I finally got around to looking over a New York Times article that my law partner Ron Teeple recently shared with me. The article describes, essentially, as inept, an attempt earlier this month by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White to shut down Wikileaks.org, a website that encourages people to post “leaked” information for the purported purpose of deterring corporate and governmental misbehavior. According to the article, the site has previously posted some particularly sensitive military documents and other closely-held materials.

Judge White’s shut down order (the permanent injunction) was directed at the website’s domain name registrar, defendant Dynadot, and not the website itself, and is apparently full of workarounds for determined fans of the site. The Court also entered a temporary restraining order pertaining to the specific documents at issue in the lawsuit.

Earlier today I came across this article in the Los Angeles Times, highlighting efforts to persuade Judge White to reconsider his prior orders. Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation is described in the article as expressing disappointment with Dynadot’s actions, noting that Section 230 protects the company from the plaintiffs’ claims here. Beyond simply complying with a court order (an order which clearly does more than just provide for the preservation of evidence), it would appear that Dynadot first entered into a stipulation with the plaintiff (the proposed order referred to in Paragraph 4 thereof, a/k/a the permanent injunction, was entered by the Court on February 15th and is linked to above), then became bound by the court’s permanent injunction, and, finally, was voluntarily dismissed from the case this past Monday. It would be interesting to know whether the Court would have entered the permanent injunction if Dynadot had not first stipulated to its terms.

We should know more about where this case is headed after a hearing scheduled for this Friday. In the meantime, here’s a copy of the plaintiffs’ six count complaint, filed earlier this month in the Northern District of California (link does not include exhibits).

On a related note, does anybody know whether the Second Circuit has ruled yet on the defendant’s appeal in a somewhat similar dispute involving givemeliberty.org?

 See my 2/29/08 Update post