Thank you, Steve, for posting your article yesterday and for calling Paypal out and causing their embarrassment for their obviously greedy and illegal actions! Also you've been more than just journalistically embedded in the temple project, you've been helping build it, making art for their art auction fundraiser and recruiting at least a half dozen people who are now committed to building it and going up early to do so. You're a journalist extraordinaire!

So you're saying that PayPal did this to protect people from making bad decisions about where to donate their money, and it had nothing to do with the interest they collect off the money? You have far more faith in corporate America than I do.

The last time I checked Paypal is not a bank, nor is it the IRS! If they were setting these sort of motions in place to protect from scamming, don't you think they would have worked with Temple and not against them? They were trying to hold their own money, not someone else's money. Funny how a little bad publicity makes them change their tune completely! I am not a fan of Burning Man at all but I am a fan of making corporations behave ethically and under the law and they didn't do that at all here.

Haha! Awesome.

Credit Card Crusties. They're back!

Comfort & Joy is a queer art collective that sponsors a Burning Man Village.

We still have $1600 of fundraiser proceeds in a frozen Paypal account. We were told that we have to get a letter from a fiscal sponsor with a tax id number saying that they are "working with us" to help us become our own legal entity or somesuch, and then we can get our money back. Luckily we already have a relationship with a fiscal sponsor, but right when we're trying to get our art installations finished with only 9 days left before departure time, we get frozen & have to drop everything to send Paypal some letter. Thank goodness we have other proceeds in other accounts so we can get our work done in the meanwhile.

A lot of burner groups like ours are not finished with all their nonprofit paperwork, because it's actually rather complex stuff, setting up an effective board & writing bylaws, which is only part of what's required by the IRS.

I am a fraud agent for PP. We see fake charities all the time. (among other scams) the vetting process for charities is relatively simple. No, donors usually do not have a clue. I can imagine how people would scream if we just let these guys rip them off. But you also need to understand that people can file credit card chargebacks and complaints that we are responsible for. In a very real sense we are not just a payment processor but we are "loaning" money for a fee. If the fake charity runs away with the money it is PP's loss.

WELL DONE(!) (whatever lapsarian, unfortunate title). I will POSITIVELY BUY more than one copy next payday.

Wishing you Great Sparks & Aloha for your book,

Original Burning Man participant (& yes, 1st generation relative to 2nd [longtime tribe photographer to Extra Action Marching Band , Spanish Galleon & other Tesslectric extravaganzas]).