Summary
8 December 2010
Datacell, which accepts credit card donations for Wikileaks, has said it will take action if Visa Europe and Mastercard continue not to process these payments. The two credit card companies say they are not willing to work for Wikileaks any more.
Reporter:
Theo Leggett
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange
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Wikileaks is a voluntary organisation which relies on donations to pay for its operations. Over the past few days, two of the main sources of that money have been blocked. On Tuesday, the credit card giants Visa Europe and Mastercard said they would suspend payments to Wikileaks, following a similar move by the online service Paypal on Friday. But the company which receives credit card donations on Wikileaks' behalf is threatening legal action. Datacell, an IT firm based in Iceland, has refused to comply with requests to shut down its donor account. It says those requests were based on "untrue and unverified accusations". It claims that if its credit card facilities are withdrawn permanently, its own business will be in danger - and it will sue the credit card firms for damages, which it says would not be small.
Theo Leggett, 大象传媒 News
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Vocabulary
- voluntary organisation
group run by people who work for free or are not paid
- relies on
depends on something in order to survive
- donations
money given by people to help a person or organisation
- sources
people or places you get something from
- credit card giants
very large credit card companies
- legal action
to sue
- to comply with
to co-operate with
- donor account
bank account to hold donations of money
- withdrawn
taken away or stopped
- damages
the amount of money they would want, to pay for any losses they might suffer
