Icelandic Court Rules: Wikileaks Will Get Contributed Credit Card Money 168
New submitter mordur writes "An Icelandic District Court has ordered the payment processing company Valitor to immediately reopen the merchant account (Icelandic original) of DataCell and start processing credit card payments for the Wikileaks organization. Noncompliance on behalf of Valitor will result in daily fines of ISK 800.000 (approx. USD 60.000). Under pressure from the USA based international credit card companies, Valitor stopped all service to DataCell, and thus to Wikileaks, just hours after having started processing payment in July 2011. The court found that Valitor had failed to prove that the processing of payments for Wikileaks was contrary to the business policies of the international credit card companies, nor had the company proved that DataCell was in breach of the service agreement between the companies by serving Wikileaks."
Re:Good decision by Icelandic court (Score:2, Informative)
The Internet operates world-wide, as do banks and credit card companies - we consumers have choices. Companies which comply with the freedom killing orders of fascist governments should be boycotted. As the recent Barclay's bank disclosures prove, all of the major banks are run by crooks, who operate in collusion with each other. Perhaps Iceland is the only country who's government refuses to allow it's banks to collude with the rest of the world's banks. When will the countries in Europe demonstrate they are democracies, and stop the democracy killing abuse by their own banks?
Re:Good decision by Icelandic court (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah the bank thing was hilarious.
"We demand the government reimburse us for the money held in failed Icelandic banks!"
"Why? the debt was not backed by the full faith and credence of the government; that's why the interest rates were so high"
"HERP DERP I DON'T CARE GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!"
Re:Good decision by Icelandic court (Score:5, Informative)
A bunch of banks that happened to be in Iceland, but not backed by the government, made some promises they couldn't keep. A lot of people, mostly in the UK, fell for those promises, and when everything went belly up they demanded that the Icelanders make good on them, which would have essentially bankrupted the country. The Icelanders felt that wasn't fair, and had the wherewithal to tell the banks, the investors, and the countries that were backing them, to go to hell.
Re:Good decision by Icelandic court (Score:4, Informative)
Scandinavian peninsula is in Europe, it consists of Sweden, most of Norway and some parts of Finland. Iceland is an island in the middle of Atlantic ocean which is halfway split between European and American plates.
Re:Iceland, for the win (Score:5, Informative)
We, in Europe, and the USA, have much to learn from Iceland about how to survive a crippling financial crisis.
Yeah, like NOT putting the very people responsible for the bank's failures in powerful government positions.
Obama Administration: Deputy Director, National Economic Council
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Financial Analyst
Obama Administration: Chairman, Presidentâ(TM)s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Board Member (Chairman, 1990-94; Director, 2005-)
Obama Administration: Commissioner, Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Partner and Co-head of Finance
Obama Administration: Undersecretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, State Department
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs Group
Obama Administration: Ambassador to Germany
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Head of Goldman Sachs, Frankfurt
Obama Administration: Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Lobbyist 2005-2008; Vice President for Government Relations
Obama Administration: Advisor to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner
Former Goldman Sachs Title: President and Chief Operating Officer (1999-2003)
They should just change the name from the "White House" to "Goldman Sachs House". Yeah, I'm sure they'll do the right thing to protect regular US taxpayers.
Strat
Re:Good decision by Icelandic court (Score:4, Informative)
Lol, yeah. I like to simply view the British "losses" in the Icesave situation as a late payment for all the cod the British stole from Icelandic waters [wikipedia.org].
"Losses" is in quote because the banks actually are, in fact, paying off their minimum insured obligations, and are on track to finish paying them off within the next year or so (they're already half done). The Icelandic government took on huge amounts of debt, in no small part to help prop up the banks and get them back on their feet so they'd be worth enough to sell off enough asset value to do this. And the British and Dutch are still suing us in the EFTA. Gee, thanks. We appreciate the whole mackerel thing, too. How dare Iceland and the Faroes fish a non-negligable portion of a fish that does most of its growing in Icelandic and Faroese waters? Such insolence, I know. Best to pressure the EC to slap sanctions on us for "overfishing" (aka, taking a non-negligible portion of the catch) when you refuse to negotiate.
Remember all that electricity you're wanting to buy [guardian.co.uk]?...
Re:Good decision by Icelandic court (Score:4, Informative)
Like the people who had their money in Lehman Brothers? Sorry, but there's a difference between a regular bank account and an investment account. Icesave was a program predominantly for retirement funds and municipal investment funds. It wasn't a checking account program.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080225152959/http://icesave.co.uk/legal.html [archive.org]: "Deposits made with Icesave are protected under the Icelandic Deposit Guarantees and Investor-Compensation Scheme (details of this scheme may be obtained from www.landsbanki.com/legislation). Payments under this scheme are limited to the first €20,887 (or the sterling equivalent) of your total deposits held with us. You have further protection from the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (www.fscs.org.uk). Payments under this scheme are limited to 100% of the first £35,000 of all your deposits with us, less any payments made under the Icelandic scheme. This means that the maximum claim amount as at October 2007 is £35,000. The total financial protection given to you under both schemes is no less than you would receive if your deposit was only protected by the UK scheme. Further details about both schemes can be obtained from our web site or by post, on request."
Following the Icelandic side's link [landsbanki.is] for the fund that backed the deposits: Hmm, nowhere in here do I see anything about government backing. Do you?
The fund went bankrupt. The British tried to force the government to pick up the bill. Which is frankly BS. The accounts were never guaranteed by the government, you can't make the government suddenly start guaranteeing them *after* a crash.
Re:Good decision by Icelandic court (Score:2, Informative)
From the Wikipedia article you linked:
"In 1972, Iceland unilaterally declared an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending beyond its territorial waters, before announcing plans to reduce overfishing."
From http://www.britains-smallwars.com/RRGP/CodWar.htm:
"The 200-mile economic exclusion zone was supported by various coastal states, including Great Britain, at UN conferences on the Law of the Sea, although it was not law yet."
So Iceland decides to declare that all that territory belongs to them, and somehow it is the British in the wrong? EEZ was not part of law yet so you had no right to do so, end of. You would have had had a right to do so after the EEZ law was passed, but you didn't wait. British ships were within their rights to fish there at the time, and you were the aggressor attempting to stop them. It's hardly surprising and completely understandable that we used our military to protect against your aggression.
Furthermore, even if we were somehow responsible for the Cod Wars, do you really think the cost would add up to the $5 billion you owe to Britain and the Netherlands? The Cod Wars were a minor spat, concerning a single industry that really isn't that important. I personally doubt the cost added up to $100 million, let alone $5 billion.
Past problems aside, if someone lends you money you owe it to them to pay it back. Especially if the countries lending it are currently hard up themselves. No amount of rationalizations will make not paying the money back the right thing to do.
Re:Good decision by Icelandic court (Score:4, Informative)
First off, there were *three* cod wars, in case you forgot. After overfishing your waters (and the waters of several other countries - I've found the Irish people I've met have a lot to complain about on this front, too), you sent trawlers to overfish other people's waters. Iceland's among them, but hardly alone. You started doing that not long after you *invaded* and occupied Iceland, a neutral country, with one of the most bungling invasions ever, in order to prevent a nonexistent Nazi plan which existed only in your leaders' minds. But I digress. You started fishing as little as *4 kilometers* from Iceland's shore, meaning that Icelanders could sit there and easily watch your trawlers overfishing Iceland's waters. The first Cod War pushed you back to 12, which is still easily in sight of the shore, overfishing Iceland's waters with even more ships involved. The second Cod War pushed you back to what was then the international limit of 50km. However, by the 1970s, many nations had already began asserting 200km exclusive economic zones - in fact, the first ones were claimed in the 1940s. By the 1970s, they had become standard. Heck, the groundwork for the concept of the EEZ began from work from UK in *1939* with the Panama declaration, and then in 1942 concerning the Gulf of Paria. The UK claimed exclusive economic access to a wide range of area outside their territorial waters in 1964. And even if all this wasn't the case, it's ridiculous that Britain felt that it had the god-given right to trawl up the lion's share of the fish in waters right next to Iceland - let alone ignoring how much you were overexploiting the stocks (something Iceland immediately reversed). Iceland's actions were upheld by the International Court of Justice in 1974 (United Kingdom vs. Iceland, 1974 ICJ Rep 3, 75).
You were saying?
Well, let's see... Iceland's fisheries are worth about $1.5 billion a year, and you were exploiting them from the 1940s to the 1970s... so no, you still owe us a damn lot more. Perhaps *you* should vote on a repayment plan.
Once again, the world revolves around you. Yeah, not that important for you. It's only 40% of our entire economy. Which was the crux of the whole problem.
Companies go bankrupt. Deal with it. Just ignoring that there was clearly no government guarantee, who in their right mind expects a government backing on a 6% interest rate? What's next, do you want us to ensure that anyone who buys junk bonds to get their money back if they loses value? Full reward, no risk, is that the plan?
Oh yeah, really hard up compared to Iceland, which had just had the per-capita equivalent of 300 Lehman Brothers fail at once.