[geedee77]

To be perfectly honest, the actions of the 'anonymous' are pretty disgusting and it's bullying. A company provides a useful service to the majority of the on-line world and, just because they do something to protect themselves and their identity (there's a lot of people who dislike wikileaks) then this 'collective' decide to disrupt the whole company.

Bullying was pathetic in high school and is so much worse in the 'grown-up' world, especially when it affects so many normal people.

[muppetman]

You don't think that Paypal is also a bully as well?

Closing people's accounts (not just Wikileaks) when they see fit, having no real recourse to try and get your money once that's happened etc.

Paypal have a reputation for being a bunch of thieves. I can't say I feel bad for them.

I've never been burned by them, I'm just going from the amount of people here that post a regular "Paypal froze my account" story.

[geedee77]

I'm not saying they aren't but when has the tactic against a bully being to bully them? Regardless of what you think about Paypal themselves, there are an awful lot of people that rely on the service they provide that can now no longer use that service due to the tactics of Anonymous.

[xd]

Maybe this raises a serious question. Why are so many people (including myself) reliant on one company for handling their payments? Maybe traders should start adding alternative forms of payment to their excepted payments. I know I will.

[sliverstorm]

It's good to accept more than one kind of payment for flexibility, but is the dominance of one payment method really so awful? It always seemed like a natural monopoly to me. It's so closely tied to paper cash... (which you'll remember must be ubiquitous and the only currency to function- except in extreme cases)

[pokinoi]

Well, that's why we have courts to settle disputes in a civil manner.

[shykes]

Don't Paypal's terms of service deny you the right to settle disputes in court?

[nikster]

You know, I am really glad that you're not at all concerned about the invisible hand which seems to synchronize actions across governments, Visa, MC, PayPal, Amazon, and other major businesses. All in the name of shutting down free speech.

Wikileaks has not been charged with any crime anywhere in the world, let alone been found guilty.

So why is it the US government is after them like the villain in a bad James Bond movie?

This isn't about wikileaks or what they have published - it's not about the content of cablegate, which is 250k documents which would have been made public in 5 - 10 years, none of them "top secret", all of them freely available to 3M+ army and government personnel.

This is about a free press, and in turn, it's about democracy. It's about who rules this world. Is it us, the people. Or is it big business which has bought our government with good money?

Let's be very clear about this - leaking classified information is a crime. Publishing leaked classified information, however, is protected by the 3rd Amendment. The US government therefore can't charge Wikileaks with a crime. So the US government has decided to go rogue and fight outside the legal framework - without laws, courts, or trials. THAT is the problem. Nothing else.

[metageek]

Upvoted, but one nit:

>Publishing leaked classified information, however, is protected by the 3rd Amendment.

First. The Third is "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.".

[ergo98]

Wikileaks has not been charged with any crime anywhere in the world, let alone been found guilty.

At a very minimum wikileaks is distributing copyrighted information without authorization. Technically they can be taken completely down via the DMCA.

Ultimately of course PayPal, Amazon, Mastercard and others don't want to do business with Wikileaks, or anon, or any similar "fuzzy" business. The business doesn't have to be illegal, they can just be a liability business and that's what they are -- only a lot of people spouting a lot of hot air are going to patronize your service because you cater to them, yet a lot of people will leave you because of it.

Nonetheless, the kids will get bored. GUARANTEED the governments of the world are going to introduce anti-DOS legislation that mandates an immediate cutoff of nodes that participate in DOS (and further a cutoff of networks that don't manage DOS attacks originating in their network). That is absolutely inevitable, and honestly is a very good thing.

[michaelchisari]

U.S. Government documents cannot be copyrighted.

[metageek]

There must be some exceptions to this, though, because IRS forms generally come with copyright notices. (Or, at least, they did the last time I did my taxes on paper, which was 5-10 years ago.)

[CamperBob]

That's crazy talk.

[sage_joch]

When basic, well-established press freedoms are being attacked by the US government, working without due process through multinational corporations, it feels a little more like self-defense than bullying.

[fookyong]

it's self-perpetuating in the same way as school bullying, too.

anyone with authority who rallies against the Anon community would likely make themselves a target also.