The implications of wikileak’s success
The implications of wikileak’s success: “
Almost a week ago there was a great buzz about a relatively new wiki, called wikileaks. One of the reasons for this popularity burst was, that this wiki accepts submissions that are
classified, censored or otherwise restricted […] of political, diplomatic or ethical significance. Wikileaks does not accept rumor, opinion or other kinds of first hand reporting or material that is already publicly available.
The emergence of a censorship issue about the content of wikileaks, boosted the wiki’s popularity even more. To summarize the story:
The case in San Francisco was brought by a Cayman Islands bank, Julius Baer Bank and Trust. In court papers, the bank said that ‘a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign’ provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws.
According to Wikileaks, ‘the documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.’ On Friday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco granted a permanent injunction ordering Dynadot, the site’s domain name registrar, to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name.
This case is not only interesting as one more censorship issue of the cyberspace but also as an example of the power and growth of the web. The indirect points that are raised are:
- The decentralized nature of the web manages to overcome obstacles.
- It seems that wikis are slowly evolving in authoritative resources.
Decentralization
The wikileaks domain was shut down, not allowing any users to visit the site. In any centralized network, shutting down the front door of a node would be enough to bring him down.
But the web’s decentralized nature, easily manages to overcome this issue. The wikileaks domain could be accessed
- by mirror sites across Europe [Wikileaks.be],
- the secure site of the wiki [http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks]
- and even by the sites IP Adress [http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks].
This proves the difficulty of local, real life laws to be applied in cyberspace. Internet has always been a self-organized place and efforts to control it haven’t brought any results until now.
Authority in Wikis
If we go back to December, we will find several discussions about the trustworthiness of wikis. The reason was Google’s announcement of their ‘unwiki’ platform Knol.
The fact alone, that this wiki received such attention speaks for the role of wikis in knowledge and information.
If wikis were really not trustworthy sources, which provide unproved data then why did this Bank step up against wikileaks?
It seems to me, that this case shows the strength of wikis, the power of the collective intelligence and the decreased role of authority and authorship.
The result
Latest news say that wikileaks got its domain back. Not because the Julius Baer Bank found the wiki less trustworthy and decided to drop the case, but because of the hard work and engagement of several lawyers and institutions (Public Citizen, the California First Amendment Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Project on Government Oversight, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation).
It seemed to be a lost case anyway.
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