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[Japo]

Thank you... Okay don't know if others wrote but I got an answer:

Dear Javier #####,

Thank you for contacting PayPal. We apologise for the delay in
responding to your email concerning your concerns regarding Mr Ondrej
Muncinsky.

Thank you for the email Mr. #####. I would advise you to please forward
the email to our relevant department to the following address:
paypal-compliance (at) paypal (dot) com. adding the email address of the person in
question.

I do apologise for any inconvenience this has caused you. We are pleased
to have you as a member of the PayPal community of online payment
members. If you need any assistance in the future, you can contact
Customer Service by email at https://www.paypal.co.uk/ewf/f=default
Thank you for using PayPal.

Please let me know if you need further assistance.

Atentamente,
Susana
Departamento de resoluciones de PayPal[/b]

If you write in an uber-formal style they may think you're fogyish, but they will take you seriously. Seems that they've got an special email account for this kind of complains regarding acceptable use, so if you're going to write them use this address:

paypal-compliance (at) paypal (dot) com

You've got to add the leech's address which is

gms (at) mosw (dot) com

(I shouldn't mask it but forum rules are forum rules.) I'm mailing mine right away, let's see what comes out of it.

[plix]

I knew I had seen more on this than the DFL thread:
http://www.the-underdogs.info/forum/...ic.php?t=46858
http://www.tnaaf.org/showthread.php?t=48

Apparently the guy is already using OCR (which pretty much defeats the CAPATCHA idea) and the rest of the points I made earlier have similarly been addressed. I apologize for sounding like a broken record, but in all honesty: everything I've seen suggested here has been tried before.

[win98]

I've emailed paypal.

[win98]

Sorry for the double post but I got a reply.
Dear Win98 (Nice try but you aren't gonna get my name)

Thank you for contacting PayPal with your concern. We appreciate your
business and will make every effort to facilitate the handling of this
matter.

Any person or business that requests PayPal assist in asserting its
copyright, patent, trademark, or any other work protected under federal
law, must first complete PayPals Request for Account Termination Form.
The completed form can be faxed to the attention of the Acceptable Use
Policy Team at (number taken out). Please keep in mind that once the
submitted information is confirmed, the reported partys PayPal account
may be placed in a limited status and may be unable to send or receive
payments through the PayPal system. Therefore, we ask that you consider
this decision carefully before moving forward.

Please keep in mind that generally only a copyright, patent, trademark
holder, or those deriving rights through the holder, can rightfully
claim a copyright infringement. It is for this reason that PayPal
encourages owners of intellectual property to contact the alleged
infringer directly to attempt to resolve the dispute in this manner. It
is also recommended that you contact your Internet service provider
(ISP) or hosting company to assist you in taking corrective measures
against the infringers website.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to email the
Acceptable Use Policy Department at aup(at)paypal.com.

Sincerely,
Acceptable Use Policy Department
PayPal, an eBay Company

Then they want me to fill in a stupid form and fax it to america no thanks. :angry:
So from now on be prepared to fill in a form. So only send the message if you are prepared to.

[Japo]

Well I wouldn't mind sending a couple of faxes if they resulted in this leech out of business. But since "only a copyright, patent, trademark holder, or those deriving rights through the holder, can rightfully claim a copyright infringement", this seems to concern Abandonia itself so there's little we can do without the admins' intervention. Still it's not only copyright infringement, it's also swindling and bandwidth stealing. I don't know how illegal those are but I'm pretty sure they're without PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy and that PayPal doesn't want to be involved in it. Well I'll just wait for a reply if it comes, and if it doesn't I'll resend the last mail (only once), since it was a forward and it might have ended in the spam bin because of its subject's starting with "Fw:".

[Frodo]

It seems basically that this guy can do what ever he wants then. :angry:
I still don't understand why ESA don't stop him. After all, he is selling games that are ESA protected. :wallbash:

[horrorist]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Frodo @ Jan 30 2007, 11:34 PM) [snapback]277203[/snapback]</div>

It seems basically that this guy can do what ever he wants then.
[/b]

Even if PayPal has a strict policy and by this strict general terms of agreement (as allready posted by Abi79 somewhere above), they are not the authorities. Adressed by someone with accusations against any of their customers they could just say:
"OK sounds pretty believable, the games might be stolen, the reviews as well. But we do not understand a heck about this copyright thingy, we are financial service providers and we do not want to occupy any of our employees with investigations about this because they are sleeping tightly and it costs us a lot to wake them up. Do you guys have any idea how many accusations like that are sent to us by people who menacely try to ruin their neigbours?"
Just to play the advocatus diaboli

I think one way to put a little pressure on PayPal would be an accusation of an other financial service provider (the foe of your foe is your friend) of supporting illegal activities. So PayPal might need to investigate.

The financial calculation for the ESA is a bit different (roughly estimated):
If this guy continues their members will lose perhaps $500 of sales each year. If they sue this guy it will cost them at least $5000. Even if they win, which is not garantueed, they cannot be sure to get any money from this guy back. He could just hide it somewhere or give everything away to his girlfriend and declare to own absolutly nothing. So shutting down his website will perhaps armortize in 10 years. Unless his girlfriend/ uncle/ stepbrother/ whatsoever opens a new one.
If there were more leechers sites the situation could be different... (sounds awfull!) :wallbash:

The only legal chance I see is of course accusing him to the authorities (this does not cost anything), but it depends from the legal situation in the Czech. Rep.: If commercial use of copyright violations is criminal in czech, we are in, if it is only illegal, it won't be that easy. Having this leecher punished only with a $200 fine, PayPal cannot refuse to ban him.

If there are no technical or legal means, what about propaganda? I read some very pointed texts in this thread, containing some very strong metaphors (Maybe Himmler could become a bit like Goebbels... )

[Moonypond]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(strachwitz @ Jan 31 2007, 02:53 PM) [snapback]277222[/snapback]</div>

The financial calculation for the ESA is a bit different (roughly estimated):
If this guy continues their members will lose perhaps $500 of sales each year. If they sue this guy it will cost them at least $5000. Even if they win, which is not garantueed, they cannot be sure to get any money from this guy back. He could just hide it somewhere or give everything away to his girlfriend and declare to own absolutly nothing. So shutting down his website will perhaps armortize in 10 years. Unless his girlfriend/ uncle/ stepbrother/ whatsoever opens a new one.
If there were more leechers sites the situation could be different... (sounds awfull!) :wallbash:
[/b]

Actually the ESA get nothing for shutting down sites. In their "Anti-Piracy FAQ" is says:

Does the ESA make money by shutting down a site?
No, the ESA derives no financial benefits from shutting down sites.[/b]

[Lulu_Jane]

*sigh*

Where do I get the fax form from, I'll send it.

(Also, yay Japofran for your emails!)

Win98, you might as well send the fax, otherwise this thread is just "hot air."

Incidentally, I find the petty beaurocracy that Paypal makes the user go through to complain disgusting. But, then again, why would they want to make it easy to close down accounts which they make money from. Yuk yuk yuk.

[Japo]

You don't have to convince PayPal that what this leech is doing is illegal, you only have to make them think that they don't want themselves involved in it, even because of public image alone. I'm sure they've suspended a lot of accounts because of non-compliance with their AUP whatever the legal stance of the practices involved.

Win98, reading the response you got with more attention, it seems that they think you're claiming copyright infringement on the games themselves, and it even seems that they're not aware that Abandonia doesn't host games anybody wants it not to host.

Anyway the games are a matter of the ESA and I don't think we can do a lot about that. First this leech is not hosting them, only linking to people who host them. Second to the ESA it's indifferent if you're hosting their games for free or you're charging for something or you're swindling. If the ESA wants to stop their games from being distributed, it will contact the sources rather than this leech.

Secondly, sine Abandonia does not hold the copyrights of the games, the only copyrights it can claim are the reviews'. But in order to expose the leech to PayPal it might be equally effective to expose the leech's other foul practices, be they illegal or not. PayPal is no Swiss bank, if they have their own private Acceptable Use Policy (besides the legislation from several countries they must comply with), it's because they must care about their public image.