Wikileaks Decides: If The US Gov't Won't Create A Real Shield Law, We'll Shield Journalists Instead

Mon, Apr 13th 2009 3:55am

Filed Under:
germany, wikileaks

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Germany's War Against Wikileaks Continues: Deletes German Domain

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

Last month, we were a bit surprised to find out that the German government had raided the home of the guy who had registered Wikileaks.de, the German version of Wikileaks. Now, as a bunch of people have submitted, the German government has pushed the German domain registrar DENIC to delete Wikileaks.de entirely. It really makes you wonder what the government is hoping to accomplish -- because so far, all it's done is call that much more attention to the fact that it seems scared to death of what might appear on Wikileaks (and what will certainly still appear on other versions of Wikileaks -- now with that much more attention).

Wed, Mar 25th 2009 2:59pm

Filed Under:
germany, wikileaks

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German Authorities Raid Home Looking For Wikileaks Info

from the transparency... dept

In just a short while, Wikileaks has proven to be both an amazing resource to reveal useful information and a massive thorn in the side of those who wish that info wasn't revealed (this includes, by the way, Wikileaks itself, which had to deal with some of its own private info that was leaked as well. However, you knew that eventually governments would start to look for ways to "deal" with Wikileaks -- and up first appears to be the German government. Authorities have apparently raided the home of the owner of the Wikileaks.de domain name. The claim is that the raid was supposedly for "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence." The speculation (and, yes, at this point, it's still speculation) is that the raid had to do with Wikileaks recently publishing censored-site lists from various governments, which included certain porn sites those gov't's wanted censored, though it did not include any pornographic material itself.

Politics

Mon, Feb 9th 2009 7:37am

Filed Under:
congress, congressional research service, public domain, wikileaks

Companies:
wikileaks

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Wikileaks Hits The Jackpot With Congressional Research Service

from the transparency-is-the-name-of-the-game dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting the rather impressive fact that Wikileaks now has 6,780 reports from the Congressional Research Service free to download. As the post on Wikileaks notes, CRS reports are technically public domain, but have remained in a quasi-secret state, because CRS only releases them to members of Congress. However, the research reports tend to be considered quite credible, non-partisan, timely and useful. That's often why Congress members don't want them anywhere near the public. However, there have been some members of Congress who recognize what a travesty this is, and have been pushing to make the reports open. You have to wonder if a staffer for one of them is responsible for the "leak."

It's great, then, to see these documents get some well-deserved, and much-needed sunlight. However, the really interesting thing will be what the response is from both Congress and the CRS -- both of whom have mostly fought against any attempts to publicly release the documents. It will also be worth watching whether or not these leaks continue as new CRS research comes out, or if there will be something of a crackdown to try (and inevitably fail) to get this information out there.

Surprises

Thu, Aug 28th 2008 9:13am

Filed Under:
auctions, breaking news, exclusivity, highest bidder, wikileaks

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Wikileaks Tries Auctioning Off Leaked Documents

from the interesting-experiment dept

We've been talking about the variety of new and different business models springing up around investigative reporting, and here's another interesting take on the matter. Wikileaks, the site that's become rather infamous for publishing all sorts of leaked documents is experimenting with auctioning off the latest set of documents its received (in this case, emails from the Venezuelan government). Wikileaks will publish the emails itself eventually, but wants to offer a news organization a chance at the exclusive rights to publish the initial stories on the documents, seeing that as a way to raise money to keep Wikileaks going.

As the folks at Wikileaks point out, it's not all that different than various tabloids paying millions of dollars for "exclusive" photos of some celebrity's new baby. However, with newspapers struggling with their own business models, it's unclear who's really going to cough cash up to get exclusive access to these documents. Also, this model runs all sorts of risks: what if the emails don't really reveal that much of interest? Then you're going to have a pissed off buyer. Plus, the whole obsession with "exclusive" news stories is pretty silly. You can't own the news, and while being first on a story may gain some initial traffic, other news sources will pick up the story pretty quickly themselves.

News You Could Do Without

Wed, May 14th 2008 10:26am

Filed Under:
documents, mormons, scientology, streisand effect, takedowns, wikileaks, wikinews

Companies:
wikileads, wikimedia

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Mormons The Latest To Make Their Secret Documents More Popular By Trying To Take Them Down

from the is-streisand-a-mormon? dept

A couple months ago, in discussing The Streisand Effect with a reporter, the reporter asked if I thought lawyers would one day be accused of malpractice for not informing their clients of the potential implications of demanding some content be pulled off the internet. While I doubt it will reach the point of malpractice, it certainly does make you wonder what some lawyers are thinking when there are such clear examples of what happens when you try to suppress material online. Earlier this year, the lawsuit that brought plenty of new attention to the concept of The Streisand Effect was when a Swiss bank, Julius Baer, convinced a judge to shut down the site Wikileaks for hosting some documents related to a lawsuit Julius Baer was involved in. Of course, not surprisingly, the attempt to shut down Wikileaks got those documents much more attention (and did the same for Wikileaks as well). Eventually, the judge reversed the order and Julius Baer dropped the lawsuit. But the end result showed how badly the strategy backfired on Julius Baer. Before it demanded the documents be taken down, almost no one saw the documents or even knew that the bank was involved in a case that accused of it laundering money. Afterwards, a lot more people knew about the lawsuit and had seen the documents -- and they were still online.

That situation got so much publicity, you would think that anyone would think twice about going down the same path. No such luck. Last month, Scientology threatened Wikileaks for hosting Scientology documents, and this morning (as a whole bunch of folks have sent in) news is coming out that the Mormon Church is threatening Wikileaks as well, for hosting church documents. In this case, the Mormon Church isn't just going after Wikileaks, but also threatened the WikiMedia foundation and document hosting site Scribd. It went after WikiMedia because WikiNews ran an article about the document and linked to them (which is hardly copyright infringement). Scribd was apparently hosting a copy of the documents as well (since taken down). Wikileaks, however, true to its charter, is refusing to take down the documents.

While you can understand why the Church might not like it's documents being made public, it does seem ridiculous that whoever decided to start threatening everyone didn't do the most basic research to recognize what would happen as soon as they threatened sites. Given what happened with Julius Baer, it should have been abundantly clear that threatening Wikileaks would almost guarantee that the documents were both more widely seen than before and copied widely across the internet.

Wed, Mar 5th 2008 4:34pm

Filed Under:
streisand effect, wikileaks

Companies:
julius baer, wikileaks

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Bank Julius Baer Drops Lawsuit Against Wikileaks

from the well-that-was-productive dept

The Swiss firm Bank Julius Baer learned all about the Streisand Effect last week, after somehow convincing a judge to force Wikileaks offline for hosting a document that they objected to (most likely because it alleged corruption and fraud on the part of the bank). However, in forcing the entire site offline, the whole thing got a lot more attention, raising free speech concerns, and the judge eventually put the site back online. While the bank claims that it never intended to have the whole site shut down, people pointed out that it certainly didn't rush to court to tell the judge to leave it up. Well, now that Wikileaks and the specific documents in question have been all over the news (as opposed to before, when almost no one knew they existed), Bank Julius Baer, tail between its legs, has dropped the lawsuit against Wikileaks. One more lesson for overly aggressive lawyers to think about the consequences of certain actions, rather than just launching lawsuits because they can.

Too Much Free Time

Fri, Feb 29th 2008 6:29pm

Filed Under:
all things considered, npr, streisand effect, wikileaks

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All Streisand Effects Considered

from the drive-time-radio dept

The Streisand Effect is getting a bit more coverage these days. After the Associated Press mentioned it the other day, I got to sit down and talk with Robert Siegel for today's "All Things Considered" where we discussed The Streisand Effect starting with the Wikileaks case and moving on to some other cases where the Effect clearly made an appearance. If this keeps up, maybe we can look forward to a day when lawyers think twice about trying to force perfectly legitimate content offline.

Fri, Feb 29th 2008 2:34pm

Filed Under:
streisand effect, wikileaks

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Judge Reverses Order, Allows Wikileaks To Live Again

from the well-that-was-productive dept

A couple weeks after trying to shut down Wikileaks a federal judge in California, after hearing the various first amendment concerns realized that perhaps he was a bit hasty. He has now reversed the order, allowing the site to have its domain name back. So, after all of this, the site still remains up and millions more people now know that the Swiss bank Julius Baer tried to shut it down to hide various documents. The end result: not only is the disputed content still available, many more people have seen it. I assume that this was not quite how the bank's lawyers expected this situation to turn out.

News You Could Do Without

Thu, Feb 28th 2008 3:17pm

Filed Under:
streisand effect, wikileaks

Companies:
julius baer

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Julius Baer Defends Wikileaks Shut Down; Digs A Deeper Hole

from the backed-into-a-corner... dept

The "Wikileaks" shutdown situation continues. The Associated Press covered the story late yesterday, noting how Julius Baer's lawyers were apparently unfamiliar with the concept of the Streisand Effect, and how the attempt to get Wikileaks taken offline would only get it -- and the content the company was trying to hide -- a lot more attention. Today, Julius Baer has finally made a statement on the matter, claiming a variety of contradictory things. It says that it didn't want the entire site taken offline, but hasn't asked the court to reverse its order shutting down the site. As Slashdot points out, the bank also seems to be claiming that the controversial documents in question need to be taken offline both because they're forged and also because they reveal confidential info. While it is possible that a forged document would also have some legitimate confidential info, it does seem like a strange defense to bring up both of these things. At the very least, it certainly seems like the bank keeps digging itself a deeper and deeper hole. If it really was afraid that having this content out there would make things worse in its ongoing legal battles, things seem a lot worse now as many more people are aware of the documents.

Wed, Feb 27th 2008 1:58am

Filed Under:
aclu, eff, first amendment, free speech, public citizen, wikileaks

Companies:
aclu, eff, public citizen

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Various Rights Group Fight Back Against The Wikileaks Injunction

from the standing-up-for-freedom-of-speech dept

Last week, the decision by a California court to have a registrar attempt to force Wikileaks offline got plenty of attention -- not the least of which was because the injunction had no impact on the site's IP address: 88.80.13.160. Yet, much more troubling were the implications concerning why a judge in California would try to take down an entire site because of complaints from a Swiss bank about just a few documents on the site concerning a lawsuit in Switzerland. Now it appears that plenty of organizations who fight for various civil rights have shown up to file briefs against this questionable ruling.

Paul Alan Levy, of the group, Public Citizen, writes in to let us know: "We at Public Citizen are concerned with the First Amendment and the issue of prior restraint, but in attacking the orders we decided to focus on some more technical issues that neither the lawyers in the case nor, apparently, the judge had noticed. Thus, earlier today, along with the California First Amendment Coalition, we filed a brief pointing out that the case did not even qualify for federal court jurisdiction because there are subjects of foreign states on both sides of the case -- the Swiss bank on one side, and Wikileaks, many of whose members are abroad, on the other side. In addition, we point out that the main cause of action on which the bank relied, section 17200 of the California Business and Professions Code, applies only to unfair or unlawful "business practices" and hence does not apply to completely non-commercial web sites like Wikileaks. Our brief is discussed on the Citizen Vox blog, and in this press release.

A brief attacking the injunction on First Amendment grounds was also filed today by a coalition of media organizations. Finally, the ACLU of Northern California and EFF have also filed a brief arguing against the decision on First Amendment grounds."

Surprises

Mon, Feb 18th 2008 1:11pm

Filed Under:
california, takedown, wikileaks

Companies:
julius baer, wikileaks