Friday, May 13, 2011

WikiLeaks: Leakers Could Be Fined Millions, May 12 2011

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Business Insider
WikiLeaks is making leakers sign an agreement that says that what they’re leaking belongs to WikiLeaks and if they leak it elsewhere they may get fined up to $20 million, Wired reports after having seen a copy of the contract.

We don’t doubt a lot of people will call this hypocritical, or at least ironic. WikiLeaks claims to be based on the principle of the free flow of information, and it wants to get exclusive rights to the information it has. It also seems to be driven by an anti-business ethos, and yet wants commercial rights to exploit that information.

WikiLeaks has been reportedly financially troubled, inbetween political pressure to halt donations and a cloud of lawsuits, so maybe it sees this as a new way to keep the money rolling in. It’s still pretty striking.

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