A federal judge in San Francisco recently closed down Wikileaks.org, a Web site specializing in the disclosure of confidential information. Apparently, a Cayman Islands bank, Julius Baer Bank and Trust, sued Wikileaks because a former employee posted on the site some secret internal documents it claimed were purloined from the bank. According to Wikileaks, the documents revealed alleged "trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion."
The court, by way of permanent injunction, ordered the Internet "registrar" to disable the Web address and lock it down to prevent transfer to another registrar. But the Web site remained available at its IP address and at "mirror" sites registered abroad. Meanwhile, Wikileaks' lawyers were preparing an attack on the court's order as a "prior restraint" of speech, analogous to the 1971 Pentagon Papers case.
In this case, I find a conflict. On the one hand, as everybody knows, freedom has always been part of the American mythology. Freedom of the internet is one component of freedom. People have right to speak out what they think on internet.
On the other hand, the Web, by its very nature, interacts with people throughout the world. It is inevitable that some contents of posts are confidential or will hurt other people.
So when web sites find this kind of post, they have two choices: keep it or delete it. If they decide to keep it, they may get penalty just like Wikileaks. However if they choice to delete it, doesn’t it conflict with the American freedom?
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