To Stop a Leak

It's funny that you mention that because Wikileaks is based outside the United States. Both plaintiffs also reside outside the U.S. The company Wikileaks registered its domain name with is the only American operator in this case. Does the judge even have jurisdiction?
Probably not. I think they went after the registrar because it's based in San Mateo, Calif., and they could find them. [The people who run Wikileaks] are all very well hidden. They are anonymous, they use servers in Sweden used by the same guys who operate Pirate Bay—which is notoriously used by people to swap movies and music. It's call bulletproof hosting and it's typically used by spammers and people on the dark side. These people are using it for good. What the Julius Baer Bank did was go for the lowest hanging fruit. And they shot themselves in the foot by doing it.

Because now everybody's heard about Wikileaks?
Talk about free publicity. I had never heard about Wikileaks before and now, frankly, I'm glad I did. Not only did this publicize the existence of Wikileaks, but they publicized the fact that this bank is [allegedly] helping people evade taxes and launder money. Even if that's not true, everyone thinks it is because of the coverage the story has gotten. It's classically stupid.

Did Dynadot fold?
Yeah. They fell over.

What should they have done?
They didn't really have too many choices, I don't think. If you look at any legal agreement with any [Internet service provider], if you read the fine print it says we will keep your information confidential unless we get a court order, in which case you're toast. There are few cases of people resisting that. You've had people like the [Recording Industry Association of America] going on fishing expeditions. The RIAA asked Verizon to give them lists, saying we want everyone's information at certain IP addresses [suspected of harboring pirated music. Verizon declined. Over all, though, you're kind of stuck if you're Dynadot.

Is that RIAA case the closest parallel?
The other parallel that comes to mind is demanding information from journalists and jailing journalists for not revealing sources. Another is Apple suing sites for leaking confidential information. What Apple is trying to do is find out the names of the sources of leaked information, though. These guys are a little different. Julius Baer Bank actually claims to know the name of the employee that posted these files. What they're trying to do is have them taken down. What they've done is permanently enshrined them on the Internet.

Because of all the mirror sites that have popped up?
It's the Streisand Effect. Barbara Streisand sued to get some satellite photos of her house removed from the Web. What that ended up doing is that people downloaded the pictures and posted them elsewhere, making it impossible to find and take them all down.