Various Rights Group Fight Back Against The Wikileaks Injunction

from the standing-up-for-freedom-of-speech dept

Wed, Feb 27th 2008 1:58am — Mike Masnick

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

11 Comments

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Hoeppner, 27 Feb 2008 @ 5:08am

so how does a normal citizen send in an amicus curie brief?
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Killer_Tofu (profile), 27 Feb 2008 @ 5:18am

Good to see
That some people still care about our constitution since a good amount of politicians don't. Mainly those in control right now.
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Matt Bennett, 27 Feb 2008 @ 7:35am

The democrats, you mean?
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MIchael, 27 Feb 2008 @ 7:55am

was bound to happen
Now they just fight to get it overturned, it was going to happen eventually, the site pissed off some rich people. Oh and Matt its Republicans that are in control retard, you can't blame democrats for the last two terms, though if they get elected and start cleaning up this mess I'm sure you'll blame them for the neocon mess anyway.
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dan, 27 Feb 2008 @ 9:13am

You are kidding right?
Cmon Michael, The dems have been in control for over a year now and what have they done? This happened on their watch. It will be interesing to see how all you whiny liberals act when Obama gets in office and the same stuff still happens...
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Killer_Tofu (profile), 27 Feb 2008 @ 9:49am

Heh
Not really wanting to get into a large argument over all things political, but just to rebuke you dan:

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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John Duncan Yoyo, 27 Feb 2008 @ 9:57am

Re: You are kidding right?
The guy steering the bus is still Bush. The congress can't do tons to really stop him. It's too late to impeach him they can just not fund things he wants to do.

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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Ray Trygstad, 27 Feb 2008 @ 11:17am

Wikileaks alternate domain name...
Just to help out, I have pointed a subdomain of one of my domains at the main Wikileaks site: http://wikileaks.pondscumandlawyers.com/. An appropriate name for the site, given the circumstances!
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Different Mike, 27 Feb 2008 @ 11:39am

And all this infighting gets us where?
Yes it the same argument every single time. Republicans/Conservatives blame the Democrats/Liberals and vice versa. Always pointing fingers, but never noticing that very few if any politicians on either side really do anything. But by being sure that there is "the other side" to blame and point fingers at distracts us from the reality and gives us a team to root for.

The only thing politicians on either side ever do is try to make sure they get reelected.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2008 @ 1:40pm

Re: You are kidding right?
They've tried to do a lot, but have been constantly vetoed.
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erick gammon, 28 Feb 2008 @ 12:39pm

The Judge is a BUSH appointee
The Judge was appointed by George Bush (The Current President)in 2002. How is this the Democrats Fault ? Nice try Dan...

The judge is a Republican, protecting a large bank that caters to the rich.

Enough Said
Erick
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