Wikileaks returns after judge overturns own injunction

By Ed Oswald | Published March 3, 2008, 11:34 AM

Whistleblower site Wikileaks has been allowed to reopen after the judge reversed his own decision to block it within the United States.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White cited First Amendment issues and legal jurisdiction questions as his reasoning for removing the injunction. This could be viewed as a win for both the site and the free speech advocates who saw it as too broad a ruling.

Instead of just ordering Wikileaks to remove Swiss bank Julius Baer & Company's confidential information, he chose to disable the entire site in mid-February. White said he questioned whether the legal remedies sought by the bank "would be constitutionally appropriate."

The decision came as part of a hearing on Friday which centered around whether or not to make the injunction permanent. Both the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation had filed motions in court to have the ban overturned, which also gained support from traditional media outlets.

White said that the ban could essentially be rendered meaningless, especially considering that other sites were mirroring the information well before the court order.

"Attempting to interfere with the operation of an entire website because you have a dispute over some of its content is never the right approach," EFF attorney Matt Zimmerman said. "Disabling access to an Internet domain in an effort to prevent the world from accessing a handful of widely-discussed documents is not only unconstitutional -- it simply won't work."

It's not clear whether Wikileaks had returned under new hosting. As part of its agreement with Julius Baer, Wikileaks' old host Dynadot agreed to shut down the site in exchange for being removed from the lawsuit.

Wikileaks was back online Monday morning, but it was unknown whether it was still with Dynadot.

Julius Baer had no immediate public comment on Friday's news.

Comments

View comments by with a score of at least

DEFEND WIKILEAKS, SIGN THE PLEDGE: http://www.pledgebank.com/defend-wl

Score: 0

|

Great. Freedom of Speech is THE foundation. Not to be messed with.

Score: 0

|

A simple Whois search say's that they are with dreamhost now.

Score: 0

|

Google's value proposition for Chrome OS: Should we feel insulted?

Scott Fulton On Point: For a search engine that has direct access to all the world's online history, it appears to have taught Google nothing about selling a machine.

Sony looks to finally open a single storefront for downloads

Sony has had many different download portals for movies, music, e-books, and games, and now it's looking to make a single shop for all of it.

PDC 2009: What have we learned this week?

There was the freebie that no one will forget, the heebie-jeebies courtesy of Scott Guthrie, and a teensy bit clearer picture of how this cloud thingie should work.

Tuning out the tablet: Time to give the endless speculation a rest

Wide Angle Zoom: Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying....won't put an iTablet on the market.

Microsoft's .NET Micro Framework is now free and open source

The latest version of Microsoft's .NET Micro framework is now in the hands of the FOSS community.

E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season

E-readers are hot this year, and a lot of compelling new products have been released, but are there enough electrophoretic displays to go around?

Five improvements for IT managers in 2010

If businesses are to improve their efficiency for next year, they need to stop and reassess the basic tenets of their job.

Live report: Will Google Chrome OS change Linux?

The mysteries of just what Chrome OS is, and how much of an operating system it truly is, may be resolved today.

AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs

As AOL moves toward become an independent company again, it will cut nearly a third of its workforce.

PDC 2009: Microsoft cares about Web browser performance

The effort to give users of the world's dominant Web browser the impression of quality, is a personal one for the man who leads that battle.

Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of

Maemo won't necessarily be replacing Symbian in the Nokia N-Series, but that's definitely a place where it will be found.