If you are in a war zone near people with weapons you have no right to complain if you get shot at.
You can Monday morning quarterback the scenario all day long. The fact is the pilots saw firearms and RPG's with a group of people and knew US soldiers would be the target. It's tragic but what armed conflict isn't.
I'm not attacking every freemium model out there.. just one that involves sports that have a large percentage of fanatic fans and their favorite teams stats . Other models don't have the same potential for copyright violation.
The idea and technology being used is great I just think there may be an enormous legal battle ahead should the site and service become very popular.
What prevents someone from doing a screen capture or content scrape of your data and posting it to their website?
Are you geared up to start sending out cease and desist notices to every chump with a myspace account who happens to like sports and knows how to use pbrush and ALT+Print Screen.
Good luck but it seems too easily to rape your content and leave you holding the legal bill for a fight you can't win.
It wasn't to them at the time... not until we had processed about 80-100k did things settle down.
I think they have a hard time with their risk management protocol. Keep customers happy and loose a lot of money or piss off customers and loose less money from scammers...
The evil part of paypal is that they don't learn from their mistakes very quickly and they seem to not realize they are affecting peoples MONEY. Kinda silly but true. It's business as usual over there regardless of $1 or $100,000 they just tied up of your cash.
I went through the same scenario in 2003 with paypal with tens of thousands of dollars locked up pending a review... Thankfully we had a back up plan (credit card processing)
The plus side of paypal... when you and if you can process some serious loot through them you get treated like a rock star and you get access people and help you wouldn't otherwise get.
More data mining by google under the guise of global awesomeness.
The point most people miss is that all of your habits and information are under one roof and only need one subpoena to get your entire electronic life on DVD. This just adds to what they already know about your searching, emailing , communicating and spending.
initial concept is pen and paper while out of office usually (i.e beach or cafe or somewhere casual)
Develop concept and initial code is usually on laptop
Final development and refinement on desktop
Report the news . Don't make it, fabricate it or skew it.
The days of yellow journalism are still alive and well.