wrythings

Comment:  Now is the moment for the Internet to shine as a Global Copy Machine.

In solidarity - share this Press Release widely.

Wikileaks Press Release from: 
http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction

WIKILEAKS.ORG DOWN AFTER EX-PARTE LEGAL ATTACK BY CAYMAN ISLANDS BANK

http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction

Contacts: http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Contact

Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 GMT 2008

The following release has not been proofed due to time constraints.

Transparency group Wikileaks forcibly censored at ex-parte Californian hearing — ordered to print blank pages — ‘wikileaks.org’ name forcibly deleted from Californian domain registrar — the best justice Cayman Islands money launderers can buy?

When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York
Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret censorship lists of Thailand’s military Junta, no-one was too surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths
to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which states “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press”, the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown:

                    BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD, a
                    Swiss entity; and JULIUS BAER BANK
                    AND TRUST CO. LTD, a Cayman Island                 ORDER GRANTING
                    entity,                                            PERMANENT INJUNCTION

                    WIKILEAKS, an entity of unknown form;
                    WIKILEAKS.ORG, an entity of unknown
                    form; DYNADOT, LLC, a California
                    limited liability company; and DOES 1
                    through 10, inclusive,

[..]

                             IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:

[..]

       Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting
       records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the
       domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or
       any other website or server other than a blank park page,
       until further order of this Court.

The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July 2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there
were “serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems of the Cayman Islands”, “Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held by financial institutions regarding their client’s identity”, “Failure of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious transactions is not subject to penalty” and that “These deficiencies, among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The ‘FATF’) as non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering”. As of 2006 the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money laundering “Countries of Primary Concern”.

The Cayman’s case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over $4,500,000,000’s worth of money laundering including by the former president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see http://wikileaks.be/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_moi which became the Guardian’s front page story in September 2007 and swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election and http://wikileaks.be/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High Court Case in Kenya).

To find an injunction similar to the Cayman’s case, we need to go back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaked “Pentagon Papers” and found itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times’ printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.

The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee and former prosecutor.

The order was written by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.
The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island’s operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the ‘Wikileaks.org’ name through — California registrar Dynadot, who then used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for ‘Wikileaks.org’.
The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents.

In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States.

The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.

Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.

Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney’s in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice “by email” prior to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank’s lawyers without a single amendment.

The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only preliminary.

Wikileaks remains available publishing from non-US, non-Chinese jurisdictions including http://wikileaks.cx/ and http://wikileaks.be/.

See http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names for more.

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer_vs._Wikileaks

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/images/Dynadot-injunction.pdf

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Die_Akten_des_Hurricane_Man

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Clouds_on_the_Cayman_tax_heaven

Here are two of them:

Jon citing David on simplifying the Net Neutrality cause under the more general framework of Structural Separation.

And I certainly concur: Structural Separation is the way to go. There’s a lot to be learned from the folks that convene around David Isenberg at Freedom-to-Connect. Don’t think I can make it there this year - but I would if I could! (Or I will if I can? We’ll see.)

Billy & Marnie explain the MashUp Challenge concept. Challenge Deadline: March 14, 5 PM - Pacific.

Robin Chase (ZipCar, GoLoCo) is great! In this 2007 TED talk Robin addresses Carbon Emissions and the Digital Divide.

(The video was only just released.)

I’ve meant to come back to this for some time. Adventitiously, the Upward Spiral has been coming up a lot lately. This piece is a kind of parable on Life and Ecology.

We’re facing big problems, and we are less able to dismiss them from consciousness. We recognize the complexities of governance and so aren’t surprised as issues blend into each other and over national, jurisdictional, institutional and conceptual boundaries… It can be overwhelming.

We need new narratives of governance, cooperation, freedom and accountability in order to meet challenge to the species. The Great Turning offers a narrative that more accurately frames our situation and allows us to collectively align our response grounded in the heritage of human dignity.

David Korten has written extensively on this.   Here’s a related piece by Joanna Macy (pointed out on Weblogsky).

What’s a tasty domain? The domain you want! (and sometimes the domain you had….)

Slashdot points to an important story for those following Internet/ICANN policy issues.

Domain Tasting occurs through a nice set of loopholes in Internet domain name governance. Some feel that the market will eventually sort this out, and others think that this much abused policy is a nice perk of the industry.

Most tasting occurs in what is known as the ‘add grace period” (agp) … a window of 5 days in which a domain can be returned to the pool of unregistered domains, but tasting can also occur after a domain expires.

Tasting refers to determining whether the domain has value… value has some subjective dimensions here, but two rather reductionist perspectives narrow in on whether 1) a domain is likely to attract plenty of traffic (so that even when parked it can generate profit) or 2) there are parties who will pay a premium price for control of that domain. This boils down to “what financial value can be extracted from control or resale of the domain.

A domain name being held by a Taster may be returned to the pool of unregistered names before the grace period ends at no cost… (excepting the case of .org domains, PIR.org having instituted a nominal restocking fee to dis-incent this behavior.

Tasting connects to a number of behaviors that may be detrimental to the name system and against the interest of Internet users in general.

Tasting identifies domains which can be snapped up and taken from the unregistered pool and which can be made profitable to the owner, but largely useless to everyone else (i.e. more noise and unavailable to meaningful development). If it looks like a domain is likely to generate revenue that would cover the cost of buying it, it makes perfect sense for them to hold on to it.

We have domain holders interested only in what they can monetize out of the domain … we have registrars engaged in holding domains in the add-grace and redemptive-grace period… we have perpetual holding of domains in successive registration and dropping of the same domain within add-grace provision…

Value of a domain should be more than this narrow sense of financial return.

The value of domains to the informational commons (the Internet) should also be considered.

The add-grace period may have made sense in the past. The Internet community would probably be better without it, but following the PIR lead, restocking fees may offer a partial solution. It’s a strategy favored by many as a solution to tasting.

However, if tasting is but one aspect of the behaviors in the domain ecology we shouldn’t treat it in isolation. Unfortunately the ICANN policy process favors segmenting some important issues (tasting, kiting, etc.) This divide the issues and conquer strategy benefits certain constituencies at the expense of others and at the expense of Internet users at large (all of us).

If we got rid of the add-grace period entirely… what would be the disadvantage to that? Think about it: a domain registration isn’t a large expense. The value of the time spent by an end user in the process of registering a domain, and dealing with the registrar easily outstrips the registration expense. (Just calculate the time spent by a modest hourly approximation of earning potential of the person in question.)

If we are talking about any scenario that isn’t a bulk processing of domains, the end user’s time (and the potential time of anyone he’d have to interact with assuming even the slightest possibility of a non-automated interaction) it makes no sense to have the AGP at all! If you bought it you bought it… let there be a restocking fee or return it to the pool (with no refund) if you made a mistake and don’t want to develop it. In short it doesnt save any legitimate buyer any real expense to be able to return a domain during AGP. (imagine the hurdles just in dealing directly with the registrar)

And in the case of bulk processing of domains, what basis would there be for return of domains other than your tasting didn’t return signs adequate value?

So, again, what domain is really tasty? The domain you want. Who has an inkling you might want a domain? A registrar where you checked the availability of a given domain name. They’re in a privileged position if you don’t take the domain. They’re also in a very privileged position if you fail to renew your domain in time, and they stand to make a nice profit off what was once your domain in that scenario. They may even play you off against others all the while offering to act in your interest for a premium price.

But that’s another topic. Or is it?