Last Friday, California district court judge White granted an injunction to a Cayman Island bank effectively stripping the whistle blowing website, Wikileaks.org of their First Amendment rights. Is there any wonder why the rest of the world looks at the United States and laughs?
Last Friday, California district court judge White granted an injunction to a Cayman Island bank effectively stripping the whistle blowing website, Wikileaks.org of their First Amendment rights.
“When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret censorship lists of Thailand's military Junta, no-one was too surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which states "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press", the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown.” – Wikileaks.org press release
The events leading up to the injunction are nothing but a political game. The bank, Julius Baer, wrote the injunction and filed it. Without any amendment or representations by Wikileaks or amicus, Judge White issued the order. “Dynadot [Wikileaks web host] shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court,” the order reads.
Apparently, the Communications Decency Act was something Judge White forgot about. The CDA is another name for Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The section most relevant to this article is Section 230(c) (1). Section 230 says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
With that pointed out, how was the judge able to force the web host to lift a finger? More importantly, why was the First Amendment stripped because a bank was twitchy over a single document posted to Wikileaks?
“Today I received a message explaining that a California court has granted an injunction written and requested by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers. It [would seem], that the bank is trying to keep the public from accessing documents that may reveal shady dealings. Wikileaks was only given a couple of hours notice “by email” and was not even represented at the hearing where a U.S. judge took such a drastic step; attempting to totally shut down an important information outlet. The result was this totally unprecedented attempt to wipe out the existence of Wikileaks,” reports Stephen Soldz.
The comical part is that while this is a violation of Wikileaks First Amendment rights and a violation to the CDA, Wikileaks is still alive and well. The site is still online, and available through several “cover names.” The U.S. website is available as well, via IP Address only. (88.80.13.160/wiki)
What happens now is the start of the Streisand effect. The viral movement that will boost Wikileaks into front-page news and the Cayman bank document will be seen by more people than might have originally seen it.
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