5 ms·

I 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 e

by maeon3 15y ago

I 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Cost of lawyers: $40,000, Cost of photocopying: $10,000, Seeing mastercard found guilty: priceless.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Surely Visa and Mastercard have the right to to business with whomever they like?
  - darksaga 15y ago
    Not 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 ago
      You, 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 ago
    The 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 ago
    Why 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services need to be offered to all, or, once having been offered, under what circumstances those services could be withdrawn.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.
    - trevelyan 15y ago
      I agree. Even in the United States the right to engage in commerce is protected by the state in the requirement for all businesses and individual to accept "legal tender". It is strange to argue that this function of state is only intended to govern cash transfers. More to the point, this is a fairly transparent case where service was denied to a free speech organization without even the allegation of illegal activity on the part of the accusers. I wonder if skeptics would consider it acceptable if payment providers stopped processing donations for the Democratic Party?
      - GHFigs 15y ago
        Define "free speech organization".
        iamdave 15y ago
        I think that's a pretty obvious one, isn't it?
  - olefoo 15y ago
    Surely restaurants have a right to refuse service to ethnic and religious minorities their owner dislikes? Part of being in business is the business owner's responsibility to the society that they are a part of. That applies even more so to businesses that handling people's money.
    - malkia 15y ago
      I think in US they can refuse individuals, but IANAL.
  - sixtofour 15y ago
    At some point credit cards will be treated somewhat like public utilities, because they're effectively becoming money or access to it. You can make a case for the right to do business with whom you please. I doubt if you can make a case for restricting anyone's access to their own and other people's money, and as the relevance of cash falls, credit cards look more like money itself and less like a business that you choose to do business with or not.
    - blendergasket 15y ago
      In my opinion it's more likely that cash would be outsourced so that the governments could control who has access to it by using corporations' "rights" as excuses to circumvent the pesky checks and balances the constitution and bill of rights afford us with regards to the government.
  - killerswan 15y ago
    There's a lot of similarity between their ~censorship of Wikileaks and the censorship performed by ISPs and search engines like Baidu, in China. Certain members of the government simply make unofficial suggestions, and the private companies _voluntarily_ block things.
  - blendergasket 15y ago
    Imagine 3 there are 3 restaurants/grocery stores in the world that control the dissemination of 90% of the food in the world. The other food disseminators that control the remaining 10% all exist on top of various mountains. Now imagine that the 3 restaurants/grocers are run by the KKK, refuse to serve blacks, and you are black. Are they within their rights as private companies to make you climb to the top of a mountain to not starve to death? To me the treatment of Wikileaks amounts to about the same thing. The few companies that control nearly the whole international infrastructure for payment processing has come out against this organization, effectively making it nearly impossible for them to exist. If this is within their rights their rights need to be drastically curtailed.

by maeon3 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago

I 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 ago
Cost of lawyers: $40,000, Cost of photocopying: $10,000, Seeing mastercard found guilty: priceless.
hugh3 15y ago
Surely Visa and Mastercard have the right to to business with whomever they like?
- darksaga 15y ago
  Not 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 ago
    You, 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 ago
  The 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 ago
  Why 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.
  - trevelyan 15y ago
    I agree. Even in the United States the right to engage in commerce is protected by the state in the requirement for all businesses and individual to accept "legal tender". It is strange to argue that this function of state is only intended to govern cash transfers. More to the point, this is a fairly transparent case where service was denied to a free speech organization without even the allegation of illegal activity on the part of the accusers. I wonder if skeptics would consider it acceptable if payment providers stopped processing donations for the Democratic Party?
    - GHFigs 15y ago
      Define "free speech organization".
      - iamdave 15y ago
        I think that's a pretty obvious one, isn't it?
- olefoo 15y ago
  Surely restaurants have a right to refuse service to ethnic and religious minorities their owner dislikes? Part of being in business is the business owner's responsibility to the society that they are a part of. That applies even more so to businesses that handling people's money.
  - malkia 15y ago
    I think in US they can refuse individuals, but IANAL.
- sixtofour 15y ago
  At some point credit cards will be treated somewhat like public utilities, because they're effectively becoming money or access to it. You can make a case for the right to do business with whom you please. I doubt if you can make a case for restricting anyone's access to their own and other people's money, and as the relevance of cash falls, credit cards look more like money itself and less like a business that you choose to do business with or not.
  - blendergasket 15y ago
    In my opinion it's more likely that cash would be outsourced so that the governments could control who has access to it by using corporations' "rights" as excuses to circumvent the pesky checks and balances the constitution and bill of rights afford us with regards to the government.
- killerswan 15y ago
  There's a lot of similarity between their ~censorship of Wikileaks and the censorship performed by ISPs and search engines like Baidu, in China. Certain members of the government simply make unofficial suggestions, and the private companies _voluntarily_ block things.
- blendergasket 15y ago
  Imagine 3 there are 3 restaurants/grocery stores in the world that control the dissemination of 90% of the food in the world. The other food disseminators that control the remaining 10% all exist on top of various mountains. Now imagine that the 3 restaurants/grocers are run by the KKK, refuse to serve blacks, and you are black. Are they within their rights as private companies to make you climb to the top of a mountain to not starve to death? To me the treatment of Wikileaks amounts to about the same thing. The few companies that control nearly the whole international infrastructure for payment processing has come out against this organization, effectively making it nearly impossible for them to exist. If this is within their rights their rights need to be drastically curtailed.