Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor
Wikileaks is back in business. In the face of widespread media attention and action from rights groups, a federal judge on Friday reversed his decision to shut down the whistle-blower Web site.
"It is clear that in all but the most exceptional circumstances, an injunction restricting speech pending final resolution of the constitutional concerns is impermissible," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco.
Ban Was Ineffective
Swiss bank Julius Baer filed a legal complaint and, after an initial review, White ordered Dynadot, a California Web-hosting company, to "immediately clear and remove" records from Wikileaks and "prevent the domain name from resolving to the Wikileaks.org Web site or any other Web site or server other than a blank page" until he could undertake a closer review.
Wikileaks.org allowed anonymous posting of documents, including those disclosing U.S. Army operations at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba; human-rights abuses in China; and political corruption in Kenya. But when documents from the Swiss bank showed up, that marked the beginning of a new look at First Amendment law.
Free-speech and privacy advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, objected to the takedown. The judge's order was largely ineffective because versions of the site hosted throughout the world remained online and even the Wikileaks site itself was still available at its numerical address.
The Judge Went Too Far
According to Mark G. McCreary, an attorney with Fox Rothschild LLP in Philadelphia, it appears the judge acknowledged that the injunction went too far by including the
entire Web site, rather than just the complained-about documents. However, for all the headlines about Wikileaks' reprieve, he doesn't sees a deeper story.
From McCreary's perspective, the most interesting aspect of the case so far is how the Internet community responded to the takedown by mirroring the Web site elsewhere and posting the controversial Swiss bank documents across the Web. Most people dismissingly comment that the "virtual world" has no real effect on the real world, he said, but this was a real-world example of the consequences of actions in the virtual world.
Think Before You Complain
McCreary's point is that businesses too often fail to consider whether the steps they take to thwart information on the Web will end up putting them in a worse position than the information itself.
While noting he only has limited information on the Wikileaks case, McCreary said he saw nothing that put the bank under any duty to have the leaked information taken down. Instead, he said, the bank is getting international attention it doesn't want.
"What attention would there have been to these documents if the posting just remained, untouched, on Wikileaks.org?" McCreary asked. "It makes you wonder if anyone in the decision-making process in this case asked that question. What would the story have been if the injunction covered only the complained-about documents? This occurrence may be yet another example of pigs getting fat and hogs getting slaughtered."
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