PayPal insists that WikiLeaks violated its acceptable use policy, “which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.” What I fail to understand is how PayPal can be used to support other journalistic and whistleblower organizations under this standard. The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and other media groups routinely publish classified material. Various whistleblower organizations use such material to disclose great government abuses. Under this standard, PayPal will assist the government in shutting off support for anyone using classified or leaked material to disclose wrongdoing.
How about books containing such information? Would that also go to pay for stolen or illegally obtained information? How about the collection of Pentagon Papers?
This comes after the acknowledgment of people like Joe Lieberman that they have been pressuring companies to block access of the public to the material.
Source:CNN