would be able to simply hide behind a border that the defendant cannot cross. If there was a case that called for a 1030 undertaking, this is it.

The filing also notes that Randazza offered Ziyi's lawyer the opportunity to put forth a different bond amount, but they refused to accept the idea of putting up any money at all, which the filing argues is another sign that they know this is likely to be dismissed under California's anti-SLAPP law.

It will be fascinating to see how this all shakes out, but in the meantime, it seems like yet another case where anti-SLAPP laws may be quite helpful in stopping a lawsuit that has less to do with an actual case of defamation, and plenty to do with trying to make life difficult for a reporter people don't like.

There's been some buzz today over the news that former Facebooker, Randi Zuckerberg, who's also the older sister to Mark Zuckerberg, is among the many people who don't understand Facebook's privacy policies, as she got upset at someone for tweeting a photo that she thought she had shared in a more limited way than she really had. There is, of course, the basic irony / schadenfreude of watching a Zuckerberg get confused about the privacy policies, but what I find even more ridiculous is the way that Zuckerberg responded to the whole thing. After getting the person who tweeted the photo to take it down (though lots of other sites have since published it) she basically pretended that the snafu had nothing to do with misunderstanding the way privacy controls work on Facebook: If you can't read that, it says:

Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency.

No matter what you think of Facebook's privacy settings and the controversy they create, it seems that this response is particularly silly, and seems completely bogus. Danny Sullivan's response to her statement makes the point clear: If you can't read that, it says:

Sure Randy Zuckerberg asked all in her family if she could share that pic before posting. That's just human decency

I think that's the bigger point in this story. Yes, Facebook's privacy settings are complex and confusing and people get tripped up by them all the time. And, if Randi Zuckerberg were being honest, and not trying to brush this situation under the rug, she'd just admit that. Making a silly claim like it's about "human decency" to ask permission from every single person whose photo you share just seems silly. Hell, if it were true, then wouldn't Facebook change its setting so instead of an easy one-click "share" button on pretty much every photo, it would instead alert those associated with the photo and ask for permission first?

Last week we had a story of Amazon pulling a book because of a dispute over the term "space marine," which Games Workshop insisted they have full control over due to their trademark (a massive exaggeration of what protections the trademark provides). The latest may be even worse. As a number of folks are reporting, Amazon has pulled a self-published memoir by Gib Van Ert entitled A Long Time Ago: Growing Up With and Out of Star Wars. The book has received some great reviews from places like Wired, but apparently someone at Amazon thought the title is trademark infringement. The email from Amazon seems particularly silly:

Thank you for the information you provided regarding the following book(s):

A Long Time Ago: Growing Up With And Out Of Star Wars (2353856)

Your book(s) contains references to the trademarked term, “Star Wars (Trademarked Term)”. We have reviewed the information you provided and have determined that we will not be making the book(s) available for sale in the Kindle store at this time. While we cannot advise you on trademark laws, we encourage you to conduct your own research by possibly going to your local library or using other online resources that may be available to you.

This seems silly. The use is clearly descriptive, and the memoir discusses the impact of the movie on the guy's life. No "moron in a hurry" is going to assume that it is endorsed by Lucasfilm or anything like that. The likelihood of confusion here is nil. But in our risk averse age, where too many people incorrectly think that trademark gives you 100% control over a phrase, we see more and more unfortunate stories like this. Hopefully, Amazon quickly reconsiders... and the publicity from this silly bout of blocking leads to more sales.

Another year... another record by the USPTO in locking up all sorts of ideas with patents. Yes, that's right, it's only early december and it's being reported that the USPTO will set a new record in utility patents, blasting through the old record, set (of course) just last year with 225,000 patents. Remember back in the early days of the patent system, when Thomas Jefferson ran the patent office despite thinking that patents might actually do more harm than good? One of the things he focused on was trying to avoid granting patents willy nilly since "abuse of frivolous patents is likely to cause more inconvenience than is countervail by those really useful." I kinda miss that Patent Office. Oh yeah, when he ran the Patent Office, it granted.. 67 patents over two years.

The folks over at TorrentFreak teamed up with BitTorrent monitoring firm Scaneye to look and see if files being shared via BitTorrent happened to be coming from some IP addresses held by the big Hollywood studios... and they found what appears to be tons of Hollywood flicks shared from Hollywood studio IP addresses. Of course, plenty of caveats apply: it's possible that these are super ham-fisted honeypots for copyright trolling, in which they're recording the IP addresses of downloaders. It's possible that the system is wrong. It's possible that the IP address information is wrong. But... it's also possible that some employees at these studios are (whether on purpose or not) using BitTorrent and sharing films -- sometimes films from other studios. For example, they found a Paramount Pictures IP address sharing Happy Feet, which is a Warner Bros. film. In the end, there could be any number of reasons they were able to find these results, but given that when the shoe is on the other foot, the studios and other copyright holders seem to insist that a single IP address is proof positive of liability, doesn't it seem reasonable to question the studios about this bit of evidence as well?

This isn't surprising, as we've been hearing the same thing for a while now, but those in Congress still remember the SOPA/PIPA protests and have no desire to go through that process again. Thus, don't expect a new SOPA/PIPA to show up in Congress any time soon. The article even claims that watered down or limited versions are a bit too scary for politicians. Of course, this still requires plenty of vigilance. As we noted back in July, Lamar Smith did look to zip through one small piece of SOPA when no one was looking, and it wouldn't surprise me to see more "little" attempts like that. But, it seems clear that the main event will move to different venues.

Historically, when the entertainment industry doesn't get its way in Congress, it just moves into international fora to seek the same thing. That's how we got the DMCA, of course. Congress hadn't been interested until copyright lobbyists went to WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) and got it to create a treaty in 1996 that more or less required the DMCA. This is why we're constantly paying attention to various trade agreements and treaties, like TPP and others, which are really (among other things) about creating more ways for the entertainment industry to backdoor in new copyright laws. They'll get these agreements in place, and then point to them and insist that we have to change our laws due to "international obligations," ignoring, of course, that they were the same people who got those international obligations put in there in the first place.

Last week, I got an email from 2 Player Productions, the video game documentary filmmakers who have done a documentary on Mojang (makers of Minecraft) and who are working on the documentary about Double Fine making their new adventure game, which was part of super successful Kickstarter campaign (the Minecraft movie itself was also a successful Kickstarter project). The email was to talk about the release of the Minecraft documentary, and they promised that backers of the Double Fine project could watch a free stream -- which seemed like a cool way to thank those fans. Reports also came out that Gold Members on Xbox Live could watch the film debut for free as well.

But, then, they took lots of folks by surprise and announced that they had put a copy up on The Pirate Bay as well. Even though they're selling it as an $8 DRM-free download, you can also get a copy at The Pirate Bay, where the 2 Player Production folks left a nice note:

Greetings Pirate Bay!

This is 2 Player Productions here, and we hoped we could be the first to upload our new movie "Minecraft: The Story of Mojang". We've never uploaded a torrent before so hopefully this isn't all screwed up.

We wanted to come here first because we knew the movie would end up here eventually, and the best thing to do seemed to be opening a dialogue. Torrents and piracy are a way of life and it probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon. There are many people that want to punish you for that, but we have a more realistic outlook on things.

We've been there. We've all needed to do it at some point. Maybe you don't have the money. Maybe you want to try before you buy. Maybe you're pissed at us for premiering the movie on Xbox Live. These are all fine reasons. But if you feel that piracy is, in Gabe Newell's words, "a service problem," please consider that we are selling DRM free digital downloads that you can watch in whatever manner you please.

We're just three guys trying to make a living doing what we love. We love the world of video games, and we love making it real. If you buy the movie, you support those efforts. The reason we Kickstarted this movie in the first place was that we didn't have enough money to make it ourselves, and even then, we still put A LOT of our own money into it. Not to mention nearly two years of work.

Watch the movie. Hopefully you'll like it, and understand what we're trying to do. Please consider supporting us by buying the $8 DRM-free digital download of the movie at www.theminecraftmovie.com, or the $20 DVD from www.fangamer.net.

We've worked with a lot of amazing people in the games industry and had the incredible fortune to make some great films the way we wanted to make them. Please consider helping us continue on this path. The best has yet to come.

-2pp

Seems like they're taking a page straight from Louis CK and being open, human and awesome. I know it got me to hand over my $8 to them, and I imagine many others will do the same as well. Of course, if you live in the UK, where they've decided that nothing good could possibly happen on The Pirate Bay, you're not even supposed to see that message or apparently you might do something evil... even if they're saying it's fine to download it. Seems silly.

For years, we've pointed out that as Hollywood kept insisting that piracy was killing its business, and all anyone would do is watch films for free at home, box office revenues kept increasing. 2011 was a slight blip -- in that US box office revenue dropped a tiny bit, even as the global box office set new records. And the drop in US box office was mainly due to a bunch of less than stellar movie options. So it's little surprise that this year, on the backs of things like The Avengers, the latest Batman and The Hobbit, the US box office is back on the rise. It's interesting to note that this year there's even an increase in number attending rather than just in revenue collected.

So, once again, we're left wondering two things. First, why does the industry keep insisting that piracy is killing it and second why has the theater industry still done so little to improve the movie going experience, to capture the clear interest in the public to go see movies in the theaters? Yes, some people will argue (as the MPAA likes to) that it's not the box office they're concerned about, but rather the home video market. But, really, that's pretty rich, given that it was less than 30 years ago, the very same MPAA was doing its damndest to make sure there was no home video market as it sought to kill off the VCR. That they should now be complaining that they can't make as much money there -- at the same time they've often failed to make their own movies available digitally in a reasonable manner -- reeks of just bad business, rather than any sort of existential threat.

We've discussed plenty of times how class action lawsuits too often are about nothing more than some lawyers shaking down a company, hoping for a "settlement" in which the lawyers make out with millions while the "class" they represents gets very little, if anything. Yes, the class action system serves a purpose, but it seems like it's way too easily abused. Any time anyone gets upset about anything you can expect a class action lawsuit to be filed within days. Indeed, you may recall last week there was a but of a hubbub around Instagram's planned new terms of service, which really didn't say anything that new or surprising, but the online world ran with it in full outrage mode. In response, Instagram agreed to change the new terms and eventually agreed to keep much of the existing terms of service in place.

However, it appears that wasn't enough to satisfy some class action lawyers, who quickly whipped together an angry lawsuit about how awful (just awful!) Instagram's terms of service are. You can read the full complaint here and try not to laugh as the lawyers try to come up with any theory under the sun as to why the terms are somehow breaking the law. The lawyers are arguing that a small change in the standard boilerplate language used by nearly every single service online is some sort of breach of an "implied contract."

They also argue that merely putting into the terms the idea that you agree to allow them to use a photo in association with an advertisement constitutes a violation of California's publicity rights law. That's somewhat insane. The way you get around violating a publicity rights claim is to get people to license their works, and now these lawyers are arguing that in trying to get Instagram users to licenses their works, that alone violates the publicity rights law? Really? That's like saying that it's illegal for you to enter my house without signing a contract, but the second you ask for the contract, that's considered trespassing.

In the end, it's difficult to see what actual damage they'll show has occurred here. And there's a simple existing solution: if you don't like the terms, don't use the service. This isn't complicated.

I have to admit I'm a bit surprised they relied on PayPal in the first place, but PRQ, the famed Swedish ISP created by two of the guys behind The Pirate Bay, and which (as you might imagine) was known for standing up for its users against legal threats, has had its PayPal account frozen twice for unclear reasons. Apparently PayPal had been working just fine for three years, and then suddenly the account was frozen. Employees contacted PayPal, who told PRQ to just set up a second PayPal account for users to use until they sorted things out, and then they'd merge the two accounts. Instead... they froze the second one as well. Of course, if you follow stories involving PayPal, this is hardly uncommon. It seems to happen all too frequently with many sites that use it. PayPal works hard to try to minimize fraud, but it seems to have a super itchy trigger finger to completely shut down sites with no warning and little process for appeal. Relying on it as a sole payment offering seems to be asking for trouble.