EU Scolds Visa et al. For Killing WikiLeaks Donations, Initiates Regulation

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

by vectorbunny • 14 years ago

234 61 14 years ago

falkvinge.net

belorn2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

spindritf3• 14 years ago

> 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.

mtgx• 14 years ago

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.

unconed• 14 years ago

Because most EU countries have proportional representation, which means geographically diffuse and demographically aligned ideologies, like the green party in the 70-80s, and the pirate party in the 2000s, can get off the ground easily.

matthewowen• 14 years ago

Actually, to be precise, it is because elections to the European parliament use a form of proportional representation.

For example, UK elections do not use PR, but elections to the European Parliament in the UK do.

sneak• 14 years ago

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."

spindritf3• 14 years ago

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... [2] pretty much any ranking will do

aroberge• 14 years ago

Other than the reasons already pointed out, money plays a huge role in elections in the U.S.A. Without large influx of money, a politician can not run an effective campaign - hence corporations have a huge leverage. To put it bluntly: corruption is rife in the U.S. but it is "hidden" as money does not (always) go directly to a politician's pocket, but it is diverted to his/her campaign. What the U.S.A. needs is to revamp its law and limit contributions to small amounts per person - including corporate persons - and reverse the Citizens United ruling through a constitutional amendment.

gridaphobe• 14 years ago

Money in politics is certainly an issue, but I think it pales in comparison to our lack of proportional representation in Congress. Many communities are now distributed across the country, which can effectively deprive them of representation unless they have a critical mass in at least one place (I assume Silicon Valley is a good example).

lumberjack• 14 years ago

I don't know how much this factors in but Visa is a US multinational. How much interests do EU countries have in playing along with Visa?

rayiner• 14 years ago

Cynical hypothesis: the EU gains from making it easier for Americans to leak American secrets.

digitalengineer• 14 years ago

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...

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

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.

Falkvinge4• 14 years ago

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

Falkvinge4• 14 years ago

(also, I am no longer the party leader of the PPSE; I led the party through its first five years and the election where we put our first people in the Europarl. Today, my focus is international)

nitrogen2• 14 years ago

I look forward to a world in which more politicians participate in sites like Hacker News.

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

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).

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Nicely done Rick, this is a conversation that needs to happen.

charonn0• 14 years ago

None of which is either scolding nor regulation.

joshuaheard• 14 years ago

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

userulluipeste3• 14 years ago

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.

saalweachter• 14 years ago

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.

userulluipeste3• 14 years ago

Wikileaks was only an example that drew attention to a wider and more serious problem.

Zikes• 14 years ago

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.

michaelt• 14 years ago

They might think a legislation change to protect horror movie and sex toy makers will have more chance politically, so they wanted the wikileaks thing to have a chance to blow over.

littlegiantcap2• 14 years ago

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.

danmaz742• 14 years ago

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.

littlegiantcap2• 14 years ago

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.

csense• 14 years ago

I don't understand why the downvotes. This is a legitimate argument -- although the position isn't popular.

On one hand, businesses should have a right to refuse service to anyone, without much reason. On the other hand, customers should have a right to certain necessity services that are vital to creating value or functioning in the modern world -- such as electricity, Internet service, or credit card acceptance.

The problem is striking a balance when these two rights come into conflict. Usually because the industry providing the necessity is a monopoly or near-monopoly. This case calls for regulation. Since HN isn't a monopoly -- there are plenty of other places for people to get their free speech fix -- it isn't a matter for government regulators if HN tightens its policies.

I am worried, though, that the EU government may move in the wrong direction -- requiring compliance with burdensome regulations for providers of non-necessities, or providers of necessities in non-monopoly-like industries.

Right now everyone's thinking of the outrage over the Wikileaks situation. But there's always a danger that the legislation that's passed may be overbroad and do more harm than good. Or, even if today's legislators and bureaucrats honestly believe they've limited the new laws and regulations to the necessary cases, tomorrow's legislators and bureaucrats may be able to abuse the authority being created today.

SEMW• 14 years ago

The EU is not a national legislature, they do not have unlimited competence to legislate. If they take anti-monopoly action against a company which is outside their powers set out in Article 102 TFEU, the company can get it overturned. If they legislate in an area outside their powers, nation states (or an individual who's directly and individually concerned by the law) can get it overturned. This isn't theoretical - there's a lot of litigation in front of the CJEU, and things getting overturned is not unusual.

jjara• 14 years ago

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.

oleganza• 14 years ago

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?

JohnGB• 14 years ago

Because they hold an effective duopoly, and therefore have an ability to unfairly harm companies.

Would it be fair if an electricity provider decided to stop providing energy to a company because they did something that they didn't like?

userulluipeste3• 14 years ago

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

If the government won't want to provide them a licence to operate in a certain way and place, why would anyone have something against it's decision?

mfringel• 14 years ago

Visa and MC are, as mentioned, an effective duopoly over card payments in the EU.

This means that Visa and MC are in a position to govern the flow of money. Since they have started acting as a governing body by unilaterally cutting off access for political reasons, they have exposed themselves to political control over their behavior, also for political reasons.

Only the government gets to be the government. That's why it works.

eCa2• 14 years ago

> 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?

demetris• 14 years ago

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”

Falkvinge4• 14 years ago

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

mullingitover3• 14 years ago

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.

jivatmanx2• 14 years ago

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)

mullingitover3• 14 years ago

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...

EU Scolds Visa et al. For Killing WikiLeaks Donations, Initiates Regulation

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