After cutting ties with Wikileaks in 2010, and after this year’s raid against Megaupload, PayPal is now imposing increasingly stringent conditions on various online file-sharing sites. According to TorrentFreak, PayPal has recently changed its terms of service, making requirements for file-sharing and newsgroup services far tighter than before.

The payment service, owned by eBay, now requires that "merchants must prohibit users from uploading files involving illegal content and indicate that users involved in such file transfers will be permanently removed from their service," and that "merchants must provide PayPal with free access to their service, so PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy department can monitor the content."

Not surprisingly, locker sites are already grumbling about the changes. Others, like the Palo Alto-based MediaFire, say that there has been little impact their bottom line since the switchover. Neither MediaFire nor PayPal immediately responded to requests for comment.

"This is a complete invasion of privacy on PayPal’s part, as it’s none of their business what files users keep in their account," Putlocker, a UK-based site, told TorrentFreak. "We have a solid abuse handling policy already, and we don’t feel a 3rd party company has any business snooping on our users."

Of course, while PayPal may be a convenient way for companies to receive and send funds, there are plenty of other ways to pay—either directly through credit cards or international bank transfers, or using services like Moneybookers, to say nothing of newer means, like Bitcoin.