Slashdot Mirror
Pirate Party MEP Helps Draft New Credit Card Company Controls
Dupple writes with this excerpt: "It has become an increasingly large problem that Visa, MasterCard, and Paypal control the valve to any money flow on the planet. Today, the European Parliament established this as a clear problem, and initiated regulation of the companies, limiting and strictly regulating their right to refuse service. The Pirate Party was the initiator of this regulation, following the damaging cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks, after said organization had performed journalism that was embarrassing to certain governments."
What will finance companies do when one government's laws make it illegal to do business with some entities, while another government's laws mandate it?
Journalists really are no longer in the business of letting their readers know what their government doesn't want them to know.
Donate money to one or both the governments and get the laws fixed. Next Question.
Maybe there should be a regulation then "don't put all those cables on the ground" ;)
In my experience analogies are like fauly watches, they are seldom correct and most of the times gives a sense of undestandning something but in reality just complicates things.
If you throw cables on the floor for any reason, or string them at random heights or intervals to please one particular person, yes - they can bring all progress to a halt.
Properly planned and distributed, however, they can take a seemingly impossible task - such as spanning a large body of water, capturing a large number of fish, jumping out of an airplane from several thousand feet up and landing safely, or climbing a very tall structure - and make it a straightforward task.
The only difference between gridlock and utility is the thought and care with which the regulations are laid.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
While I like regulation in many cases, like nuclear power plants, in my experience new regulations are like cables.
When you put all the cables on the floor, they're more likely to snag your legs, or get entangled and knotted with each other.
This is why sometimes the solution is fewer regulations, and more direct solutions. [...]
Listen. To me. Your. Guy. Lost. The. Election. Already.
The irony is that it was a "true journalist" that accidentally leaked the encryption key to the WikiLeaks archive with the embassy cables. WikiLeaks up to that point seemed to know their limitations and was working with established journalists to release the cables in a controlled fashion.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There's also the issue that you can donate to the KKK using Visa but can't donate to Wikileaks because Visa have arbitrarily deemed them "guilty" of some crime, most likely at the behest of US Govt.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
No, it was the payment service providers Visa, MasterCard and PayPal who took the decisions to block, not the Swedish banks.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
Oh Americans... will you ever realize, that regulation is when you get to say "No! Stop it! We won't have it like this! Now it's my rules!"
Which is your only damn defense against those 20-page terms & conditions contracts.
Why the hell you would complain about such regulation, that does you good, and instead choose to defend the companies, that get to do way too much already, so they can do even more evil shit, is a riddle to us non-Americans.
It's like a rape victim complaining that his savior should not tell his rapist what to do so much.
Then again, in North Korea, they really believe that if you touch an American flag, your hands will rot off. As if that would really actually happen...
So I guess people can be brainwashed into almost any delusion... even that their rapist would be the one that needs "more freedom"... and protecting your own rights would be "harming the free market".
Sure, if you have an extraordinarily loose definition of "money."
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
They are conditioned to believe this shit at early ages... "If you want to be rich some day, you have to think this way and support Free Market Capitalism. Anything else is just bad, and you don't need to know any more about it. Let's just call it all Socialism. It kind of rhymes with Satan, well, it starts with the same letter, at least."
This is why you have stupid people, who haven't a pot to piss in, that lobby against things that are in their own interests, in favour of the corporate greed.
Ordinary workers, living from paycheck to paycheck, getting in debt, saying that at least under (Insert Republican candidate they've been conditioned to support) they get to "keep what they have". No sir, they don't want anything like subsidized health care, they'd rather go into mortal debt for an emergency appendectomy. At least they are living the American Dream and doing it on their own, because government handouts are Socialism, which is the same as Communism (See, the old U.S.S.R. had the word "Socialist" in the title)
Now these big companies, whose "freedom" they worship, are wanting to claw back their meager wages and benefits while execs get bonuses. Damn those unions for interfering with the God Given Rights of the corporations.
Of course not all Americans are this obtuse, it's just that they are also taught to be very vocal when others don't agree with their beliefs, or criticize their country.