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Wikileaks & Datacell to sue Visa / MasterCard for 'financial blockade'
- d0ne 15y agoFull complaint: http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/07/01/heres-the-legal-complaint-wikileaks-is-threatening-to-file-against-visa-mastercard/ http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/07/01/heres-the-l...
- kefs 15y agoRelated commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMN2c24Y1s&hd=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMN2c24Y1s&hd=1
- stephth 15y agoThat's awesome. What's the story on this commercial? Description says spoof and comedy but it looks very official.
- maeon3 15y agoI hope VISA and Mastercard get their asses handed to them for playing the part of hitman and hired goon. I hope these proceedings don't let loose the primary entities at fault who ordered the financial warfare.
- nextparadigms 15y agoI hope they ask for a huge amount like $1 billion, so they never dare to censor like that again. Amazon, Visa, Mastercard and others set a bad precedent then by becoming the Government's private arm in censorship of the Internet. In many cases the Government can't censor directly, so they get companies to do it for them. That must not happen again.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- fleitz 15y agoCost of lawyers: $40,000, Cost of photocopying: $10,000, Seeing mastercard found guilty: priceless.
- hugh3 15y agoSurely Visa and Mastercard have the right to to business with whomever they like?
- darksaga 15y agoNot only that, but it says right in the terms and conditions they can change the terms at any time without notice. It also clearly states if they feel like a party is using their services for illegal activity, they can block any payments or transfers to their accounts. Most of the stuff they do is borderline criminal activity, and it won't take a judge long to side with the credit card companies.
- tijs 15y agoYou, or Mastercard, might -feel- they are or were engaging in illegal activity but i'd rather let a judge decide.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- proexploit 15y agoThe article talks a lot about EU competition laws and what I got from a brief scan wasn't that Wikileaks was claiming Visa & Mastercard had to do business with them but that they coordinated financial blockade by the two biggest payment processing companies amounted to some sort of collusion. So it's not necessarily what they did, but how they did it.
- lkrubner 15y agoWhy do you say that? The complaint is being made in Europe, not the USA. Europe has a great many laws about what sort of commercial services need to be offered to all, or, once having been offered, under what circumstances those services could be withdrawn. It doesn't make sense to assume that the businesses has a right to transact freely, or to hire freely, or to fire freely. The English speaking countries (I mean those whose legal codes descend from English Common Law) tend give more freedom-of-maneuver to businesses. The differences are stark regarding the issue of hiring and firing. In a country like the USA or Canada it might make sense to ask something like "Surely Visa and Mastercard have the right to hire whomever they like?" but in a country like Germany the answer would be "Of course not." (Specifically, Germany has a law for any business with more than 50 employees that gives the union a say in who gets hired.) Regarding the right to transact freely, even the USA has several limits. For instance, you cannot refuse to do business with someone on the basis of race. But the EU has far more regulations of this sort than the USA does.
- tluyben2 15y agoExcellent! Good one. Hope it gets a lot of press this one.