I accept it's not free
and they possibly do have to sell their information to stay afloat. However, that's somewhat at odds with their representation of themselves as disinterested defenders of the public good; it means that they're simply a kind of information broker - a middleman between the person who has the information, and the person who wants it. (Does Wikileaks give the people who leak them information a dividend based on its value? I'm not sure. If they do, then they are basically a brokerage - which is fine, but they should be upfront about it. If they don't, then it looks like they're horrible exploitative of the people who actually take the risks.)
Now, they might want to charge to provide legal cover and so on; but presumably, that'd be factored into the price that they charge the media outlets to which they sell information. It's not obvious why it'd justify a gag on employees. In rather the same way, a shopkeeper will want to insure against theft, and the price of this insurance will be part of the cost paid by the consumer. She wouldn't normally have to threaten employees with a strangely precise and undiscriminating bond of their own in addition.
And in respect of your DNA-laced jeans analogy: well, if I don't want to pay your price, I don't have to. I'm assuming you don't want to sell them, so you can set any notional price you want. Wikileaks, on the other hand, presumably does want to sell what it has. By appealing to the market value, though, that means that they lose any entitlement to dictate the price. They can try to, as would any other seller; but in the end, information (or any other good) is only worth what people are willing to sell. And you don't know what that'll be in advance.
Also, you pay too much for your trousers.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 11 May 2011, 20:05,
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