Comments | gwillen: Wikileaks needs money

gwillen

Wikileaks needs money

Feb 02, 2010 13:44

Apparently WikiLeaks has suspended operations due to lack of funds.

If you like them, and you have money, give them some money. I am.

ETA: It's also worth noting that they can't use low-bid hosting -- they get constant takedown notices and lawsuit threats, so they have to use so-called "bulletproof" hosting, most often used by spammers, so they ( Read more... )

Comments 19

aleffert February 2 2010, 19:16:09 UTC

Maybe I don't understand what wikileaks does all day, but it sounds like they need way more money than I'd expect. What do they do with it?

gwillen February 2 2010, 19:41:38 UTC

Pay for bandwidth.

aleffert February 2 2010, 19:43:36 UTC

They have $200,000 worth of bandwidth costs every year? There has got to be a more efficient system.

gwillen February 2 2010, 22:20:14 UTC

Read my added note about "bulletproof" hosting -- they can't use a low-bid webhost, because they'd get shut down as soon as someone sent a takedown notice or threatened to sue. Their host presumably costs a lot more, in exchange for ignoring takedown notices and spurious (and perhaps nonspurious) legal threats. (It sounds like they are hosted by some of the same people who work on ThePirateBay.)

Thread 12

jcreed February 3 2010, 00:04:44 UTC

Fascinating! I always vaguely assumed bulletproof hosting was just for spammers and scammers and the like, but this is a great example of why it's not.

I still would hold onto the hope that some distributed (and therefore more money- and network-efficient) thingy would catch on sufficiently to serve the same purpose they are serving.

gwillen February 3 2010, 00:59:38 UTC

I would agree, but I'm still giving them money because we aren't there yet. (Bittorrent is an interesting suggestion that showed up on Digg; but on reflection, any distributed solution is likely to get participants in legal trouble for distributing the materials in question...)

aleffert February 3 2010, 06:22:46 UTC

Whatever happened to freenet? Wanking?

gwillen February 3 2010, 06:47:27 UTC

Did freenet ever work?

Thread 5

saetherion February 3 2010, 03:10:21 UTC

I gave $25. I'm pretty broke right now but I figure if I just spent $50 on a sweater it's pretty damn hypocritical not to spend half that combating mass media.

Thanks for linking to this.

gwillen February 3 2010, 03:59:18 UTC

Thanks for donating!