Why Wikileaks Made a Bad Move for Donations
As of Thursday October 11, 2012 Wikileaks will now require you to donate in order to view some, if not all, of it's documents. This move by Julian Assange and his team came about because Wikileaks has had a lack of funds recently, due to almost every type of payment method has put a ban on donating to them. This move has made some people a little angry though, one of the most recognizable ones would be Anonymous. Anonymous has been one of Wikileaks biggest supporters in the past. It was stated by Anonymous that "We have been worried about the direction WikiLeaks is going for a while. In the recent month the focus moved away from actual leaks and the fight for freedom of information further and further while it concentrated more and more on Julian Assange.", adding that "awesome idea ruined by egos".
The legality of the Wikileaks site and of Julain's actions has been a thing of debate over the past few years, but the main purpose of the site was to provide the public with information that would otherwise be kept secret by industries and governments. With this being said, it seems like a direct contradiction of what they were trying to do in the first place. It also seems like it's not ethical to make people donate in order to get information out that Wikileaks thinks the people ought to know. Of course the site need to get some money in order to keep the site up and running properly, but by using this way it doesn't seem like it will produce the most good for the people. In fact, in my opinion, it will make the site so uninviting that Wikileaks will lose most of the people that used to view the site.
Although I think I might be able to argue my point with most of the ethical theories, I'm going to do it with duty based. Since they preached at the beginning that they wanted to release information to the public that should have been in the first place, they should stick to their duty to do so. If they now make it so you have to donate before viewing their articles they are now not only limiting who can view their articles (poor people can no longer) but having people who already really want to read an article and support Wikileaks are going to read it. Well if they create this small circle in which people will/can view their information they have, then there is not real big difference between this and the government just holding onto the information. If this is the case then they shouldn't have the site because Wikileaks is no longer preforming its duties that it previously set up for itself.
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ReplyDeleteThere are many ethical issues that are brought up by wikileaks. One of them is displaying sensitive information. The legality of this also puts wiikileaks in the spot light. The owner Julian has had many legal troubles in the past few years. He is wanted in several countries. It’s his legal trouble that makes wikileaks somewhat un-creditable in my opinion. As Mike mentioned the egos of these people have gotten in the way and one could say they have an ethical responsibility to set aside egos a give the public the information they need. A lot of the information that wikileaks have put out are good for the general public to know. Exposing some of the messed up stuff governments due is important so the governing people don’t get screwed over.
ReplyDeletejesse f.