Judge to Baer: Stick this stipulation in your secret bank account
dan tynan on Feb 29 2008 at 2:01 pm | Filed under: Da Web, Julius Baer + Wikileaks, Privacy
Since it seems to be All Baer v. WikiLinks, All the Time here at Tynan on Technology, here is the latest on the case, courtesy of CNet’s man on the spot, Declan McCullough:
SAN FRANCISCO–Wikileaks may get its domain name back sooner than later.
A federal judge here has spent 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 are trying to get the site back online–and has not yet reached a decision. Wikileaks, recently hosted on Wikileaks.org, is a whistle-blowing site that focuses on posting leaked documents…..
Updated at 1:42 p.m. PST: The judge has ruled in favor of Wikileaks, saying “the court denies the motion for preliminary injunction and the court hereby dissolves the injunction against Dynadot and the litigation may now proceed.” He said he will issue a written order very soon and said he was 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.”
The judge also said Wikileaks is properly before the court, in part because the domain name holder, an Australian citizen living in Kenya, sent an attorney to court Friday.
One thing that’s clear: the coverage of this story — thanks in part to the rapid (and rabid) spread of it through the blogosphere — had a definite impact on the outcome. In Declan’s story, he writes about how the judge seemed to address some of his comments specifically to the reporters in the room.
It’s unlikely this story would have gotten the mainstream attention, or WikiLeaks would have gotten the legal support from the ACLU, EFF, et al, without it.
