Various Rights Group Fight Back Against The Wikileaks Injunction
from the standing-up-for-freedom-of-speech dept
Last week, the decision by a California court to have a registrar attempt to force Wikileaks offline got plenty of attention -- not the least of which was because the injunction had no impact on the site's IP address: 88.80.13.160. Yet, much more troubling were the implications concerning why a judge in California would try to take down an entire site because of complaints from a Swiss bank about just a few documents on the site concerning a lawsuit in Switzerland. Now it appears that plenty of organizations who fight for various civil rights have shown up to file briefs against this questionable ruling.Paul Alan Levy, of the group, Public Citizen, writes in to let us know: "We at Public Citizen are concerned with the First Amendment and the issue of prior restraint, but in attacking the orders we decided to focus on some more technical issues that neither the lawyers in the case nor, apparently, the judge had noticed. Thus, earlier today, along with the California First Amendment Coalition, we filed a brief pointing out that the case did not even qualify for federal court jurisdiction because there are subjects of foreign states on both sides of the case -- the Swiss bank on one side, and Wikileaks, many of whose members are abroad, on the other side. In addition, we point out that the main cause of action on which the bank relied, section 17200 of the California Business and Professions Code, applies only to unfair or unlawful "business practices" and hence does not apply to completely non-commercial web sites like Wikileaks. Our brief is discussed on the Citizen Vox blog, and in this press release.
A brief attacking the injunction on First Amendment grounds was also filed today by a coalition of media organizations. Finally, the ACLU of Northern California and EFF have also filed a brief arguing against the decision on First Amendment grounds."
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Filed Under: aclu, eff, first amendment, free speech, public citizen, wikileaks
Companies: aclu, eff, public citizen
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Good to see
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was bound to happen
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You are kidding right?
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Re: You are kidding right?
According to http://www.officialbushcountdown.com it is still over 327 days before he gets sent to his Elba in Crawford Texas.
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Re: You are kidding right?
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Heh
The judge was not put in place by those currently in a Majority in the House of Reps. So your argument there is kind of flawed.
Also, have you noticed how any good thing (although I know there is bad attached to it, but thats always hidden, no matter who is in power) that they have wanted to talk about right now, the president just says he will veto it? Kind of makes it hard to make things better when everything you want to do is just shot down.
Just a thought.
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Wikileaks alternate domain name...
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And all this infighting gets us where?
The only thing politicians on either side ever do is try to make sure they get reelected.
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The Judge is a BUSH appointee
The judge is a Republican, protecting a large bank that caters to the rich.
Enough Said
Erick
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