Slashdot Mirror
WikiLeaks To Sue Visa/MasterCard
An anonymous reader writes "After six months of financial blockade by Visa and MasterCard, during which they claim to have lost over $15,000,000 in donations, WikiLeaks and Datacell are filing a complaint against the two financial giants, with plans to litigate should the block not be lifted. WikiLeaks stated, 'On June 9th the law firms Bender von Haller Dragested in Denmark and Reykjavik Law Firm in Iceland acting on behalf of DataCell and WikiLeaks told the companies that if the blockade is not removed they will be litigated in Denmark and a request for prosecution will be filed with the EU Commission.'"
Visa and Mastercard are one of worst promoters of censorship. For example, look at this case of outrageous religious censorship. Exiern is a webcomic with a PGish level of violence and some nudity. This is enough for an outright ban from the big three (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal), so the author was forced to split it into two sites, one with any violence, one with any nudity. Then they came up with another outlandish rule: that "mythical characters" cannot be displayed with any nudity. Yes, I'm not making it up.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Visa and Mastercard are payment processors, it's not their place to decide where one can and can't buy things and it's not their place to make moral decisions on behalf of their clients.
And it's not your place to decide who a company can and can't do business with, based on your own moral and political views. If you don't like the policies of the company,or feel that they are preventing you from paying for something you would like to, you have the right and opportunity to go pay through someone else.
That's a very unfair statement, Visa/Mastercard are a duopoly and it's not like there are a glut of other international options. The easier you make it possible to make a money transaction, they more likely it is that it will happen. You can't expect everyone to jump through hoops, some will make it happen, others will say screw it, and then you've lost revenue from that group. Isn't that why some merchants offer multiple cards, to make it more likely that their potential customer can make the transaction.
You can't have companies working to control the market and making everyone think that they are the best option and then when they finally control the market start using their power to control the world. There are anti-trust laws for that.
Visa/Mastercard have already been through multiple anti-trust cases, they're showing serious signs of corruption. They seem to have no problem making transactions on behalf of nearly all porn sites(even the ones that are beyond my limit to handle) and even malware sites. I wouldn't be surprised if high profile scumbags/criminals used them. So, why did they suddenly decide to stop Wikileaks? If it was pressure from the U.S. government, then they shouldn't be used internationally, they should be U.S. only! If they did it because they're controlled by banks and those banks are desperate to stop Wikileaks, obviuosly those banks have something really dirty to hide. Which makes this lawsuit a potentially major win for Wikileaks! I would love to see the rational for what they did.
And it's not your place to decide who a company can and can't do business with, based on your own moral and political views.
Bzzt, very very wrong. Yes it is societies place to decide how a company can and cannot behave, including with whom they can and can't do business with... since the company is after all operating as a guest within the framework society has setup (not the other way around, as appears to be the thinking in the US).
Visa/Mastercard have 98% market share in the EU - If they decide to stop payment processing for any political parties they don't like, or boycott any business competitor's of their "preferred partners", or as in this case try to stifle whistleblowers - it is societies legal (and moral) obligation to punish financially that companies bad behavior, at worst drive it right out of the market for not playing fair and by the rules. Unfortunately we here in the US we appear to let companies run society (by owning our politicians) however they prefer, which lead's to fanatical pro-corporate-runs the state ideas like this being often repeated: "it's not [societies] place to decide who a company can and can't do business with".