Icelandic Court Rules: Wikileaks Will Get Contributed Credit Card Money

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

[Maquis196]

Well it's not all milk and honey over here. Our airlines ARE supposed to give data to the US government if the airline has anything to do with America. I'm in the UK and were bow down to most US requests for people or information.

Iceland isn't EU (although they are attempting to join afaik), they just happen to be an awesome country that seems to care about such things. They must have been doing a good job, my goverment called them terrorists once for letting their banks fail (oh no, not the banks!).

This might have been feeding a troll but wanted to set a small record straight :)

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[CanHasDIY]

Forcing a company to do business with someone they don't want to. Yeah, wonderfully enlightened position EU

from the summary you clicked to get to this page:

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.

In other words, Valitor did indeed want to do business with them, but were strongarmed by US credit card companies into violating their contract with DataCell.

Must be troll...

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[jythie]

Eh, there is a certain amount of information bais going on. Stories of EU courts sticking it to the US and being moderate fit an existing narrative well, but the reality is they are just as dysfunctional and have more then their fair share of crazy rulings. There are some thing EU courts (which is a VERY broad concept right there since each country has its own laws in a way that US states do not) are good for, and some things US courts tend to be saner on.

Heh, though as others have pointed out, Iceland isn't EU... but they do rock. Walking on lava and everything ^_^

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Iceland actually totally fucked up at banking not so long ago. However, that may have actually had a salubrious effect. In the US and EU, the fuckuppery of the banking sector has been massive; but small enough that shovelling bushels of money at the people responsible can be advanced as a 'reasonable' proposal. In the case of Iceland, the scale of the meltdown of the imaginary money economy was so enormous that even the most overtly delusional had difficulty advocating the 'just bail out the Experienced Experts who got us here' theory of repair...

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it sucks when those damned socialist courts force you to honor your contracts, eh?

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[shentino]

There's nothing wrong with backing banks as long as all we do is keep them from taking their depositors down with them.

The problem with the US system is that we prop up zombies that don't deserve to stay in business.

But protecting innocent depositors is a good thing.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Catbeller]

People in Iceland, like the USA, were in danger of losing their homes due to circumstances beyond their control.

The US yakked about "moral hazard" and let the banks take everyone's homes.

Iceland spent a tiny bit and let people keep their homes.

Now the US has millions of disillusioned, unhomed people whose collective demand has pumped rental costs to unaffordable heights, so they are screwed both ways.

In Iceland, people remained in their homes, found new jobs, and everyone is happy except the Friedmanites and Randites. The moral hazard was understood differently. In Iceland, you say, they believed the real moral hazard was the societal breakdown caused by people ruined through no fault of their own, but by the actions of foreign bankers - so they made sure it didn't happen.

In the USA, it is our firm economic religion that people's failures are their own, and them's the breaks. Except rich bankers of course, who made out fine, own everyone's abandoned homes, and are about to make an even bigger killing when the value goes up and they can unload. The moral hazard is never the rich man's, always the schmuck's. 19th century plantation capitalism; freedom is for the owners, not the serfs. You wanna be free, get rich, lazy parasites...

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Svartalf]

More like an Oligarchy...