All across Europe, from Brussels to the Balkans, a new generation of WikiLeaks-style websites is sprouting.

Like their forerunner, the fledgling whistle-blowing sites are a chaotic mixture of complex systems engineering, earnest campaigning, muckraking and self-promotion.

And though their goals are varied, the activists behind the sites told Reuters that they share one major concern: they all vow not to repeat mistakes they believe were made by Julian Assange, the controversial WikiLeaks creator.

The proliferation of websites to encourage, facilitate and shelter leakers is so anarchic that two aspiring anti-corporate leak sites are both claiming rights to the rubric “GreenLeaks” and muttering about legal consequences if the other side doesn’t back down.

The most closely watched rollout in the leak-hosting world was the launch on Thursday of OpenLeaks.org, a site whose principal creator, German transparency activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg, was once Assange’s closest collaborator.

Domscheit-Berg, who used the pseudonym “Daniel Schmitt” as Assange’s official WikiLeaks co-spokesman, says he doesn’t believe, as Assange initially did, that confidential material should just be dumped on the Internet. The bare-bones mission statement posted on OpenLeaks describes Domscheit-Berg’s vision as both a safe-deposit box and a social networking site for leakers and their consumers.

Other WikiLeaks copycats, spinoffs and wannabes are germinating: activists say they have learned of recent launches of leak-accepting websites focused on specialized topics or regions — from Russia and the European Union bureaucracy to international trade and the pharmaceutical industry.

Major news organizations are also moving to establish web-based mechanisms for receiving leaks directly, such as electronic “drop boxes” which would enable leakers to feed the media outlets directly, cutting out middlemen like Assange.

“THE ARCHITECT”

The most ambitious and potentially far-reaching WikiLeaks spinoff to surface this week is Domscheit-Berg’s OpenLeaks, which its founder describes as a mechanism both for putting together leakers with knowledgeable recipients and for linking leak-consuming organizations to each other.

“COUNTERINTELLIGENCE FOR THE EARTH”

Of more immediate interest to oil, mining and other natural resources industries might be the launch of two websites which say they intend to become conduits for corporate insiders wanting to blow the whistle on environmental abuses.

But the race to set up environmentally-oriented websites under the rubric “GreenLeaks” became slightly toxic earlier this week when groups of activists in Denmark and Germany, who say they have been working independently for months on creating infrastructures in cyberspace and assembling networks of lawyers and experts to process leaks, learned of each others’ existence.

“EZ-PASS FOR LEAKERS”

At least one other website channeling purported insider disclosures on green issues, called EnviroLeaks.org, is also up and running, though much of its initial fare consisted of re-posting State Department cables already released by WikiLeaks. More original — and arcane — are recent launches such as balkanLeaks.eu and brusselsleaks.com, which deal, respectively, with scandals in countries like Bulgaria and in the European Union bureaucracy. (BalkanLeaks’ content appears to be mainly a one-page manifesto.)

Meanwhile, one prominent media outlet which has had a productive, though tempestuous relationship with Assange and the original WikiLeaks, is brainstorming whether it might be possible to cut out the middleman entirely and establish a secure channel for leakers to feed stuff to it directly.