Almost no chargeback will ever go to arbitration though. So it's not like this new fee is the reason behind the change. Patrick Collison is (probably) just exploiting his position in the market to squeeze more money out of merchants.
I sure wish there was more competition in the payment marketplace. During the early Stripe years, I thought Patrick would be above this nonsense (even without competitive pressure). Not so!
I think it's more about running up the legal bill of the defendant. It costs virtually nothing to include a spurious claim in a complaint (it can literally be a sentence or two). The defense has the burden of getting the weak claim dismissed with pages and pages of arguments (because they don't want any chance of it slipping through).
The bar for a "shotgun" complaint is way too high in the legal system.
I would agree. I'm the defendant in a (frivolous) trademark infringement case and my firm (which does work for the EFF) averages about 2 hours per (substantial) page, at a rate of $500/hour. I do wonder in the back of my mind if I'm being taken to the cleaners...
Small businesses do not routinely send pennies to the UAE. Countries do not have unlimited resources to chase after you. The law cannot be universally enforced, so the government has to pick and choose its battles. And they aren't going to bother with you. You need to be concerned about the tax law in the country you reside and have citizenship.
If you are the target of automated copyright trolling, inspect your server logs whenever you get a notice. Some troll bots will (surprisingly) use an honest HTTP user agent so you can easily block it.
Someone tell this to the US Census Bureau please. They send you threatening letters demanding you fill out a survey ("Your response is REQUIRED by law"), but then block every non-US ISP from accessing it. I wrote my congresswoman, the US Digital Service (it was a hail mary) and Kevin Deardorff (the "chief" of the particular survey I have to take), and no one cares about the millions of Americans abroad.
I could probably sign up for a VPN service and take it, but then again, they could be blocking VPN services too.
> Friedman wrote, “implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny.” (Of course, Kennedy had said that Americans should not ask what their country could do for them. But never mind. It’s that kind of book.)
It's hard to take this article seriously when it makes a glaring mistake analyzing the first two paragraphs of Friedman's book. Friedman was critiquing both statements in Kennedy's famous line ("Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society.")
The secret is JiffyShirts.com (or any other blank wholesaler). You can buy 3 or 4 tees for the price of one from a normal store. Buy a bunch of different "models", try them on, see which fits the best, and then order more. There is some variance in sizing if you buy the same shirt again, which is annoying. But at least it doesn't matter much at $5 a shirt.
Indeed. The problem may even be worse with other systems.
There are other trivial ways to prevent unsophisticated card testing. For example, I have a card tester who visits my checkout page every day via a direct link (he must have bookmarked it). Little does he know, the real checkout page is now located at a different URL. So I just reject every transaction at that page.
My opinion: It isn't worth it to do anything (especially because you only have a common law trademark). Even if you had the federal trademark, it might not even be worth it. A trademark dispute can easily be $100K and you won't get your fees paid for unless the case is particularly egregious.
Of course, someone will tell you talk to a lawyer. Getting legal advice from a member of the legal cartel is a crapshoot. There are so many terrible lawyers out there who won't hesitate to recommend legal action for every little thing even if it has zero chance of succeeding (I am currently on the other end of that). So proceed with caution. Do your own research on common law trademark rights before you talk to a lawyer. That will help you weed out the incompetent ones.
I would keep an eye out if they file a trademark application (check TESS periodically). You'll want to oppose it. That should "only" cost you a few thousand dollars.
> Ultimately, the court’s CalECPA analysis proved fatal to the defendants’ case. Despite ruling the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment, the court refused to suppress the evidence, finding the officers acted in good faith based on a facially valid warrant.
Incredible. This is like the government version of a corporation laundering its bad behavior through an undercapitalized shell company to shield it from liability.
That window between the last two steps is a killer. PayPal Checkout supports iDeal, and I get complaints about how PayPal took their money, but their account (on my system) was never setup...because I never got the money/notification from PayPal! It drives me nuts.
PayPal seems to refund them after a certain period of time automatically, but it takes a while. Naturally, the customer is anxious and mad at me, and not likely to risk checking out again.
I switched to Porkbun after Namecheap threatened to disable my domain in 24 hours when some shady reputation management company (izoologic) claimed a page on my site was phishing.
I don't know if Porkbun would handle that situation any better, but I take comfort in the fact that I can drive to their office and talk to a real person in an emergency.
I sure wish there was more competition in the payment marketplace. During the early Stripe years, I thought Patrick would be above this nonsense (even without competitive pressure). Not so!