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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."
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.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
All those rich Icelanders can now donate! Oh wait...
All this time I thought Isk was some sort of space money for Eve Online. Icelandic Kroner? I am an idiot.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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)
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
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.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun