The Short Arm of the Law

A lesson in how the law has yet to catch up to the Internet era is playing out in San Francisco. A federal judge there has ordered the domain registrar for a Web site that allows users to post leaked confidential information in the hopes of "discouraging 'unethical behavior' by corporations and governments, according to a New York Times article. The case involves a former employee for a Cayman Islands bank who provided the Web site (Wikileaks.org) with documents that violated a confidentiality agreement and banking laws. The documents show the bank allegedly involved in money laundering and tax evasion.

While the order has been portrayed as a test of First Amendment rights in the Internet Age (and for the Web site, called ), it's also an example of how unsuitable judicial authority is when it comes to the Internet. As the Times points out:

Judge White ordered [domain registrar] Dynadot to disable the Wikileaks.org address and “lock” it to prevent the organization from transferring the name to another registrar.

The feebleness of the action suggests that the bank, and the judge, did not understand how the domain system works, or how quickly Web communities will move to counter actions they see as hostile to free speech online.

The site itself could still be accessed at its Internet Protocol address (http://88.80.13.160/) â€" the unique number that specifies a Web site’s location on the Internet. Wikileaks also maintained “mirror sites,” or copies usually produced to ensure against failures and this kind of legal action. Some sites were registered in Belgium (http://wikileaks.be/), Germany (http://wikileaks.de) and the Christmas Islands (http://wikileaks.cx) through domain registrars other than Dynadot, and so were not affected by the injunction.

Fans of the site and its mission rushed to publicize those alternate addresses this week. They have also distributed copies of the bank information on their own sites and via peer-to-peer file sharing networks.