- Title: SWEDEN: Swedish firm Flattr will continue to channel funds to Wikileaks
- Date: 10th December 2010
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) FLATTR CO-OWNER AND DEVELOPER LEIF HOGBERG SAYING: "We will continue to accept donations for WikiLeaks as long as there is no legal obligation not to do so. If there was a legal obligation to do so we will of course follow that. But for now it's mostly people who think they've done something illegal or doesn't think that what they do is any good." HO
- Embargoed: 25th December 2010 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Sweden
- Country: Sweden
- Topics: International Relations
- Reuters ID: LVA5P1S0RKYMESJ5EA26DGJCFHH9
- Story Text: While major payment providers Mastercard, Visa and PayPal have stopped transfers to WikiLeaks, a small company with a base in south Sweden said on Thursday (December 9) it would carry on as a lone channel for donations.
The three big companies stopped servicing WikiLeaks after the website's release of United States (U.S.) diplomatic cables that have angered and embarrassed Washington.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has also been remanded in custody in Britain on accusations of sexual crimes in Sweden.
Flattr, a British-Swedish firm operating a web-based donation system, is one of few avenues left open to people who want to donate money to finance WikiLeaks' operations.
"We believe that freedom of speech is one of the fundamental things in human society and we are not the one who should make the call if someone wants to give money to an organisation or not," Leif Hogberg, a system developer and co-owner of the small firm, said.
"We will continue to accept donations for WikiLeaks as long as there is no legal obligation not to do so. If there was a legal obligation to do so we will of course follow that. But for now it's mostly people who think they've done something illegal or doesn't think that what they do is any good," he added.
Hogberg said the company had not been put under any "direct pressure" to cancel transfers to WikiLeaks but that some payment providers did not want to "co-operate" at the moment. He declined to disclose the identities of the payment providers.
Hogberg declined to say how much money had been transferred to the organisation in the months it had been registered as a recipient of donations through Flattr, which has about 50,000 donors around the world.
He said that his company was one of the few ways in which people could donate to WikiLeaks.
"I think you can do it by bank transfer still but beside that, to my knowledge, there is no other way," he said.
Flattr was co-founded by Peter Sunde, one of the men behind file sharing website The Pirate Bay.
"Our business concept is enabling voluntary payments for free stuff that you find online basically. We've built an easy platform for donations and voluntary payments," Hogberg said.
The Flattr payment system collates the clicks a donor makes to an individual cause and then divvies out the sum contributed by the donor on a monthly basis. Hogberg said the system made it difficult to estimate the exact amount donated. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None