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PayPal Withdraws WikiLeaks Donation Service
ItsIllak writes "The BBC are reporting that PayPal is the latest company to abandon WikiLeaks. The list now includes their DNS providers (EveryDNS) and their hosts (Amazon). PayPal's move is unlikely to result in many more people boycotting the company, as most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them for years for a wide variety of abusive practices."
Adds reader jg21: "As open source freedom fighter Simon Phipps writes in his ComputerWorldUK blog, behavior like this by Amazon and Tableau [and now PayPal] 'informs us as customers of web services and cloud computing services that we are never safe from intentional outages when the business interests of our host are challenged.'"
If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to worry about.
Isn't that what they tell us when they pry into our affairs...?
No sig today...
Wikileaks, which is revealing the truth about governments and therefore aiding (in a way) the democratic process - is being killed off because it is risky for companies to continue supporting it....
Freedom works both ways. I give you the freedom of speech, but please allow me the freedom to not do business with you.
I don't so much mind the fact that some american businesses are bigoted red-necks. The politicians are the one to watch.
well, Guess it's time to close that account then.
what a bunch of bullshit. I'm getting so tired of the the divide that's developing.
It is surprising, watching the entire WikiLeaks controversy, how quickly American corporations discard the concepts and ideals of the American constitution.
"most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them for years "
While it's true that paypal generates animosity for some, I still think that the above statement requires a source before putting it in the article summary like it's a fact.
There were idiots believing there could be freedom with full feudalism (capitalism) being allowed in the economic side of life, and democracy and equality in the political side of life.
....
See how that works ? you are free to say anything you want, from the political side, but, you dont have the MEANS to say it from the economic side.
basically, the corporations which dominate the economic side, determine how far your freedom goes. it doesnt matter ZIT whether you are allowed full freedoms in the political side of life.
its stupid anyway - you let everyone be free and equal, but, you give the control of the means to exercise those freedoms to the most wealthy. what did you think would happen ?
this
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Yea! Aren't you PROUD to be an American?
Yes
I'm surprised, I'd have thought Paypal would have been the first to cut ties. Especially considering their connection to Meg Whitman.
Though, this is probably a good thing. Considering Paypal's reputation and standing, Paypal is a company that Wikileaks should have been publishing documents about, rather than using as a payment partner.
I think there is a real possibility that the more they stamp down on wikileaks the more people are likely to support it. You don't need paypal to get donations. Unless the government is going to open mail and remove checks (I suppose that COULD happen) wikileaks will get support.
As for the Web site, copies of it will float around forever in bittorrent, question is,...will we see wikileaks move completely over to something like freenet (which it has not done but it is being mirrored by 3rd party individuals on freenet)
I must say, this is sizing up to be quite an interesting chapter in our history. The pressure put on these companies by angry or embarrassed government entities must be enormous.
Or nonexistent. Seeing as we've seen no report of governmental influence other than one company saying they unilaterally booted Wikileaks after a Senator made a public statement condemning Wikileaks, any supposition of governmental pressure is pure conjecture. One could also surmise that companies might find doing business with a website which is at the very least hostile toward the US government isn't part of their business plan and cut ties. Or maybe they're really patriotic. The point is, we don't know if the government has pressured American companies not to do business with Wikileaks. I suspect it wouldn't take much leaning on the part of the government to convince them to stop, at any rate. I know this doesn't fit the narrative here at /., what with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but in the real world businesses do what is in their own best interests.
I think it's pretty commonly known that paypal sucks. Not that long ago Paypal locked the account of the indie developer of Minecraft for no good reason, holding over $600k hostage.
I have demanded that they reinstate wikileaks account, and noted that i would migrate my business from paypal to other means, and also advise my ecommerce clients to do as such too. In addition, because im in the Eu zone, i have filed my complaint under 'file a complaint in the european union'.
i have also stated that i was going to file an official complaint with the European Parliament regarding the matter, unless the account is not reinstated. As a citizen of a candidate country, i have that right. Any citizen of any member or candidate country, has that right. If you file your complaint properly with your name, address, it is processed by Eu Parl even if it is by email.
take action.
i said, i didnt want to do business with a corporation that caves into the pressure of a single senator from a single country. Let paypal show its international, if it wants to do business internationally.
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Doing that wasnt on my mind even. Thanks, whichever moron, has pressurized paypal to suspend them. They made me donate to wikileaks.
Thank you for your donation.
Your payment of EUR 25 has been received 4.12.2010 16:02:31
With your VISA xxxxxxxxxxxx9516
Reference : 5729
The Wikileaks Team, Sunshine Press
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Actually, the US has laws against funding terrorist organizations, and is moving to try to put Wikileaks on that list. So there may be either fear on the part of the businesses, or else behind-the-scenes pressure (a "friendly warning" from the FBI for instance) to do so.
At the same time, I can't fault Paypal for their actions. I used to donate to UNICEF, but I stopped when it was revealed that a sizable portion of money from them was being used to fund "summer camps" like the Wafa Idris, Ayyat al-Akhras and Dalal Mughrabi summer camps; these are named after suicide bombing terrorists and places where nothing but hate and racism is taught to children.
I dunno if you've noticed lately but:
A. The government is taking down domain names without warrants
B. The government is pressuring hosts to remove services
C. The government is encouraging if not mandating ISP to throttle bit torrents
D. The government is tracking US citizens Via their Credit cards, telephone conversations, Internet traffic and cellphones without warrants.
E. All sorts of other nefarious things we aren't aware of yet...
Seriously, this is turning into a bad Oliver Stone movie.
Freedom of publication. But can you afford to pay for the press, the ink, the distribution?
Freedom of broadcasting. But can you afford the license fee for the frequency, the cost of powering the transmitter?
Freedom to gather. But can you afford to take a day of work, the travel expenses? Can you get a meeting place?
The chains of oppression are never more powerful then when those chains are of our own making. We make the super-companies and gave them the power to control society. Google dictates what you can put on a website, oh you can pay for bandwidth yourself but who can afford to pay for a DDOS attack traffic? So you get google ads and abide by their content laws or you get the money elsewhere.
Through paypal donations? Only when PayPal approves.
The proof? Boobies. There is no need for congress to ban boobies on TV, self regulation does it already. How nice. But it goes further. Just how do you get something published on TV if the powers that be do not want it? Oh, you might be able to get it on some tiny channel but then the fast majority will never see it.
Mission accomplished.
The conspiracy theory nuts never think devious enough. They fear jackbooted thugs marching down the street when it is so much simpler to simply let it be known that an action would displease you and all the little puppets spring into action to prevent the risk that this displeasement might come on their necks. I could whip you into obeying my orders, or I could make you fear you won't have a job tomorrow with which to pay your credit card debt. I can only whip one person at a time. I can ruin thousands of lives by just signing a simple piece of paper except that the fear means I never have to do it to get you and your masters to obey.
We are seeing now in action what western democracy has become. And nothing will change. Because our masters have replaced the whip with credit card payments, mortages and Idols. The romans would have been proud. To bad they are gone, bread and circusses didn't work out to well for us. Doubt it will for us.
Wonder what the Chinese are making of all this. They seen the romans rice and fall, are we just another empire to die as the Chinese empire continues?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If the US moves Wikileaks on the list of terrorist organizations, I move the US on my list of fascist nations.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
But he's not an Anonymous Coward calling others names on Slashdot.
Me too.
I see you're an AOL user. Didn't know they were still around.
you know, the kind who dedicated their lives so that others could live: the kind who actually lost their lives.
you mean, the ones who lost their lives while propagating invasions, occupations so that american corporations can create mandates and get access to resources ?
in NO war after world war ii, there has been a situation in which american soldiers were dying for defending freedom and preventing oppression. in ALL situations, and that includes somalia, they were sent to those places to further private interests's aims in the region. Any zone either had strategic resources (panama canal, middle east), or, natural resources (somalia, middle east, oil).
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Paypal is basically discriminating against an entity/person based in European Union, based on political pressure in united states.
United states, is not in european union.
Petition european parliament at the below url via their online form, or, mail your petition to the address below and ask European Parliament look into the practices of Paypal in european union, and take action against their holdings in Eu, if they are found in violation. If they are to do business in European union, they have to abide by its rules and regulations.
https://www.secure.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/petition/secured/submit.do?language=EN
Committee on Petitions
The Secretariat
Rue Wiertz
B-1047 Brussels
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http://www.screw-paypal.com/alternatives/alternatives.html
Dated 2007. Anything newer?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Any person proud to be of a specific nationality is by definition an idiot. Pride reflects a choice of actions. Pride is often confused with arrogance. Arrogance is the pride exhibited by those who have no cause to feel pride (e.g., someone of noble birth looking down on a commoner). Pride is also seldomly confused with inspiration.
Which is it? Are these companies totally gutless? Unable to recognize the positive publicity they could spin from this? Or - more likely - have they been put under back-room pressure by governmental officials? If so, they should publish *that* through Wikileaks.
The accounts were terminated, because Wikileaks violated their terms of service. Specifically "encouraging illegal activity". Of course the material is illegal - lots of it is classified, and whoever leaked it violated the law. That's kind of the point. Whistleblowing is always against some regulation, be it corporate or governmental. Whistleblowing to expose corrupt, unethical or simply improper practices nonetheless remains important, and should be supported.
In the current round of Wikileaks stuff, I haven't heard of any major bombshells. However, the sheer mass of classified materials points to improper governmental secrecy. There is no reason for most of this stuff to be classified in any way. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson named fourteen points for preserving international peace. His very first point includes the statement: "...there shall be no private international understanding of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view."
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/news-events/news/2010/12/amazon-severs-ties-with-wikileaks
Clearly Lieberman's office called them before they took it down. It is not cool at all in my book for government officials to be calling web providers and demanding "an explanation". It's unpatriotic. Downright un-American.
Clearly Amazon reported their compliance to Lieberman after they did it.
Clearly Lieberman thinks it is a good idea for communications service companies to be under the heel of random senators' offices. It would seem that in his and Amazon's view, cloud computing and data center hosting arrangements should be provisioned at the pleasure of His Royal Highness.
Lieberman and Amazon need to go on record and explain whether or not this policy should extend to other organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Amazon needs to make a statement about whether or not The New York Times is welcome to host on their EC2 service, and whether or not they intend to exercise editorial control.
Is this guy channeling Nixon, or what?
I'm sure that given a certain preexisting worldview, Lieberman's claims would seem pretty damning. However, Amazon flat out denies that government pressure was behind their dumping of Wikileaks as a customer.
Message
There have been reports that a government inquiry prompted us not to serve WikiLeaks any longer. That is inaccurate.
There have also been reports that it was prompted by massive DDOS attacks. That too is inaccurate. There were indeed large-scale DDOS attacks, but they were successfully defended against.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) rents computer infrastructure on a self-service basis. AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them. There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that “you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.” It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy. Human rights organizations have in fact written to WikiLeaks asking them to exercise caution and not release the names or identities of human rights defenders who might be persecuted by their governments.
We’ve been running AWS for over four years and have hundreds of thousands of customers storing all kinds of data on AWS. Some of this data is controversial, and that’s perfectly fine. But, when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.
We look forward to continuing to serve our AWS customers and are excited about several new things we have coming your way in the next few months.
— Amazon Web Services
Isn't it interesting that Amazon quite genuinely publicly defended a Paedophilia how-to guidebook longer than Wikileaks? I'm surprised no one else seems to be talking about this in all the discussions I've seen so far on Wikileaks being dropped.
Though the author claimed it did no wrong, and was about 'loving children', reports stated it went so far as to discuss how to create custom condoms for use with children, that's a far cry from innocent intent, but an attack on the innocent.
"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable," it stated.
And yet the single biggest defender of the right to true free speech this century, perhaps even ever, is dumped from their servers quicker than 'TSA for dummies, a terrorists guide' would be.
I find the timing of the massive attempts to shutdown wikileaks at all costs curious (maybe it's just the conspiracy theorist in me). I have no doubt those in power were aware of the pending release of the Afganistan diaries in July. This dump contained information and videos embarrassing (to say the least) to the US, but no real attempt was made to block it's release. The next major dump (gablegate) was no doubt anticipated beforehand as well and we began seeing some moves afoot to try and block it's dissemination, but no "bring the hammer down and stop it at all costs before it gets out" effort. That seems to have changed last week. The government is now warning all military, civilian and contractors to not download and/or read the documents, or they might jeopardize their jobs (or worse). However, the documents are already out there and being reported on. It would seem a little late to try to put the genie back in the bottle, so what's going on here?
Could it be that the next announced major document dump , the so-called "banking information megadump" is the real dump that cannot be allowed to be made public? It's no secret that it's really the banks that control all governments, including the US (or so the conspiracy goes). I'm not sure how much stock to put in this conspiracy theory, but it does make a good deal of common sense that those with the money pull the levers.
I does make one wonder - I'm just sayin'
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
quite an interesting point he has there. pedophilia is more free than information it seems.
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You didn't think this through before you started calling people idiots. LOTS of folks have chosen to become Americans.
... of how deeply fascist tendencies have crept into our socio-economic system.
Our government depends heavily upon the cooperation of the corporate community to perform enforcement functions that they themselves are prohibited from by the Constitution. In a true free market, business would tell the government to take a hike until such time as a court injunction was in hand. Up to that point, everyone's money is green. But its evident that our system provides incentives (or pressure) to the corporate world to participate in public policy initiatives, distorting supply and price signals upon which an efficient market depends.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think usually people are "proud" to be of a specific nationality because they are proud of the "choice of actions" of that nation. I could say that I'm proud to be Canadian because of the actions taken by my nation, in much the same way that I could tell my child I'm proud of them for choosing right over wrong, for working hard on their piano practice, or for sticking up for a friend. Pride doesn't have to be completely centered around my own choices.
> If it was illegal, why hasn't the justice department issued an indictment for Julian Assange?
I think it's very important to note that Wikileaks hasn't actually released anything that the New York Times hasn't *also* released, *with the same redaction*. And the New York Times has been working directly with the State Department.
Whatever crime that Assange could be indicted for, would also be a crime that editors of the NYT have committed in a conspiracy with the US State Department.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
If you're going to take the credit for what your forefathers did in the 18th century (assuming that they were among the residents of the 13 colonies, which probably isn't the case for a large number, if not a majority, of current US citizens), then don't you also have to take the blame for all the mistakes and crimes the US has committed since then? Is the total still in your favour?
You didn't get it. The idea is that you're being irrational if you feel proud for yourself on behalf of something someone else did without a significant involvement by you in some way. You can be proud of your children in the sense that you had something to do with whatever they accomplished and that indirectly reflects on you. You can be proud of a friend if you played a significant role in his success. There might even be a tiny proportion of fans of sports teams that can rightfully be proud when they win due to them having done substantial things to make the win possible. The proportion of citizens that have cause to be proud of their country is just as tiny. No American alive today was involved in any way with the founding of America, and so feeling proud of what happened then is taking someone's else's glory for yourself - it is strutting stolen feathers. Not that that ever stopped anyone.
To all those who are saying, "Don't blame PayPal and Amazon, because they are responding to government pressure! It's the big bad government that's to blame, not friendly American businesses!" (and there are several of these in the above threads) I would just like to point out that your government/business dichotomy doesn't actually exist in the real world. While I'm sure some in the government have approached these companies, I'd be willing to bet my life the decisions were made for independent business reasons, because the large corporations know which side their bread is buttered on, and it's the side of a large and powerful US government.
Do you really believe the shareholders of PayPal and Amazon don't see a strong US government as profitable to them? Most of these shareholders own stock in many other corporations, probably including corporations who benefited from government giveaways in Iraq and Afghanistan, from hundreds of other government contracts, from bank bailouts, or from the auto bailout. Notably, anyone who owns stock in companies engaged in war profiteering suffers from both the diplomatic cable leaks and the military leaks because they need the government to have a free hand in matters of war and peace in order to make the decisions that most profit them.
In this country, large corporations and government are on the same side. They have been for decades. They work together to screw us. Think about it: who do politicians most closely listen to? Lobbyists. Who has most of the lobbyists? Big corporations. The only time government and big corporations are NOT on the same side is when we, the people, really push our government to do something different, and at that point government sometimes does something somewhat beneficial while corporations fight it and claim the government is "anti-business". The truth is, the government is never anti-business except when businesses are doing something really wrong and the people stand up to vocally oppose them.
After all, how could an entity controlled by business be anti-business?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
It's not just throwing out diplomatic cables. If that's all they needed to do, they wouldn't need a whole organization. They could just use Tor and the hundreds of other back channels by which data circulates on the internet. But consider all the other things that Wikileaks actually does besides distributing data:
These four tasks are absolutely indispensable. If some future Wikileaks copycat thinks that it's enough to dump out documents, then the world is really in trouble. Wikileaks doesn't get enough credit for all the work they do to make sure their leaking is done in a responsible way.
Not just Paypal but Wells Fargo as well. When I heard about Paypal and Amazon I went to the wikileaks website to make a donation. Not only was my charge denied but they put a hold on my card! Talk about harassment. It's bad enough when your own government breaks the law, worse when vendors decide to run a protection racket when they disagree with a customer's purchases/donations.
"Geez, I still don't see why prosecutor Marianne Ny (email address: marianne.ny@aklagare.se ) didn't follow any of the standard judicial and prosecutorial procedures; maybe we should ALL contact her to see what's going on?"
"And what's up with Justice Skarhed? (email: anna.skarhed@justitiekanslern.se ) I mean, wasn't she investigating why prosecutor Maria Kjellstrand illegally released aspects of the Assange file to the Swedish tabloids?"
"And that Tableaux Software (headquartered in Seattle, along with Amazon, isn't that were Micro$oft's located???)?
If you support Tableaux's pulling their software license from WikiLeaks, then give them a shoutout for support the Corporate Fascist State."
(first email is management) cstolte@tableausoftware.com efink@tableausoftware.com jmackinlay@tableausoftware.com
Then I must ask: Do you live by it? Do you tell the truth, at all times, in your life? That doesn't just mean only saying what is true, that means never omitting important details, never keeping your peace when there is something that would be relevant to say. That includes things like white lies to try and make people feel better and so on. It also means providing anyone who asks with full and complete information on any subject they ask.
This is a rhetorical question because I know you don't, nobody does. There are plenty of reasons to keep secrets.
Now I'm not arguing about if specific secret should be kept or not, but it makes your "Revealing the truth is *never* inappropriate behavior," statement look rather silly.
So you seem to be proposing that not only should the government have a duty to protect the freedom to do something, they should have to finance your doing it as well? You seem to have a rather fucked up understanding of freedom. Being free to do something doesn't mean that doing it has to be easy, or that someone else has to provide you everything to do it, it just means that you have to be allowed to do it. This is how freedom in nations has worked, well, forever. So whining that "Oh you aren't free because it costs money," is silly.
Also, as this relates to this case, part of freedom means that your freedom can't step on the freedom of others. As the saying goes "Your freedom of speech ends at my door." You are free to speak your mind, but you cannot require me to listen to you. Likewise you cannot demand that I make my house available to you to speak in. You have the right to express yourself, but I can't be forced to help you if I don't want to because that infringes on my rights.
Same is true with web sites and companies. I don't have to allow you to speak on my forums, I don't have to host you on my servers. To force me to do so would be to interfere with my freedoms.
Freedom does not mean that you can do whatever you want, and it also doesn't mean that everyone has to help you do what you want.
We don't have to feel shame for we aren't the ones who have done this.
You did this - Iraq, Abu Graib, Gitmo, the 'rendition' of political prisoners, the cluster bombing of villages, members of your government making death threats against innocent people (Julian Assange) with no legal action taken, on the basis that 'his' organisation revealed some truths that were embarrassing. You sat by silently while it went on in your name. These atrocities are now part of the US legacy - and to the extent that you could have done something about it and didn't they are your legacy too. That's the point - you can't be proud of the long gone legacy that you didn't participate in and cannot influence, and not be ashamed of the recent legacy that you, in a small way, were part of.
The ones who should feel shame are the progressives/socialists who have been busily destroying our freedoms and sense of love for our country for more than 100 years and lying about what they are doing every step of the way.
I see. Do Palinisms come in pill form now - making them easier to swallow? Socialism isn't what you think it is, and your freedoms haven't been taken away by socialists - but rather by the corporate hand that steers the actions and positions of your faux representatives in the government. Including Tea Partiers - the same thing, but with different spin.
We have to feel, and act on, our sense of responsibility we have in the governing of our own country, and the sense of the debt of honor we owe our founders. But, we can still derive pride that we are a part of something that has done such a great thing, if we are willing to fight to return our country to its founding principles. I am. How about you? If not, then you do need to feel a sense of shame until you decide your country's founding ideals are something worth fighting for.
Then get on with it. A good place to start would be to abandon the notion that the US is somehow different from the rest of the world. This creates a phlegmatic atmosphere - the delusion that somehow, a thread of underlying decency will shine through eventually if we trust the American Ideal and ignore the atrocities of the recent past. The founding principles of your country have been turned into a mythology that your oppressors and their mouthpieces use to stop you acting against them.
Merchant accounts in Australia are actually pretty reasonably priced. The amount we pay sure buys us the peace of mind that a non-bank-pretending-to-be-a-bank can't just freeze our accounts and withhold our money.
PayPal's often looked down upon as being used by "unprofessional" vendors. By processing transactions directly, you're often also improving your company's image in your customer's minds.