Wikileaks needs money

[gwillen]

Apparently WikiLeaks has suspended operations due to lack of funds.

If you like them, and you have money, give them some money. I am.

ETA: It's also worth noting that they can't use low-bid hosting -- they get constant takedown notices and lawsuit threats, so they have to use so-called "bulletproof" hosting, most often used by spammers, so they don't get shut down every time someone threatens their webhost with a lawsuit. This adds a substantial multiplier to their hosting cost.

Comments

[mellowcupcake.livejournal.com]

That sounds preposterously high. Like, stupidly so.

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

For a point of comparison, in 2007 it cost about a million a year to run Wikipedia:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for

I assume it's more now. I don't know if you guys will consider that a point in favor of or against wikileaks' $200k, but note that they tend to serve up large PDFs and other bandwidth-heavy content, whereas wikipedia mostly serves text.

[mellowcupcake.livejournal.com]

That's actually a really interesting breakdown of the costs for a huge site. I don't know how big Wikileaks is compared to Wikipedia, but if they're in the same general class of organizations, I guess I'd believe that.

I'm with Akiva though - they could probably do it more efficiently.

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

As mentioned in the update I am about to make to the post, Wikileaks also has a cost multiplier on their hosting due to legal problems. Because they get constant takedown notices and lawsuits, they can't host with normal providers -- they have to use bulletproof (i.e. spammer) hosting, which costs a lot more.

[mellowcupcake.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point!