Really? You can buy debit/prepaid cards at pretty much any major retailer in the United States. I'll submit that a lot of people outside the first world probably have limited access to bank accounts and credit cards.
Yahoo doesn't pay dividends and has 14000 employees...they are't really a small startup, that's my only point about market cap. I would guess they have a legal department they could consult on this.
I think having a market cap of 17.75B isn't really in the "small to medium-sized business" category. So Flickr/Yahoo could do it that way assuming their in-house counsel says that it abides by the law.
The main complaint is that he was asking for donations to fight this, and then more or less bailed on the fight. That's the only valid complaint in my opinion, then again, we don't know if and how much money was raised. It pays to be wary of donating to a legal defense fund, you can't be certain it will be spent the way you want it to be spent.
Agreed. Whether it was a good move on his part or not, it doesn't matter when it comes to the donations scenario. He implicitly collected donations to fight Sony, and then discontinued the fight. Would we do it too? Probably. But that is not the point. If I paid seeded X amount of money to you to sail across the world and then you stopped part way because the outcome looked bleak, I would all or some of my money back. Hopefully it does get passed on to the EFF.
it's assumed that he is going to donate remaining legal funds to the EFF
Assumptions are always dangerous, especially when a lot of money is involved. Will he donate all of it, some of it, of none of it? We'll likely never have anything better than his word on what he did with the money. And that has an even more damning effect on these sorts of cases in the future, since people will be much more reluctant to donate to someone else's case after this guy sold out and took the money (even if it's just some of the money, even if it's just *allegations* that he pocketed some of the money).
Well we can always hope that the EFF would share information as to whether these donation claims are factual or not down the road.
I entered a post.
And it was quite delightful.
Back to work I go.
"Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser." -- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew"
