Freedom Rings on WikiLeaks.org

A San Francisco, California, Federal District Court judge rescinds a ban on website WikiLeaks.org.  The controversial website was imposed after a Swiss Bank opposed the posting of internal bank documents on the site.  Previously, the court had deactivated the domain name which is the equivalent to pulling the life line to an internet website.  Wikileaks permits third parties to post corporate and government documents that they believe expose wrongdoing. It is a platform designed for whistleblowers to make their claims public.

The lawsuit began when Swiss bank Julius Baer filed suit against Wikileaks for hosting allegedly leaked documents regarding personal banking transactions of Julius Baer customers. Also sued was Wikileaks' domain name registrar, Dynadot LLC. On February 15, 2008, following a stipulation between Julius Baer and Dynadot, the court issued a permanent injunction, disabling the wikileaks.org domain name and preventing that domain name from being transferred to any other registrar.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) moved to intervene in the case, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). In a hearing in federal court , EFF and its fellow interveners argued that the order infringed on the First Amendment rights of Internet users who have an interest in accessing material of public concern on the site.

Ruling from the bench, Judge Jeffrey White cited concerns about the First Amendment, the effectiveness of disabling the wikileaks.org domain name, and the courts own jurisdiction over the case as reasons to dissolve his previous orders.  In addition to dissolving the permanent injunction, which permits the wikileaks.org domain name to be reactivated, the court also declined to extend a previous temporary restraining order requiring Wikileaks to disable access to 14 disputed Julius Baer documents.

The EFF issued the following comment regarding the decision:

"We're very pleased that Judge White recognized the serious constitutional concerns raised by his earlier orders," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "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. 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."