WIKILEAKS: Name of its US DOMAIN restored to legal use Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:57:40 -0600 (CST) http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9883240-38.html?tag=newsmap The Iconoclast February 29, 2008 12:00 PM PST JUDGE: WIKILEAKS GETS ITS DOMAIN NAME BACK SAN FRANCISCO--Wikileaks is getting its domain name back. After spending 90 minutes or so hearing arguments from a raft of attorneys--two representing the Swiss bank that fought to get the site's plug pulled and about 10 who have been trying to get the site back online--a federal judge here has ruled in favor of Wikileaks. Wikileaks, recently hosted on Wikileaks.org, is a whistle-blowing site that focuses on posting leaked documents. "The court denies the motion for preliminary injunction, and the court hereby dissolves the injunction against (domain name registrar) Dynadot, and the litigation may now proceed," said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who had called a brief recess around 11:40 a.m. PST, indicating that he was inclined to revisit his order from earlier this month that effectively pulled the plug on the Wikileaks.org domain name. White said he will issue a written order very soon and added that he is skeptical that an injunction would survive free-speech scrutiny: "There are serious questions about prior restraint, possible violations of the First Amendment, which the court can make no definitive findings about at this point." Public Citizen attorney Paul Levy, who had asked to intervene in the case on behalf of Wikileaks, speaks to reporters outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco after the judge hands down his ruling. "The court has the obligation to get it right," White had told attorneys for Bank Julius Baer, or BJB, earlier Friday. "I took an obligation to uphold the Constitution. The court has its own obligation to raise these issues. Contrary to what you say, my obligation is to look down the road and see where this thing is going." From the bank's perspective, it sued Wikileaks in federal court in California because the registrar, Dynadot, is located here. (Wikileaks alleges that the documents in question show that the bank supports the "ultrarich's offshore tax avoidance, tax evasion, asset hiding, and money laundering.") But a host of free-speech groups, including Public Citizen, the California First Amendment Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Project on Government Oversight, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, requested to intervene in the case on behalf of Wikileaks. They threw down a series of legal land mines against BJB, including that Wikileaks can't be sued in a U.S. court by a foreign company because it consists of foreigners; that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act prevents any action against Dynadot; that the First Amendment prohibits an overly broad attack against a Web site just to delete a subset of pages; that Dynadot cannot refuse to transfer the domain name to another registrar; and so on. Some of the filings amounted to an implicit criticism of White, who granted the allegedly First Amendment-problematic order in the first place. So the first thing White did on Friday was defend himself--more to the half dozen reporters in the back of the room than to the attorneys. "The parties need to understand, and those in this courtroom need to understand, the status of this case," White said. "This is a case in which we had a (dispute) with named parties, and the parties were duly served. One of which properly responded and came to this court with a proposed settlement in this lawsuit...Nobody filed any timely responses to the court's order." While giving his ruling, White explained that the case is properly in his jurisdiction, in part because the domain name holder, an Australian citizen living in Kenya, sent an attorney to court Friday. One attorney for BJB said there were no First Amendment problems, invoking a U.S. Supreme Court precedent dealing with an intercepted conversation played by a radio station because, "We allege, your honor, that Wikileaks has actively solicited the theft of private information...they are participants in the illegality." BJB also said, "We're talking about private banking information, account numbers, personal numbers like Social Security numbers...all this is private information that's not newsworthy...None of the publishers here today would want their own banking information posted on the Internet." The judge's preruling reply: "Let me play devil's advocate here. Is it newsworthy if some prominent citizen is...evading taxes, laundering funds? Wouldn't that be something in the public interest?" ########## http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/post.html JUDGE ALLOWS WIKILEAKS TO RESUME U.S. OPERATIONS; GENIE 'OUT OF THE BOTTLE' February 29, 2008 | 4:37:36 SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge on Friday allowed whistle-blower site WikiLeaks to resume operation in the United States, a week after ordering its hosting company and domain registrar to shut down and lock the renegade's site from the internet. The judge conceded the futility of attempts to censor information, in this instance private banking records, after it has been posted to the internet. "When this genie gets out of the bottle, it's out for all purposes," U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said after a more than 3-hour-long hearing here. Earier, White said he had "an obligation to get it right" and that "I took an oath to uphold the Constitution." White signed an order last week that effectively took down the WikiLeaks site in the United States and also locked "the WikiLeaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar." WikiLeaks, a whistle-blower site publishing thousands of leaked documents, was taken offline in the United States after posting allegedly stolen documents: individuals' banking records that suggest a Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank was helping customers practice money laundering and tax evasion across the globe. Dynadot -- WikiLeaks' U.S. hosting company and domain registrar based in San Mateo, California -- agreed to take down and lock the site at the behest of Julius Baer Bank and Trust. Judge White, appointed by the second President Bush, signed off on the deal last week. The judge held a hearing here Friday to reconsider his initial decision because federal law required it, and because he was having second thoughts. "There are serious questions of prior restraint, possible violations of the First Amendment," he said. The site should resume U.S. operations perhaps as early as today, according to Dynadot's attorney, Garret Murai. Its overseas servers were not affected by the litigation. The judge heard arguments from the bank, which said no First Amendment rights were being implicated, WikiLeaks' domain name owner and a host of media and civil rights organizations that derided the judge's intitial order as an unconstitutional "prior restraint" on speech. The judge seemed to agree with the media and rights groups. About 30 minutes into the hearing, White said the case concerned "very important issues" and "the court does not want to be a part of any order that is not constitutional." Murai, Dynadot's attorney, told the judge the company was not inserting itself in the battle. "Dynadot's position, your honor, we are not taking a position on the merits of the litigation. We're willing to comply with any order the court issues." Evan Spiegel, one of the banks two attorneys at the hearing, said the bank "wanted nothing more" than for WikiLeaks to take down the documents in question. "That's been the point of the bank all along," he said. He added that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not afford the right to publish private banking information. The media groups, however, contended that the American courts had no authority to order WikiLeaks to remove published material -- a term of art known as "prior restraint." The media argued that the bank's "remedy" is to seek damages from WikiLeaks. Still, the judge cautioned that he is likely to toss the entire case. He said the American courts may not be the proper venue for a Swiss bank to sue the WikiLeaks.org domain name owner -- John Shipton, an Australian citizen living in Kenya. The judge added that the bank "should take a breath" and consider whether it wishes to continue pursuing the litigation, especially because the genie is out of the bottle. ######## In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell