PayPal has "permanently limited" my account

Ah ok, I thought it applied to all states. I'm in Florida so it applies here. My parents nearly had to sue someone for recording me without permission once when I was in middle school (Jr. High).

 

What dirty thing did you do to make someone record you ?
On topic though, I had an issue with the authorities where they would give conflicting answers each time I called so I decided to tape my calls with them. After catching them redhanded I called a last time and told them that I have them on tape I suddenly got the best and most polite service in my life with very informative and definitive specific answers and laws and paragrafs

 

Some jerk in my class was recording me crying hysterically in class with their phone's camera and they posted it to YouTube. The entire school was talking about it and I was made fun of a lot more than usual. After hearing that my parents were looking to sue their parents for this, they removed the video from YouTube before we could find it. Still don't know who did it but I had a good idea of who it might have been.

Now back to the topic, I hope you can get this solved APE. PayPal can be jerks sometimes.

 

As you say, this is absolute drivel. When you buy something, it becomes your property, and you can do anything you like with it, as long as what you do doesn't beak the law.

So if you buy a Gamecube, you can paint it yellow and pink if you like, or use it as a football, stick flowers all over it and say it's art, call it Fred, and anything else (however insane!) that isn't against the law.

You can't hit someone over the head with it, or make it into a bomb, throw it through someone's window (well, you can if you have their permission, as then it's not illegal), etc, as these are all illegal.

And whilst bypassing a console's protection system is illegal in some countries (especially since the DMCA), repairing a console, or improving it (say with a HDMI out, or sticking LEDs all over it (I wouldn't say that that improves it, but that's just me), adding a better fan to the system for extra cooling, etc), is definitely not illegal. When you buy a Gamecube, it becomes yours, you don't rent or lease the item, it's yours, and Nintendo/Paypal/the government etc can't dictate what legal things you can but mustn't do to it.

 

That would be PayPal limiting APE's account, right?

Let's not get too in-depth into the legalities of phone call recording in here... simply put, in all primarily English-speaking countries you should be able to record phone calls but may have to announce at the beginning of the call that you are doing so, and for what purpose (and it would be advisable). If we're talking about a conversation with a PayPal representative, do PayPal record your calls? If so, just ask them for a copy of the recording.

 

In the US the law for *most* states is that both parties have to know the recording is happening (as noted above). I specifically did ask if I could get a recording and she said it would have to be subpoenaed (meaning a court would have to force the issue). Should've recorded it myself but my app was disabled and I couldn't figure out how to reenable it under stress.

PayPal is not remotely interested in being transparent and is obvious uninterested in helping people take them to court over it too.

 

Kind of, but more like on the topic of trying to be helpful and showing an example of how it helped me against none other than the man.

That's weird. In Sweden, and maybe EU as a whole, we have a law that says if any company or organisation collects any type of data on you they have to hand over a complete copy to you at your first request. The companies in question (mostly telecom) lie a lot of the time and say things like what you said but once you mention the existence of such a law they become very helpful and cooperative.

 

Here's the problem: Paypal can do whatever they want, and they will because you agreed to their ToS which states that. Whether or not the contract is enforceable is irrelevant. Your only outs would be to find a sympathetic customer service agent (HA), publicly embarrass them to the point of reversing (not going to work with perceived "shady" items) or try to take them to court (too expensive). Personally, I don't know why the states' attorney generals haven't put the company in the ground yet for the numerous monopolistic and banking issues that lets them prey upon consumers.

 

Yup, Data Protection Act here in the UK. You might have to pay for the info if they don't want to be co-operative, but they have to provide anything held about you on demand. Of course, such laws are different from country to country.

In Europe, their Privacy Policy says:

Technically, under the Data Protection Act, you should be able to get recordings with that. Unfortunately, I don't think such a law exists in the US. And the US policy is different.

On the topic of receiving gift payments (in the US):

And here is the specific section that prohibits modchips:

https://www.paypal.com/selfhelp/article/FAQ1812

Regardless of the legality of any of the mentioned items, PayPal specifically state that they don't allow those items to be sold. So your chances of winning a legal case against them are very slim.

If you fall foul of this rule, your best bet would be a web store with an appropriate payment gateway - be it Google Wallet, Apple Pay, Amazon Payments, Skrill or whatever. Some of those might require you to start a business, though... although some may allow use without an online shopping cart.

 

So, if i'm reading this correctly, doing a mod like RGB mod, composite mod, making a handheld portable etc is fine on PayPal as long as there is no built-in facility to run games or from regions not supported by the original hardware; in other words selling modified systems is fine as long as you haven't circumvented region or game protections - yes?

 

If Sega, Sony et al wanted to make a claim against you (or PayPal) for altering their designs, you might have an issue on the copyright point that they'd argue... but technically, yes. If you have modified it to provide a better picture, that's probably going to be fine. So long as it doesn't play backup or import games.

As I stated before, though... if you do this regularly, you are a business. You should register as a business. And then, you'll probably have a shopping cart system on your site, maybe you have a credit card machine as part of your business or a payment processor and you won't need to worry about PayPal. Although check your payment processor's TOS!

 

No, copyright would only apply to software mods (e.g. BIOS modifications) and potentially trade dress issues (though, those are more likely trademark issues). Patent infringement is a possibility for hardware-only mods, but that would be very hard to prove and most of this stuff is outside of the patentable periods anyway.

Again, they can make a claim for anything and you have to abide by it unless you are willing to pay a lawyer to fight it.

 

Once you use PayPal, your pretty much walking on pins and needles with them. If you really need PayPal, just open up a new account with info not tied to your original; otherwise, move on to a different processor.

 

I've sold my fair share of modchips and other gray market Chinese devices and while I've never been outright banned, I have been warned for sure. After the first warning, I told all my customers to mark as a Gift and most of my issues went away. But just to put a cherry on top, I also told people that I would reject any payment that doesn't use generic terms in the description. For example, I told people to use the phrase "Replacement CD-ROM Controller" for SS Modchips, etc. Something very generic and extremely academic and boring sounding. (^_^); After taking these actions, I never got flagged again. If anyone didn't follow the rules, I would reject payment and ask them to do it again.

 

You're very lucky they didn't notice you have an awful lot of "friends" giving you "gifts", check into things and have you for false gift payments, though.

 

Only to an extent. You can argue that a provision in the contract is unconscionable (in that a reasonable person would not agree to something like this) and that the contract is clearly adhesive (meaning a much larger entity wrote up the contract in a way that favors them and not the smaller individual who has very little negotiation power). So you can argue and win against them except for the fact that PayPal has an arbitration clause and a recent supreme court ruling reinforced already existing decisions about forcing arbitration over going to small claims court.

I've been discussing this case with another modder. PayPal is OK with AutoZone selling superchips (which do many of the things PayPal says aren't allow with electronics such as require reverse engineering and modify equipment to do things it was not built for) apparently. But with the Rhea they said it wasn't allowed. PayPal is using some really bad, and selective, logic to dictate their rules arbitrarily. Modchips are probably not going to be acceptable by them but overclock mods and S-Video mods might be considered against policy due to being a custom solution.

We're not even sure the UltraHDMI is acceptable under PayPal's rules.

 

As in a chip that tweaks a car's performance? If, as you did before, you want to ignore the altering of the code's legality, then you'd have to look at what the device does. Does it deprive the manufacturer of any income? I can't see that it does - unless there's a "sports" version of the car that doesn't have any physical part changes, merely software alteration. Conversely, a modchip (and the Rhea) are designed primarily to allow games to be played without an original disc in the console. Whilst it's a dead console so quite a pathetic claim were Sega to try and make one, a modchip is designed to allow people to play games without buying them. There's a difference between making your car go faster and allowing piracy.

I think their argument if you took it to court would primarily be that it's against their IP policy (and your above argument would be flimsy, I'd imagine - the policy clearly is there to prevent illegal activities). It's just a shame the agents don't seem to know that. Not surprising... I spoke to eBay about a company taking my e-mail address from our sale and putting me on their website's mailing list (but also contacting me regarding the transaction instead of communicating through eBay's system), which seems to be against their TOS. eBay ignored my requests to confirm it is against their TOS, instead trying to tell me they can't get my e-mail address from eBay (can and did) and that if I am being harassed, I should call the Police! Who said anything about harassment?! lol[/QUOTE]

 

Indeed! I suspect that because my volume has lowered, as well as the fact that some people prefer to cover PayPal fee's to get buyers protection, no one really looked into it.

 

I don't see why PayPal would be interested in monies sent as "gift", they are no longer part of ebay, people often transfer payments from one bank account to another online, sending "gift" is no different on PayPal. There is no way to transfer monies to an account like a normal bank, so you have to "gift" it. PayPal take their expensive fees anyway when you send money as a "gift", same rate, so why should they care, they make 3.4% on the transaction after all!

 

Paying by gift doesn't excuse their ToS for your transactions. It simply isn't protected if deals go south.