Paypal is at it again

[firecat]

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/02/25/smashwords-succumbs-to-censorship/

Paypal is demanding that Smashwords remove certain content.

I don't know anything about Smashwords except that some people I've interacted with have self-published their work there.

Since Dreamwidth went through this and ended up choosing a payment system other than Paypal, I wonder if the peeps at Smashwords have talked to the people at DW who negotiated that minefield.

Are there any viable alternatives to Paypal?

Comments

[wild_irises]

I am always looking for viable alternatives to Paypal, on which I depend. There are a few small ones, but nothing with remotely the reach or market penetration. That would probably be okay with me--if I could send money to individuals some other way, I could give up the other things I do with Paypal, but I haven't yet seen anything attractive.

If you find something, let me know.

[elainegrey]

I suppose it depends in what way you want an alternative to paypal. It seems clear that dreamwidth has found a US based credit card processor from http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/7022.html (more detail http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/7022.html?thread=702318#cmt702318 ). It seems it doesn't have the full feature set that paypal does, however.

http://bitcoin.org/ is something i'm curious about. It turns out i could have bought my dad's birthday gift, the pocket mini cannon, with bitcoin.

[flarenut]

As medium of exchange, bitcoin may have its uses, but as a system egad in oh so many ways. Even if the wallets were secure, which they repeatedly get proven not, the whole idea of "mining" with variable return to generate growth in the pseudomoney supply has some serious philosophical problems. And then the exchange rate...)