PayPal is evil

2010-12-04T22:37:59Z

Today I'm a little bit sad because I was a PayPal customer since 2002 and was forced to close my account today. I started using PayPal back in the days when I was working for some customers from the USA. It was the least complicated way to get the money from the USA to Germany. And it just worked, if everything else wouldn't work PayPal did. So I always tried to defend it against the people who said it was a force of evil and you never knew what would happen with the money.

Today I found out that PayPal closed the Wau Holland Foundations account for good. From http://www.wauland.de/english.html

A foundation in memory of Herwart “Wau” Holland-Moritz

Numerous documentaries and texts on and by data philosopher and visionary Wau Holland show how he influenced the world both as a public figure and the doyen and co-founder of the Chaos Computer Club throughout several decades until his untimely death on July 29, 2001. The area of conflict between new technology and media on the one hand, and ubiquitous surveillance on the other, risks and opportunities in information technology: these were key points Wau covered in his copious talks and public speeches. He developed and refined concepts like hacker ethics and teaching young people about the joy and passion in technology while stressing and showing the society's role therein. Through founding the Chaos Computer Club in 1981, Wau Holland paved the way for hackers into legality and social responsibility. He continued to be a huge influence and a voice to be heard. It was on the day of Wau's funeral in Marburg that five of his closest friends set up the Wau Holland Foundation in his memory, supported by his family who also gave the initial funding. In December 2003, the Foundation was registered as a tax-privileged charity.

They handle the most of WikiLeaks money.

Germany's Wau Holland Foundation has told newspaper Der Freitag Wikileaks receives no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth. Hendrik Fulda, the foundation's second chairman, says around 30.000 euros have been handed out after receiving signed receipts. According to Fulda, most of the money has been mainly used to restore Wikileaks and keep the site up and running. The website had to be taken down last year as donations did not cover costs.

So it's not possible for Julian Assange to draw money and buy a Currywurst (via Fefe). The Wau Holland Foundation checks every payment and do not pay out money for illegal stuff and they will reveal WikiLeaks salaries in a new report at the end of this year.

Ron Paul, an American physician and Republican Congressman, says:

This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason -- I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion? [...] I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?