Wikileaks pledge drive on TipiT
This weekend Paypal froze Wikileaks’s account impeding their efforts to get funded (the entire site had been turned into a big pledge drive to secure future operation). This is a common occurrence for merchants of all sorts.
We also think that Wikileaks performs an important function online and in any case they are a great cause to have on TipiT. I tweeted them and told them TipiT is very much available and one of the few donation services that does not use Paypal to transfer money (with obvious and non-obvious benefits). Not to mention that we are far more responsive.
After some initial trouble keeping up with the load was resolved (which turned out to be just a minor glitch), the tipjar and thermometer for Wikileaks is up and running on the site (tipjar). It seems that Paypal has unfrozen the Wikileaks account again (see The Register), but we continue to serve as a donations conduit for Wikileaks and hope to do so in the future.
January 27th, 2010 at 8:55 am
In practice, how different is your tip jar thermometer graphic, from a “web bug” ?
For many websites the fact that the thermometer graphic is being called down on the fly from the TipiT.to webserver, is not much of a problem.
However, for WikiLeakS.org, which is meant to be preserving the anonymity of their readers, analysts and whistleblower sources, this is a problem, since the embedded graphic generates *log file entries* on *your* web server etc., for *every* visitor to their home page, not just those who are planning to donate money via TipIT.to.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:16 am
If that is so big of an issue, we can figure out a workaround for it. I talked with Reinier about it and he said we could setup an image you guys could periodically retrieve from us and serve statically on your own webserver, just to name one idea.