WikiLeaks And Dynadot Sued

[Dave_Z]

I was just going through Wikipedia to look up something when I caught this bit
at their "news" section:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/'Wikile...ne_in_many_areas_after_fire,_court_injunction

The website WikiLeaks.org has been taken off line in many parts of the world. Wikileaks is a website dedicated to leaking documents that are "anonymous, untraceable, uncensorable."

Looked up the complainant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Baer_Group

In 2008, Bank Julius Baer sued WikiLeaks and its domain registrar for the wikileaks.org domain name, Dynadot, allegedly because of leaks claiming illegal activities at the bank's Cayman Island branch. On February 18, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a permanent injunction against Dynadot forcing it to "lock the wikileaks.org domain name".

Then saw this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks

Dynadot was further ordered to "immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court." The injunction was based on a stipulation between Bank Julius Baer and Dynadot and dismissed the suit against Dynadot.

While no doubt some people won't feel good about Dynadot's stipulation here,
remember that no registrar is willing to take your legal risks over a $7 to $10
a year contract. It's not really good business sense to do so.

 

[IAmAllanShore]

Agreed that $7 to $10 isn't worth the risk for one year (And they only see $1 - $4 of that, max) - but multiply that times the domainer portfolio, and the number of years the domains are registered there...

Dangerous ground on which wikileaks tread, but it was incredibly interesting, to say the least.

Nice find, Dave.

Curious - from today's WIPO - was there one that jumped out at you as particularly interesting? I loved one of them... for once a panelist with cajones </threadjack>.
http://www.namepros.com/legal-issue...ing-udrp-panelist-realizes-most-powerful.html

-Allan :gl:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7250916.stm

 

[Ronald Regging]

This whole business of suppressing speech by circumventing the proper channels is an abomination of the law. The owner of the site is in Sweden, and the bank is Swiss... How the hell does California have jurisdiction over the issue? Oh wait, thats right, the registrar at which he happened to register the domain is in California....

So instead of actually going to court FOR THE ISSUE, they just pull a bunch of strings and a few backroom deals and problem solved. No one even looked at the evidence or weighed the legality of the speech.

Maybe it's just me... But I think registrars should be more than happy to fight a few of these cases in order to establish some precedence for the future. Otherwise, they're going to continue getting dragged into theses messes and continue to create a negative image for themselves in the eyes of customers.

Also, I just read that they ordered their hosting company to release all of the files as well. This means that everyone who posted "anonymous" information is now completely exposed...

 

[Dave_Z]

So instead of actually going to court FOR THE ISSUE

Not sure, but it looks like they actually did (one of the links):

http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/julius-baer-bank-and-trust-v-wikileaks

On February 6, 2008, Julius Baer Bank and Trust Company, a Cayman Islands banking entity, filed suit in federal court in California against Wikileaks

There's another thread around here where Moniker fought a court case. Don't
know what's the outcome, though.

Whether a registrar should fight a court case is only for them to decide. They
are the ones spending the costs just to represent themselves, and there's no
way to recoup that unless, say, they pass that on to their customers...

Actually I haven't checked the latest UDRPs, Allan. Doing that after this...

 

[labrocca]

Too bad there are no mirrors. I would love to start obtaining cheap domains and using free hosts to mass create sites to display the wiki.

Let's see what they do when it's hundreds of domains, registrars, hosts, countries, and sites.

 

[Alan Glennon]

There are many wikileaks mirrors. Here's a link to several dozen:

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names

Too bad there are no mirrors. I would love to start obtaining cheap domains and using free hosts to mass create sites to display the wiki.

Let's see what they do when it's hundreds of domains, registrars, hosts, countries, and sites.

 

[Auraka]

Umm...dynadot caved when they shouldn't have and now they have a precedence. If you have valuable domains or websites you should know that Dynadot will suspend your domain to get out of fighting a court battle that didn't concern them in the first place.

 

[Dave_Z]

Umm...dynadot caved when they shouldn't have and now they have a precedence. If you have valuable domains or websites you should know that Dynadot will suspend your domain to get out of fighting a court battle that didn't concern them in the first place.

Unfortunately this can happen with any registrar. The registrar might or might
not fight it depending on how mild or severe the legal issue is, even if they're
actually able to afford it.