Anonymous, the loose collective of hackers, dissidents, and the disaffected, roared into action in late 2010 to defend WikiLeaks, conducting denial-of-service attacks against MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal in retaliation for the payment processors' decision to block funding of the secret-publishing site. That support appears now to be at an end, with the hacking group outraged that WikiLeaks has placed its data behind a paywall.

WikiLeaks first implemented its paywall on October 10th. Most pages on the site were overlaid with a video and a banner imploring readers to "Vote WikiLeaks" and donate money to the site. Donating, sharing the video on Facebook, or tweeting about the campaign, would dismiss the overlay and allow access to the site. The overlay also disappears automatically after a period of time. After an immediate backlash on Twitter the overlay appeared to be removed within hours of its first appearance, but it returned on the 11th.

The reappearance of the overlay provoked an angry response from Anonymous representatives. The group claims to have been betrayed by WikiLeaks. The group's statement argues that numerous Anons have been charged or arrested over activities supportive of WikiLeaks, and that in contrast, no member of WikiLeaks staff has been charged or imprisoned.

Those charged include 14 Anonymous members who were indicted for the denial-of-service attacks of December 2010, and Jeremy Hammond, who provided WikiLeaks with e-mail pillaged from private intelligence company Stratfor. Those e-mails are now behind the WikiLeaks paywall, a move that "dishonors" and "insults" Anonymous. Anons "risk lengthy prison sentences" in their defense of WikiLeaks, but in return, WikiLeaks is "prostituting" the data that they have provided.

Concluding, the statement says that in the future the group will cease putting itself at risk to defend WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, and instead publish information through its own network of leak sites.

Justifying the call for donations, Assange wrote that the fund-raising was necessary to fund its "publishing and infrastructure costs," and further to fund its legal action against the payment processors. WikiLeaks' Twitter account also said that an overlay that allows you to share, tweet, or wait—or pay—isn't a paywall anyway.