On Wednesday, the Icelandic Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling finding that Valitor (formerly VISA Iceland) had illegally terminated a contract with DataCell, WikiLeaks’ Icelandic Web host, thereby stopping processing donations to the embattled site.
Valitor will now be forced (Icelandic) to pay 800,000 Icelandic krónur ($6,824) per day if the gateway to WikiLeaks donations is not reopened within 15 days, according to the group.
"This is a victory for free speech,” said Julian Assange, the site’s founder, in an online statement. “This is a victory against the rise of economic censorship to crack down against journalists and publishers. We thank the Icelandic people for showing that they will not be bullied by powerful Washington backed financial services companies like Visa. And we send out a warning to the other companies involved in this blockade: you're next."
Less than a week after the Icelandic district court’s ruling in July 2012, WikiLeaks opened up another means of donating via a French bank. By December 2012, a new group, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, also set up an online means to donate to Assange’s group.
On its website, WikiLeaks lists myriad other ways that people can donate, including sending direct bank transfers to various accounts in Iceland and Australia. The Wau Holland Foundation, a German group named after the founder of the Chaos Computer Club, has been WikiLeaks’ primary receiving entity in Germany, for example.
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