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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.'"
Lots of posts here suggesting that Visa/MC shouldn't care what goes through their pipes, that it's not their job to worry about that stuff. There is a good argument for this, but then you open up another whole can of worms, which is that criminal enterprise just got a very easy way to raise and launder money.
There are a lot of hoops you have to go through these days to get set up to accept credit cards, at least relative to how it used to be (it's still not that hard). But the notion that the card companies shouldn't care who you are or what you're doing is a little naive. What if some illicit gambling or kiddie porn or mafia ring raised millions this way? Slashdot would be up in arms about how the card companies are just greedy shits who don't care about what is going through their pipes so long as they get their money.
But now, because it's wikileaks, it's 'oh why won't they leave us alone.' Well, you can't have it both ways. Either the card companies have some responsibility for checking out the organizations with whom they do business or they do not, and my layman's understanding is that, right now, they do. And if you're doing business with a company you have a reasonable suspicion is breaking the law, you are not only within your rights but probably well advised to cease doing business with them.
'But Aquitaine,' you say, 'isn't that carte blanche to just stop doing business with anybody you don't like? Can't you just claim that you have a reasonable suspicion that they're dirty and so protecting yourself?' Well, yes. That's the cost of doing business in a tort-heavy, regulated market such as most first-world countries today. It's a judgment call, and it's one that's actually pretty tough to make in this case. I remember thinking how cool Wikileaks was for years until Assange started becoming the posterchild. I'm not even talking about the Swede case - their laws on that stuff are pretty harsh - but just his personality. The guy is an anarchist, and for the life of me I don't understand how any reasonably intelligent person can support anarchy or the stuff an anarchist does, even if there's some crossover with legitimate whistle-blowing. But that's a different discussion.
Credit card companies are by no means a monopoly or a duopoly. There are four major companies in the US alone, and several more in Europe. It's not a big market just because it's got a high barrier to entry, but it's by no means impenetrable.