Deep Politics Forum

PayPal freezes WikiLeaks account

Online payment company says funds were being used for 'illegal activity' in violation of its rules

Jonathan Haynes
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 December 2010 10.19 GMT
Article history

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Photograph: Valentin Flauraud/Reuters

PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks' account in the latest action against the whistleblower website, which has been posting leaked US embassy cables online.

The decision by the online payment site – which WikiLeaks had used to raise funds for web hosting and other costs – has been announced with a posting on PayPal's blog.

PayPal, owned by the auction website eBay, said the account had been frozen because it was being used for "illegal" activity.

This week Amazon withdrew its cloud hosting of WikiLeaks' cables site and the WikiLeaks.org domain was taken offline. It has since moved to other domains based outside America.

PayPal said: "PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal acceptable use policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We've notified the account holder of this action."

Definitely. And Amazon.

Magda Hassan Wrote:Definitely. And Amazon.

How could I forget.....I think there will soon be quite a list to add to it vis-a-vis Wikileaks. I expect the credit card companies will be next, then Sweden, and many others...coming to a free-speech free zone soon!

Peter Lemkin Wrote:

Magda Hassan Wrote:Definitely. And Amazon.

How could I forget.....I think there will soon be quite a list to add to it vis-a-vis Wikileaks. I expect the credit card companies will be next, then Sweden, and many others...coming to a free-speech free zone soon!

In general the boycott is one of the few tactics available to ordinary people to fight the power of the monster corporations, governments, etc.

I entirely concur Myra. I told Paypal to close my account today.

David Guyatt Wrote:I entirely concur Myra. I told Paypal to close my account today.

I have never had an account and now will not but use Amazon to buy books.
Does anyone know of another site to buy books online? I need to buy a couple of Christmas gifts and was going to get books.

Dawn

Borders and Barnes and Noble in the states. Your local book shop will get books in for you too.

Dawn Meredith Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:I entirely concur Myra. I told Paypal to close my account today.

I have never had an account and now will not but use Amazon to buy books.
Does anyone know of another site to buy books online? I need to buy a couple of Christmas gifts and was going to get books.

Dawn

Abe's Books is best IMO for older, used, hard to find. He also has new.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:

Dawn Meredith Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:I entirely concur Myra. I told Paypal to close my account today.

I have never had an account and now will not but use Amazon to buy books.
Does anyone know of another site to buy books online? I need to buy a couple of Christmas gifts and was going to get books.

Dawn

Abe's Books is best IMO for older, used, hard to find. He also has new.

Abes is good.

Also Powells in Portland. It's great. And Powells is a union shop.
http://www.powells.com/

For used books I have good experience with betterworldbooks.com.