republican judge

This reminds me of a case in Austin in 1990. Lloyd Blankenship of Steve Jackson Games had a BBS on which someone had posted a text document containing information about the emergency 911 system. But all it contained were administrative contacts and the document was already available to the public by request directly from BellSouth. Anyway, the secret service raided Steve Jackson's office and Blankenship's home (pulled him out of bed at gunpoint, if I recall) with an unsigned search warrant, lied about the reason behind the raid, confiscated everything and held it for months, almost driving them out of business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games%2C_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service#The_raid

The aftermath of the raid--besides a $300,000 judgement against the secret service--was the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, heroes in the ATT warrantless wiretap story (and others). I predict that shutting down wikileaks will just cause 20 new wikileak sites to pop up around the world.

Hey Judge - the Horese ia already out of the barn - no use in closing the doors now.

Wikileaks is one of the best things that has happened for investigative journalism in years and years. This is an outrage.

according to Boingboing.net, the only thing taken down at the moment is the DNS information.

The site itself is still up and running at their IP address:

http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks

According to their quote from Daily Kos, Wikileaks was only notified by email and was not represented at the hearing.

ref:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/18/california-judge-shu.html

Silly me. I did not realize I lived in mainland CHINA.

The whistleblower site is new to me, but is yet another reason why corporations and Republicans on the Federal Communications Commission are trying so damned hard to turn the internet over to the telecom industries.

But, on the other hand, we've lately seen Sen. Rockerfeller (D.), reveal his true colors and vote to grant immunity to the telecom industry (having before that putting up a front that he was opposed to it).

You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

Did the bank or the judge intend to publicize this information? Even if they were in a hurry what was done seems the best possible way to ensure that the information never disappears from the net. I suppose it is just as well they haven't learned.

You can still find what has already been posted on Wikileaks on the internet archive (way back machine at www.web.archive.org) which is a pretty sweet resource to find pages which have been changed, deleted or censored). not sure how complete it is, but it's a start

http://web.archive.org/web/20070114162346/http://www.wikileaks.org/index.html

I wasn't a fan but see this as an initial threat on the part of the bank to litigate non-complying parties into actions, but that is not how the web works, tomorrow the site will be back, and the web will continue to outpace the bank's ability to litigate against it.

I imagine this is a websites dream come true, free advertisement where the bank is the villian, imagine that?

I wonder if the bank has considered the PR implications of this move or if the decision was made in a small closed group?

After reviewing the order, it is clear that the injunction was issued by stipulation and it only applies to Dynadot the hosting provider. Dynadot just rolled over on this and agreed to shut wikileaks down. The court, at least in the posted order, made no orders against wikileaks.

They think that they can just shut the website down? They're not very good at the internet.

Wikileaks has its own page about the injunction at http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction.

ORDER GRANTING PERMANENT INJUNCTION

BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD, a
Swiss entity; and JULIUS BAER BANK
AND TRUST CO. LTD, a Cayman Island
entity,

WIKILEAKS, an entity of unknown form;
WIKILEAKS.ORG, an entity of unknown
form; DYNADOT, LLC, a California
limited liability company; and DOES 1
through 10, inclusive,

[..]

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:

[..]

Dynadot 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.

Heh. My reaction to judge Jeffrey White's absurd ruling provoked me to making a $150 donation to Wikileaks. For that donation I get a copy of Daniel Ellsberg's book, "Secrets: Memoirs of the Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers". Figgered it was the least I could do. --jzap

http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks:Donate

The court documents show that no lawyer has stepped forward to defend Wikileaks in the case, and that Wikileaks did not respond to Julius Baer's legal filings, including the original complaint, which was filed February 8th.

In fairness to Wikileaks, you should mention Wikileaks' own explanation for its lack of appearance at the hearing:

From its site:

Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney's in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice "by email" prior to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

Speculation by Steve Aftergood notwithstanding, Wikileaks first party explanation paints the situation in a significantly different light.

So what? Obviously environmental groups have the right to sue, just as any individual or group has the right to sue against harm done to public and common interest. That was formally established over a century ago. If he had ruled against that he'd be on the losing side and would forever be tarred with the left and middle

That doesn't negate him being very Republican on high finance, legitimizing predatory practices and even money laundering and tax evasion. And he's apparently anti-free speech and journalism when they collide with the finance industry.

Sounds like a Bush appointed Republican judge to me.

I have been watching Wikileaks for the eventual breaks regarding 9/11 -I also expect to see the interrogation "tapes" there at some point as well.
Who knows what else we will see there. Wikileaks has the potential to be extremely important in the future. It and sites like it will replace the "news" as we currently know it.