Christian Science Monitor says closing down WikiLeaks will probably have reverse effect:
The Christian Science Monitor
February 22, 2008
Oakland, Calif.
By Ben Arnoldy
...the Julius Baer Bank sought an injunction against Wikileaks, a website that anonymously publishes whistleblower documents, for posting papers purporting to show money laundering and tax evasion schemes at the bank's Cayman Islands branch. A federal district judge late last week took the unusual step of shutting down the entire site instead of removing just the bank's documents.
What followed was an explosion of interest in the relatively obscure website, with many online activists helping to redirect curious eyes to alternative sites. where the content had been reinstated.
"I think we are seeing the limits of a jurisdiction-based judicial system as it faces a relatively borderless Internet," says David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project, a Harvard-linked group advocating for free speech.
The court orders are stunningly broad, he says, and suggest a lack of seriousness about the First Amendment...
If this kind of order had been given in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, says Mr. Ardia, the court would be ordering the Teamsters to park their trucks and permanently refuse to deliver any copies of The New York Times...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0222/p02s02-usgn.html
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