Leaky Little Wiki-Boat Still Floating Despite Judge's Orders
1fastdog.
Posted to Legal on Thu Feb 21, 2008 at 02:00:55 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
Well, if this case shows nothing else, it certainly shows that the courts aren't up to speed in the digital world. The whistleblowing site, Wikileaks, is still up and running despite Judge Jeffrey S. White's order that it be shut down over the publication of bank documents exposing the bank's money laundering and tax evasion schemes.
Judge White's order has raised quite a few eyebrows over its (mis)handling of "prior restraint" and the apparent squashing of the First Amendment:
Federal District Court Judge Jeffrey White ordered Wikileaks's domain name registrar to disable its Web address. That was akin to shutting down a newspaper because of objections to one article. The First Amendment requires the government to act only in the most dire circumstances when it regulates free expression.Julius Baer Bank and Trust, a Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank, sued Wikileaks charging that it had illegally posted documents stolen by a former employee. The site said the documents "allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures" for money laundering, tax evasion and other misdeeds.
The lawsuit and the corresponding judicial orders have come back to bite both the bank, and Judge White on the ass, as the operators of Wikileaks have strategically placed their servers in many locations beyond the reach of US judges. The ordered shuttering of Wikileaks only served to foster plenty of attention on the judge, the bank, and all the related documentation that was in dispute - surely not the outcome envisioned by the court or the bank. Wikileaks, in addition to having its own secure servers scattered here and there, is also being hosted by the same folks who run The Pirate Bay, and they're not exactly shaking in their boots:
"We have the usual small army of stupid lawyers that think we will piss our pants because they send us a scary letter," Svartholm said in a telephone interview. "We do employ our own legal staff. We are used to this sort of situation."
As of now - and most likely in the future as well - the judge's order is not only being ignored, it's being flouted and laughed at, as well. With the increasing ubiquity of all things being digitized and served up instantaneously, will this serve as a wake-up call to the courts that they must update their thought processes to reflect the present - and future - days?
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