The Los Angeles Times, seems to be first with the news that at last, there now seems to be some legal opposition , to the California Northern District Federal Court orders against WikiLeakS.org, on behalf of Bank Julius Baer:
Judge is asked to rescind shutdown of Web siteMedia and public interest organizations tell the jurist that his order violates constitutional provisions against prior restraint of free speech.
By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
4:41 PM PST, February 26, 2008A coalition of media and public interest organizations went to federal court in San Francisco today to urge a judge to reconsider shutting down a muckraking Web site that publishes business and government documents leaked from around the world.
Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and several news organizations told U.S. District Jeffrey White that two orders he issued last week to take wikileaks.org off the Internet were a prior restraint on free speech that violated the First Amendment.
"The First Amendment prohibits prior restraints in nearly every circumstance, even where national security may be at risk and even when the source unlawfully obtained the documents," the documents, filed on behalf of 12 media organizations, including The Times, Associated Press , Gannett, Hearst, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Society of Professional Journalists, said.
This must surely be rather more heavyweight legal opposition than Bank Julius Baer and their lawyers Lavely & Singer, were expecting.
[...]Wikileaks.org urges people to post leaked documents in an effort to discourage "unethical behavior" by corporations and government agencies. Matt Zimmerman, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed separate papers asking White to reverse his ruling, said the case posed a key test of free speech on the Internet.
Hopefully the Judge will be able to rule in favour of WikiLeakS.org and to uphold the well established legal prohibitions against "prior restraint" under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
You can read one of the brief, by the Public Citizen and the California First Amendment Coalition:
Press release: Federal Court Should Not Have Shut Down Wikileaks.org, a Web Site for Whistleblowers
Public Citizen and California First Amendment Coalition brief (.pdf 13 pages)
This argues strongly that
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the Federal Court does not even have jurisdiction in a case involving Swiss individual and corporate citizens, involving only Switzerland and the Cayman Islands
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. that both the Domain Name Registrar Dynadot and WikiLeakS.org are "interactive computer services"and are therefore immune from responsibility for the publications of their customers, or users, under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
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WikiLeakS.org is not a business trying to gain commercial advantage, but a non-commercial organisation., so the claims about "business names"do not apply
- Powerful legal precedents forbidding Prior Restraint of publications.
The FACT IS if you trace much of the LOOT it goes back to those who appoint FEDERAL JUDGES and that's Billary and Hill and George and Dick and all those associated with Charles Keating, Kenny Boy, Jack Abramoff, Webster Hubble, Vince Foster and that whole GANG of folks who loot WALL STREET and the Pension Funds and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and those SUB PRIME MORTGAGE GOONS
you all remember the Land Cons and S&L and Bank Lootings of the 1920s. 1940s, 1970s and 1980s HUH
Judson Witham
Whistleblower On STERIODS