

EU Scolds Visa et al. For Killing WikiLeaks Donations, Initiates Regulation - vectorbunny
http://falkvinge.net/2012/11/20/europarliament-scolds-visa-mastercard-paypal-for-killing-wikileaks-donations-initiates-regulation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Falkvinge-on-Infopolicy+%28Falkvinge+on+Infopolicy%29

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JumpCrisscross
This is a proposal, for legislation to be drafted, backed by the Pirate Party.
Falkvinge is the founder and leader of the Swedish Pirate Party. Much less has
happened than this article implies.

~~~
Falkvinge
Well, the proposal has been adopted as a report today. The Parliament has
formally requested legislation to be drafted - it has gone beyond the proposal
stage.

So this has entered the famous _wurstmaschine_ - the legislative sausage
machine - where something will come out the other end.

Cheers, Rick

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The article opens by asserting that the EU has "ordered new regulation to
regulate". I took this to mean regulation had been passed. Instead, this is
analogous to the U.S. House of Representatives passing a motion to send an
issue to committee (where legislation is subsequently drafted). Not
insignificant, but nothing that will change too much on the ground (yet).

~~~
jmd_
Sadly this is pretty typical of Falkvinge's pieces.

Continuing your example, the "EU scolds" part of the article would be: the
sponsoring Representative makes a blustery press release.

How it all connects back to why and how the Swedish banks were forced by Visa
and MC to discriminate against '“questionable products” like horror movies,
movies with nudity, or sex toys' isn't particularly clear. Especially since
those types of products are as american as apple pie.

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digitalengineer
The same thing happened when the US cut non-friendlies (or basically any
nation that does business with Iran) with denial of access to the SWIFT
system. What use to be a financial transaction highway became a political
weapon of choice. This basically backfired when China refused).
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/swift-iran-
sanction...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/swift-iran-
sanctions_n_1347361.html)

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demetris
This is important news and I am happy a first step is taken.

I am not sure about the accuracy of the title of the submitted post though.
The official EU text, as reported in the post,[1] does not scold or name
anyone. The scolding comes from a press release of the Pirate Party.

1\. “[The European Parliament] considers it likely that there will be a
growing number of European companies whose activities are effectively
dependent on being able to accept payments by card; considers it to be in the
public interest to define objective rules describing the circumstances and
procedures under which card payment schemes may unilaterally refuse
acceptance”

~~~
Falkvinge
The headline has, as always, an amount of liberty in summarizing the article
to a few words.

The person responsible for inserting the text into the report, who is a Member
of the European Parliament, and therefore in some sense representing this
particular piece of text, names WikiLeaks and the donation blockade
specifically.

Cheers, Rick

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belorn
Could not anti-competitor laws be expanded to also include depended parties?
It sound as an logical approach, since anti-competitor laws always discuss
market abuse by parties of an monopolistic nature, and the activities against
wikileaks looks to match that exactly. The problem is not VISA, MasterCard,
and PayPal per say, but their monopolistic statue as payment systems in regard
to access to and by end-users. For companies and organizations depended on
online revenue like donations or webb-shops, VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal has
complete market control over them.

~~~
kiba
Well, if you do that, bitcoin wouldn't gain traction. This is the kind of
scenarios that bitcoin excel at.

The others being that bitcoin is a great way to transfer wealth out of the
country at any moment, allowing individuals to vote with their wallet.

~~~
spindritf
> bitcoin is a great way to transfer wealth out of the country at any moment

For a high-tax region like EU, that's a severe bug, not a feature.

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saalweachter
Didn't Visa & Friends kill WikiLeaks donations two years ago? What good does
it do for the EU to "scold" them now, two years later, after it turned out
WikiLeaks was able to survive and keep operating without credit card
companies?

Even if something comes of this, it would have been a helluva lot more useful
to have happened in December 2010/early 2011. Doing something now _might_
discourage this kind of behavior in the future, but it seems a lot more like
calling the fire department after watching your neighbor's house burn to the
ground.

~~~
Zikes
I would say it's more akin to calling the police about the arsonist that's
already burnt your neighbor's house to the ground.

Sure it won't save the house, but the wrongdoer is still on the loose and
might well do it again given the opportunity.

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mtgx
I don't know why EU seems to have so much more common sense for issues like
these than US, but whatever they are doing is working, and I love it. Maybe US
needs to model its democratic system more after EU.

~~~
sneak
Theory: The US gutted its educational system some generations ago, and the
results are now showing on a policy level.

As George Carlin once said: "When you have a selfish, ignorant public, you get
selfish, ignorant leaders."

~~~
spindritf
Myths and legends supported literally by a joke. American educational system
is no worse than Western European[1], and definitely better when it comes to
higher education[2].

[1] [http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html) [2] pretty much any ranking will do

~~~
tirant
[2] Better for just the lucky few who can get to the top universities.

~~~
pvnick
Literally anyone can get to a top university if they work hard enough

~~~
jlgreco
Certainly, but that doesn't have terribly much to do with what you can say
about the population at large.

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jjara
This is good. Thank you Europe. But what about regulations that favour market
diversity? We should regulate the payment interface to encourage the emergence
of non-US companies in the system.

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mullingitover
Personally I'd rather see the payment card companies nationalized. Make them
operate at zero profit, and vastly reduce the friction in the flow of capital.
Or, if you prefer not to nationalize, institute a government-operated
competing global payment card system that's free for merchants and consumers
alike. Watch the payment card companies collapse under their own weight.

It makes a lot of sense to me: the governments of the world are in the
business of governing currency, and payment card systems are superseding that
power. Time to take it back and return the power to citizens.

~~~
jivatmanx
The actions of these companies were done at behest of the U.S. government. How
would this problem be reduced if the companies were eliminated and a
nationalized system implemented?

And if you think nationalization will increase efficiency, please compare the
U.S. post office to European post offices, which were nearly all privatized
decades ago. (They're operating with significant profits b/c they've combined
with convenience stores, allow you to opt out of spam, offer scanning
services, etc)

~~~
mullingitover
Well for one thing, the private nature of the card companies means that they
can be 'pressured' by the government and they have no accountability. If the
government operated the payment card systems, the constitutional constraints
would apply (so for example, wikileaks could have some shelter under the first
amendment). As for the postal system, it's being sabotaged from within -
[http://my.firedoglake.com/mmonk/2011/08/19/the-pre-
funding-m...](http://my.firedoglake.com/mmonk/2011/08/19/the-pre-funding-
mandate-bringing-down-the-american-postal-workers-union/)

~~~
jivatmanx
The legal restitution is likely to be identical, as this is a post-Patriot act
age of gag orders. However, with multiple competitors it's a lot harder to
shut down something like wikileaks in a completely silent and uniform manner,
without indication that it's been silenced.

Most important of all, however, is that a us gov monopoly precludes the use of
foreign competitors from countries with better speech laws.

As far as the post office is concerned: Leaving their numerical financial
situation aside (which is hard to ascertain exactly due to the opaque nature
of government spending) there is simply no excuse for why, after decades and
decades, they haven't implemented any of the modern efficiency mechanisms or
services that modern post offices have.

~~~
mullingitover
Also as far as the post office is concerned: one troubled branch of the
government != indictment of all government involvement in public utilities
(which is what a government-operated payment card system would amount to). Not
every government project is a bureaucratic failure. For example, this internet
thing we're using to argue about how the government can't do anything right...

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joshuaheard
Vague rules from Visa and MasterCard will become vague laws on the books of
the EU, and nothing will change.

~~~
userulluipeste
Vague rules are still better than nothing. Vague rules might be also be
transformed in more efficient regulation if the effect still hurts in the long
run.

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oleganza
First, one government uses power to regulate who and how receives money. Than
another government uses power to regulate who and how accepts money. Why
nobody questions why governments are regulating money flow at all?

If nobody was after WikiLeaks, Visa and MasterCard would be happy to provide
them with payments. Or, on the other hand, if Visa does not want to provide a
service for any reason, why anyone should force them to?

~~~
eCa
> if Visa does not want to provide a service for any reason, why anyone should
> force them to?

Since Visa (and MasterCard) are such a big part of the flow of payments that
leaving that decision to them is almost like letting organized crime charge
protection money.

I guess you missed this part:

> banks in Sweden were caught in the act of arbitrarily > discriminating
> against fully legal business owners that the > banks claimed sold (according
> to the banks) “questionable > products” like horror movies, movies with
> nudity, or sex toys; > meanwhile, these same banks happily channeled stock
> in > corporations under investigation of genocide. When pressed on > the
> matter, the banks referred to vague rules from Visa and > MasterCard

Imagine being a startup that competes with (say) Amazon in some fringe market
(say porn, of which Amazon has plenty). _You_ get shutdown (by Visa/MC proxied
by your bank) for selling "questionable products" while Amazon happily can
continue selling the same products, since they bring so much more profit to
Visa/MasterCard. Is that fair?

------
littlegiantcap
And so it goes. I have a feeling many people on here would be singing a
different tune if the EU suddenly decided that it was a "right" for people to
use their software no matter who they are. Think of it this way. Would anyone
truly benefit if the EU decided that Hacker News was "a valve of free speech"
so it must not discriminate who uses it? I think this is a terrible decision
and a massive overstep of the state into private affairs. As an aside, I'm not
so convinced that wikileaks is as noble an organization as many on here seem
to think it is.

~~~
danmaz74
So, for example, if I operated a bus company, and I wanted not to accept, say,
jews on my bus, it would be a "terrible decision and a massive step etc. etc."
for the state to intervene?

Reductio ad absurdum doesn't work in political matters. Because reality isn't
based on simple monotonic logic.

~~~
littlegiantcap
Absolutely reductio ad absurdum works for political arguments. If you didn't
think that then why did you literally just use it on my comment? I would say
discrimination based on some sort of inherent trait is completely wrong (race,
religion, etc) but if a private company chooses to deny service to another
private company what affront to civil rights has been committed? I'm sorry but
there is no human right to the visa or mastercard network. If you want to
support wikileaks send them government issued currency through the government
run mail.

~~~
danmaz74
Actually, I used reductio ad absurdum exactly to show it can work as a
rhetorical device, but in politics you can easily construe "demonstrations"
for both sides of an argument using it. So it is not a good argument.

