Gagged by a lawyer
A Caymans Islands financial institution, the Julius Baer bank, has taken some Scientology-like steps to have controversial content taken down from the Net. Wikileaks.org, a whistle-blowing web site published a secret internal bank document which purportedly details how the bank helps their customers hide assets and launder cash.
The bank got Dynadot, the California-based hosting company for Wikileaks, to not only take down the site, but also to "lock" the domain name, keeping Wikileaks from moving the site elsewhere. They then got a Northern California judge to sign off on the agreement between the bank and the hosting company. All of this was done ex parte, without giving Wikileaks a chance to respond. Their site is still down.
I have always been worried about this kind of thing, specifically the usage of domain names as a club to batter small and relatively powerless organizations into submission. Shame on Dynadot (is that a real name?). The ICANN-accredited domain name registrar rolled over far too easily.
I understand why someone who didn't like something that someone said on a website would want it taken down. But shoving a lawyer down someone's throat is an elitist way to gag someone. When the Internet was decentralized, this kind of stunt would have been almost impossible. I blame ICANN for not stomping the registrar.
Posted on February 19, 2008
