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Originally Posted by knox
No. Wikileaks can be considered a media vehicle. The media does not have any obligation to hold back and not publish things they get hold of. Wikileaks did not hack and get these documents, they are mostly sent to them. Other people are facing punishment for doing so:
http://www.bradleymanning.org/
What has been done is certainly not a crime, so much so they could not charge him for it, he's in jail for "having sex without a condom". What did they expect? They expected this (see video posted above). Wikileaks is winning.
As for whether Internet petitions are effective or not, sometimes they are, most of the times they aren't but surely taking 2 minutes to sign them is not gonna kill anyone. |
by your definition any hacker with a blog is a legitimate media source, and further who defines legitimate in the first place? You are supposing that being an internet pirate is somehow morally wrong or negative, where as from my ethos surely it was the better tactic considering the circumstances. With war crimes continuing daily in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Colombia and Iraq (and a dozen other places probably) meanwhile Americans are still griping over the Dream Act and ideological tax debates I dare say WikiLeaks hasn't done a fucking thing! I never asked wikileaks to hold back anything in regards to distributing their materials, but I do believe that have went against their initial purpose and intentions. They were a DIY internet based distributor of documents, which they solicited from any hackers/whistle blowers who possessed such and were looking for an outlet, wikileaks was supposed to be the wikipedia of leaked documents and secrets, now it has become more an Amazon.com
I don't believe wikileaks initially ever wanted to be considered any kind of so-called legitimate media source, and that has been their flaw now, as the play with the big boys. Mass media is all about sponsors and advertisers, and so that is the constituency which mass media has to address, where as wikileaks was DIY. In abandoning the DIY/pirate/hacker ethos which it was founded on, it has lost its way. In collaborating so fully and openly with the mass media machine, what did it expect? WikiLeaks already had a bit of publicity without having to had pimped themselves out so much for media attention. They could have had a media blitz campaign still on the DIY platform, but instead they opted to turn to the current and corporate model, and as such it has come to bite them in the fucking ass!
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Originally Posted by tesla69
But if the govt is covering up a crime, then you are not committing a crime by publicizing that information. OR do you think that the State has the right to deny the citizens knowledge about its crimes? And I think "Piracy" isn't quite accurate, there are no materials of value, its just information.
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you completely misunderstand me. Just because I stated the obvious (that the current government consider such leaks criminal activity) does not mean I support the government's intentions. But reality is reality. I smoke weed, and its a crime, not to me personally, but to the police on the street, so why would I ask a pig for a light for I-spliff?