Wikileaks Can Receive Visa & Mastercard Donations Again... But Visa Doesn't Understand Why

from the for-the-lulz? dept

Last week, Wikileaks and Datacell threatened to sue Mastercard, Visa and Paypal if it didn't stop blocking payments to Wikileaks. The claims were basically collusion charges, in that all of the major payment companies were blocking payments. Things got strange today, however, when suddenly Datacell announced that payments worked again, and clearly implied that the companies had lifted the blockade. Except, Visa is insisting that it has not lifted its ban on Wikileaks and has no idea how payments are getting through. The details seem a bit sketchy. Some careful wording by Datacell's CEO suggest that he really just found an alternative payment gateway provider, which likely means this is a very temporary loophole, before the payment companies block again.

Filed Under: antitrust, collusion, europe, wikileaks
Companies: datacell, mastercard, paypal, visa, wikileaks

WikiLeaks Planning Legal Action Against PayPal, MasterCard & Visa

from the thought-this-would-go-away? dept

There hasn't been much talk lately over the fact that PayPal, MasterCard and Visa all cut off Wikileaks late last year, after the US government freaked out about the release of some State Department Cables. None of the firms has done a very good job explaining why this makes sense (or why they continue to allow other groups, such as the KKK to receive funding, while singling out Wikileaks). I'm sure those three firms, which took quite a public bashing when the news originally dropped, would prefer that there not be any more talk about it. However, Wikileaks and the payment firm they used, DataCell, are apparently planning to file a legal complaint this week against all three firms in Europe. A draft of the complaint, which was obtained by Andy Greenberg at Forbes (linked above and embedded below), claims that the three firms violated Articles 101 and 102 of the EU Treaty, effectively a form of antitrust law. While I tend to think many antitrust claims are merely attacks on successful companies, this seems like a case where they could make sense. Here you have basically the only three ways for most people to transfer money easily, all agreeing to block a single (small) client from receiving money, despite no legal ruling against the operation (hell, charges haven't even been filed). It certainly would make for an interesting case.

Filed Under: antitrust, collusion, europe, wikileaks
Companies: mastercard, paypal, visa, wikileaks

IFPI, UK Police, Credit Card Companies Push People To Pirate Music, Rather Than Pay For It

from the did-they-really-do-that? dept

Bizarre move out of the IFPI. It's gleefully announced a new deal, in conjunction with the London Police and Visa and MasterCard to cut off credit card services to online music stores who the IFPI accuses of selling infringing MP3s. This is really targeting sites like MP3Fiesta, which is sort of a modern version of Allofmp3.com. Of course, what they seem to be missing is that both of these sites were examples of people, who would otherwise likely be downloading totally unauthorized versions, being willing to pay for MP3s at a much more reasonable price. What I never understood was why the music industry never realized that these sites actually showed a business model that worked. Tons of people were happy to pay for the music when the prices seemed much more reasonable. What these services really showed was how much the industry has artificially inflated the price of music.

But, of course, in cutting off credit cards to those sites, two simple things are likely to happen in response: first, those sites will simply find alternative payment means. That may still limit some, but it hardly stops these sites from existing. But, more importantly, if people can't get music at these prices, it seems a lot more likely that they'll shift to totally free options, rather than go back to paying $0.99 per song (or more!). So, effectively, all this move really does is drive more people to stop paying for music. Is that what the record labels pay the IFPI to do these days?

Filed Under: credit cards, liability, piracy, uk
Companies: ifpi, mastercard, visa

Will Visa, MasterCard, Paypal, BofA & Apple Terminate Relationships With The NYTimes For Revealing Military Secrets?

from the consistency-is-all-i-ask dept

Glenn Greenwald has a post highlighting how a NY Times' investigative report on US military action in Pakistan appears to reveal key military secrets concerning plans that have not yet been put in place, and which could certainly put Americans and others in danger:

Indeed, the NYT reporters several times acknowledge that public awareness of these operations could trigger serious harm ("inside Pakistan, [] the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash"). Note, too, that Mazzetti and Filkins did not acquire these government secrets by just passively sitting around and having them delivered out of the blue. To the contrary: they interviewed multiple officials both in Washington and in Afghanistan, offered several of them anonymity to induce them to reveal secrets, and even provoked officials to provide detailed accounts of past secret actions in Pakistan, including CIA-directed attacks by Afghans inside that country.

As he notes, all of this seems a lot more revealing than anything that Wikileaks has done, and a lot more likely to put people in danger. Yet, there's been almost no response, and certainly nothing like the attention paid to Wikileaks -- with calls for trials or even killing the head of Wikileaks. Seems odd, doesn't it?

But, an even bigger point is buried towards the end in an update, where Greenwald asks:

Why aren't Visa, MasterCard, Paypal, their web hosting company and various banks terminating their relationships with The New York Times, the way they all did with WikiLeaks: not only for the NYT's publication of many of the same diplomatic and war cables published by WikiLeaks, but also for this much more serious leak today in which WikiLeaks was completely uninvolved?

And, I think, we can add Apple to that list. After all, if these companies keep claiming that Wikileaks "broke the law" (as most of the companies listed here are saying), why do they not feel the same way about the NY Times?

Filed Under: hypocrisy, journalism, state secrets, wikileaks
Companies: apple, mastercard, ny times, paypal, visa

US IP Czar Gets Companies To Cut Off Unlicensed Online Pharmacies

from the borderline... dept

Earlier this year, we noted that the US IP Czar, Victoria Espinel, had been making the rounds to ISPs, registrars, payment processors and others to get them to agree to voluntarily start shutting off certain "infringing" sites. Now we see the results of those talks. Espinel has announced that a variety of companies -- including Google, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Network Solutions -- have apparently agreed to effectively disappear and cut off certain websites. The focus, for now, is on "unlicensed web pharmacies," with the idea being that these companies will effectively kill off those sites:

Together, the firms hope to tackle every link in the chain that keeps unlicensed pharmacies operating by stopping them showing up in search results, taking their websites offline, delisting the domains they use and stopping payments reaching them.

Think COICA without COICA -- but just with government pressure on companies. Seeing Visa, Mastercard and Paypal on the list certainly isn't surprising, after those three already did the same thing in cutting off Wikileaks. However, it's a bit surprising to see Google agree to this (Update: Google says that it's only agreed to cut off advertising that violates its policies). If there's a trial and these sites are found guilty of violating the law, then I can see cutting them off -- but once again, it appears that this is the government trying to kill off websites, without a trial.

And, yes, it's for "unlicensed web pharmacies," and everyone plays up the spam and the fake (potentially dangerous) drugs. Those are a serious problem. But they also lump in the (quite common) grey market pharmacies as well -- which often allow people to get drugs from outside the country at much more affordable rates. Shutting down fake drug sellers is fine. Shutting down the grey market drug sellers is a bit of a bigger issue.

On top of that, given the recent ICE domain seizures and the whole COICA law -- both of which Espinel has spoken out in favor of -- it's not hard to see how the mandate behind this particular program is quite likely to grow well beyond "unauthorized web pharmacies" to other sites as well. In fact, MasterCard has apparently already agreed to cut off websites deemed "pirate" sites.

Filed Under: copyright, cut off, ip czar, isps, payment, pharmacies, victoria espinel
Companies: google, mastercard, network solutions, paypal, visa

Iceland Considers Revoking Visa/MasterCard Licenses For Wikileaks Ban

from the what-legal-grounds dept

With Visa and MasterCard cutting off payments for Wikileaks, it appears that some Icelandic politicians are threatening to remove both companies' operating licenses in that country. Apparently, the Icelandic Parliamentary General Committee has asked both companies to explain what legal grounds they used for cutting off Wikileaks and, without evidence of legitimate reasons, both companies could lose their operating licenses. We had already noted that Icelandic firm DataCell, which was handling the payments for Wikileaks, was planning to sue both companies but it appears that the Icelandic government may help out. Of course, I would imagine that Visa and Mastercard both care about keeping the US government more happy than the Icelandic government...

Filed Under: iceland, wikileaks
Companies: datacell, mastercard, visa, wikileaks

Lieberman Praises Companies Helping Him Try To Censor Wikileaks

from the censorship-is-the-in-thing dept

This should hardly comes as a surprise, but Senator Joe Lieberman has apparently put out a statement, along with Senator Sue Collins, praising companies for following through on their political pressure to try to censor Wikileaks, calling them "good corporate citizens," and saying that people should support those companies for their willingness to bow down to government pressure. Yeah, okay. Even the press reporting on this seem to think Lieberman is simply making stuff up. Witness this paragraph from Wired:

"The WikiLeaks data dump has jeopardized U.S. national interests and the lives of intelligence sources around the world," Lieberman said, though there is no proof or even detailed allegations that the release has endangered any intelligence source.

Lieberman apparently wants the world to believe that censorship is okay because "this is no time for business as usual." It appears that Lieberman really wants to go down in history as the Senator who favors censorship of the press and US companies. Quite a legacy.

Filed Under: censorship, joe lieberman, sue collins, wikileaks
Companies: amazon, mastercard, paypal, visa

Wikileaks Payment Company Plans To Sue Visa & Mastercard Over Cutoff

from the priceless dept

With Visa and Mastercard refusing to take payments for Wikileaks, the company that was providing payment services to Wikileaks, Datacell, has announced plans to sue both credit card companies to try to get them to go back to accepting payments. There's no indication of exactly what law Datacell thinks these firms broke. Unless there are more details, this does sound like a bunch of shouting in the wind. As much as I disagree with Visa and MasterCards' decisions to cut off Wikileaks, they are private companies and can refuse service to anyone, no matter how petty it makes them look.

Filed Under: payments, wikileaks
Companies: datacell, mastercard, visa, wikileaks

Want To Know Why Visa & Mastercard Cut Off Wikileaks? Because Its Latest Leak Was About Them...

from the everywhere-you-want-to-be dept

Visa's slogan used to be "Everywhere you want to be," but apparently one place it did not want to be was on Wikileaks. We've already covered how both Visa and MasterCard cut off Wikileaks quite quickly, with MasterCard even going so far as to claim that it did so because of illegal activity by Wikileaks -- despite no charges or convictions for any actual illegal activity.

Just a day later, it seems, we may have some new insight into why this is. Chris Rhodes was the first of a bunch of you to send over the news that the latest cable leak shows that US diplomats worked hard on Visa and MasterCard's behalf in Russia, where the Russian government was working on a new national payment card system, that would likely deprive Visa and MasterCard of transaction fees in Russia. Convenient timing.

Filed Under: russia, wikileaks
Companies: mastercard, visa, wikileaks

Visa & MasterCard: KKK Is A-OK, But Wikileaks Is Wicked

from the starvation-through-political-pressure dept

Well, it looks like we can add Visa to the list of companies pressured into no longer working with Wikileaks, following a similar move by MasterCard. At least, unlike MasterCard, Visa isn't already claiming that Wikileaks was convicted of a crime. Instead, it's just said that it's suspended any work with Wikileaks "pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules."

As Charles Arthur points out, the Ku Klux Klan's website points you to a site that takes both MasterCard and Visa -- suggesting the pure arbitrariness of both credit card companies' decision here. It's a bad idea when firms start making decisions for political reasons. There are all sorts of companies out there that take credit cards to support objectionable (to many) activities. Is it really the credit card companies' job to pick and choose who they find objectionable to work with -- and if so, what basis does it use for saying "KKK is okay, but Wikileaks is not"?

This reinforces the point we recently made about the role of corporate intermediaries in being able to aid governments in censorship, even in the absence of a trial or conviction. Either way, this is a really sad statement about both Visa and MasterCard and their willingness to cave to government pressure.

Filed Under: censorship, kkk, politics, pressure, wikileaks
Companies: kkk, mastercard, visa, wikileaks