WikiLeaks Tests Donation Pop-Ups For Leaked Material 67
WikiLeaks has for years relied on donated time and money to publish the scoops that it has; now, concealment writes "As of Wednesday night, the secret-spilling site now shows a 'paywall' to any visitor who clicks on one of its leaked documents, including the 13,374 emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor that it published earlier in the day along with the teaser that the messages regarded presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The pop-up message that blocks access to the site's content shows a video parodying Barack Obama's stump speeches and asking visitors to instead 'vote for WikiLeaks' by making a donation to the site or buying its promotional gear like tote bags and hoodies."
What are they thinking?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to wonder who at Wikileaks thought that this would be a good idea.
I suspect that the reason they're not getting as many donations as they used to is because if wikileaks got labeled an enemy of the state then people who had donated would be targets. Putting up a paywall isn't going to motivate people to take that risk.
Part of the point of wikileaks is to get maximum exposure for the information, and adding a barrier to entry is going to go against their cause.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Check the blockchain for Wikileaks' bitcoin wallet. I think they'll be able to continue paying for their web hosting.
Re:Screw that... (Score:5, Interesting)
of course what you don't get is any useful information..
Cryptome make a big play of 'hosting things the gvmt tries to hide', but in reality it's mostly badly rendered maps of roads running through area51, unintelligible court transcripts about topics only total paranoiacs worry about, the occasional commercially sensitive dataset, etc.. Nothing of any global note, certainly nothing nearly as useful as the consular docs or stratfor stuff.
I watched how it reacted when Wikileaks got the real scoops, and it was obvious that cryptomes owner would never actually wobble the status-quo, and seemed indignant that anybody else would, especially if infringing on 'his' territory.
My sneaking suspicion is that cryptome was/is run with the full co-operation of your military-cia-fbi-industrial overlords to provide an outlet for paranoid and the tin-foil brigade, without actually doing anything that might hold them to public account.