Say Anything Blog

This just doesn't make sense to me.

Washington Blade - When PayPal, the giant Internet payment processing service, announced last year it would no longer do business with clients that sell pornographic products or services, gay-owned Internet businesses assumed the firm was aiming its new policy at the graphic sex trade.

But at least three gay-owned companies that conduct business over the Internet say PayPal appears to be using its anti-porn policy against them, even though they don't consider their businesses to be sexually oriented.

The Los Angeles based H.I.M. Corp., which operates a network of Web sites that provide services to gay audiences, and the New York City-based Belhue Press, which publishes books by gay authors, said PayPal dropped them as clients earlier this year.

The Red Hot Organization, an international group that raises funds for AIDS causes by selling music recordings and music related promotional items on the Internet, says PayPal dropped them from its service, apparently because of objections over its safer-sex messages.

"Red Hot has never considered its content obscene or adult," said Jeff Jackson, the organization's production manager. "We do discus safe sex and safe needles as it relates to the AIDS epidemic on our Web site," he said.

Jackson said he raised objections to PalPal's action, saying his organization's aim is to educate the public on ways to avoid AIDS. He said PayPal never responded to his concerns. His group has since switched to another bill payment servicing company, he said.

A lot of people in the Blogosphere have had problems with Paypal. TalkLeft had its account suspended for linking to a terrorist beheading video while reporting on that story. The Daily Pundit nearly had its account suspended for apparently just writing about terrorists. Wizbang got a warning for linking to photos of scantily clad women. And back in may the Free Network Project got dinged by Paypal for "using an anonymous proxy," whatever that means.

How is it that, given this sort of behavior by Paypal, a good competitor hasn't sprung up? When they're not busy harassing customers Paypal is a pretty good product. There's nothing else quite like it on the market. But there should be if only so customers had somewhere to go when Paypal treated them this way.