WikiLeaks Donations By Visa Ruled OK In Iceland

angry tapir writes "The three-year blockade against donations to WikiLeaks may have just been chiseled away, in Iceland, by a ruling handed down by the European country's Supreme Court. The verdict says that the Visa subcontractor Valitor had unlawfully terminated its contract with WikiLeaks' donation processor, DataCell, and must re-open the processing of donations to the whistle-blowing site within 15 days or else face a fine of ISK800,000, or US$6,830, per day."

Comments

Damage is done

[magic maverick]

But the damage is already largely done. When the service was terminated, there was a lot of publicity around Wikileaks, and a lot of people wanting to donate. By preventing them from donating at that time, Visa & Mastercard (etc.) basically prevented this money from ever reaching Wikileaks. Even if now, Valitor will process Visa donations, most of the people who were going to donate, probably won't. Without the media, people won't think about Wikileaks. They won't realize that they can now donate (because this court decision will not be widely publicized). Etc.

The article says that 95% of Wikileaks' income was cut by the actions of Visa, Mastercard, Paypal etc. Maybe Wikileaks should also sue for lost income, arguing that the percentage of Visa donations would have remained at the same level from 2010 through to now. They probably wouldn't win, but it would be funny.

Good news!

[Bearhouse]

All those rich Icelanders can now donate! Oh wait...

Re:Good news!

[Type44Q]

Actually, they're doing better and better since they told the criminal banking cartel to fuck off... (Perhaps if the Greeks, Cypriots, Portuguese and Spanish were descended from Vikings, they'd have some bigger balls, too...) :p

Re:Good news!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pretend that is why, but you would be wrong.

While their decision was fine, and better in many senses, it is not the reason for their relative comeback. The fact is they have their own currency, which can appropriately float to better reflect (and repair) the conditions.

ISK is the Icelandic currency?

[Sockatume]

All this time I thought Isk was some sort of space money for Eve Online. Icelandic Kroner? I am an idiot.

Re:ISK is the Icelandic currency?

[MichaelSmith]

I am an idiot.

Me too I thought the same thing. Maybe we can all donate to wikileaks by joining Eve.

Re:ISK is the Icelandic currency?

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's an homage; CCP, the creators of Eve, is an Icelandic company.

Re:ISK is the Icelandic currency?

[Errol backfiring]

I am an idiot.

Should I mod that as informative or as insightful?

Re:ISK is the Icelandic currency?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Redundant. We already knew.

InterStellar Kredits

[cbhacking]

800k ISK? Man, that's pocket change. Go shoot belt rats for a few minutes and you'll make that back easy.

Where's "Europe" anyhow? Can't find it on the map. Sounds like it should be part of Gallente space, though...

(lol, burning karma)

True BUT

[SmallFurryCreature]

You are absolutely 100% correct and this is a common tactic by those who seek to oppress, not to shut you up perso but just to silence you long enough for attention to drift away. You can see an excellent example by weasel company Shell who around the Brent Spar debacle diverted attention away from Greenpeace claim there was till oil aboard the to be sunk platform by claiming that there was less oil on board then Greenpeace claimed, bought reporters like Witteman immidiatly fell for it. Quite by accident (caused by lucrative public speaking contracts) forgetting that Shell had claimed there was NO oil left on board. No oil mean zero liters but the bought press then went into attack mode on Greenpeace because Greenpeace couldn't exactly measure how many thousands of liters were left on board. By the time more accurate measurements had been taken, attention had drifted.

BUT judgments such as this make it harder to pull the same thing again next time. No it won't fix things in the past but it might fix the future.

Oh and this bit did reach the news, so wikileaks is in the news again. And everyone now has proof that Visa, Mastercard and Paypal acted against the law. That means something to. Not much but the longest journey starts with a single step, and a LOT of steps after that. Nothing worth fighting for was every won easily.

so have they started processing?

[gl4ss]

because I vaguely remember this exact same story from few days back.. so don't repost it until they process.

Bitcoins

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, in my mind, part of the rise of a pure virtual currency like Bitcoin is directly related to the action the US took.

It seems we need a payment method that doesn't involve SWIFT (EU handed Swift data to USA for data mining) and credit cards (US data mining our credit card transactions), and Western Union (US leaned on them, they handed over the transaction data).

Bitcoin is it, and the game of closing a bank account trying to stop conversions from Bitcoin to dollars will only slow it slightly.

Re:Bitcoins

[Phrogman]

Except the first thing that banks would be required to do would be to furnish records of the transactions to the government. In order to verify a unit of currency you would need a tool to check its cryptographic validity, and that would need to be certified, meaning its location would be included most likely and then there would be a way to track the currency again.
I don't think it can be anonymous in a way that prevents undesirable entities from gaining information about it and you.
Thats the nice thing about paper money. Once you have it you can spend it without it being traced - unless you put in the hands of a bank, or transfer it electronically etc. As paper its pretty anonymous - but of course subject to counterfeiting etc.

Can they say no?

[L4t3r4lu5]

It is my understanding that Valitor is a private company. Can they simply refuse to process transactions in Iceland "taking my ball and going home" style?

Re:Can they say no?

[RaceProUK]

It is my understanding that Valitor is a private company. Can they simply refuse to process transactions in Iceland "taking my ball and going home" style?

Of course they can; they did. Now they've been found guilty of unlawful contract termination.

Re:Can they say no?

[Luckyo]

After a decision of that level, highly unlikely but possible. The fine itself is not much, and as far as I know they can still appeal to ECJ if this is a matter of European rather then state law. But this does in fact seem to be state law matter, so wikileaks won. It's a bit of a phyrric victory at this point due to the fact that those who wanted to donated when it was needed were prevented from doing so. Wikileaks was essentially a target of a massive media hit campaign, followed by funds blockage to avoid them from being able to function, which was largely successful. When was the last time you heard about them in mass media in relation to their actual work rather then some juicy scandal aimed to discredit them?

Natural balance?

[Agent_B-7]

Seems like a tiny european countries laws actually trying to couterbalance almost totalitarian laws of a major ones.

Re:Didn't Obama OK monitoring credit card transac.

[neo8750]

And think how safe everyone will be if no one is allowed to fly.

No only people who will be able to fly will be the terrorists cause they will be sure to have clean records.