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Bank That Suppressed WikiLeaks Gives It Up
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Mar 06, 2008 04:49 PM
from the can't-stop-the-rain dept.
from the can't-stop-the-rain dept.
Is It Obvious writes "Bank Julius Baer has moved to withdraw suit against Wikileaks. We've discussed this story a few times, most recently when the judge lifted his injunction against WikiLeaks' registrar. The Baer story reflects an issue that will only grow worse over time: the gap between technology and the legal system's understanding of said technologies and their application to established legal principle. Given the rapid rate of technological change, is there a more practical way to interface emergent technology with our legal system while retaining civil rights over corporate rights?"
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Your Rights Online: Wikileaks Gets Domain Back, Injunction Dissolved 70 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The judge in the Wikileaks case has dissolved the injunction against Wikileaks, which means that it can get its .org domain back. He defended his prior ruling because it was based on the pittance of information the bank and registrar had provided him, saying 'This is a case in which we had a (dispute) with named parties, and the parties were duly served. One of which properly responded and came to this court with a proposed settlement in this lawsuit... Nobody filed any timely responses to the court's order.'"
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I wonder if... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I wonder if... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I wonder if... (Score:5, Informative)
I think the laws that the statement refers to are California's anti-SLAPP [wikipedia.org] (SLAPP = strategic lawsuit against public participation) statutes. However, it seems like the defendents must file anti-SLAPP motions, and we haven't heard of any that have been filed (though I may be wrong).
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not entirely accurate as to how it transpired. But in any case, the key words in your quote are: The reason for the injunction in the first place...
Clearly as the case progressed there where legal expenses. In the end, it turns out Baer had no case, at least to where they filed their legal action. So it was "frivolous", yes? Therefore they should pay the legal expenses.
IANAL.
Short answer (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
Longer answer: We don't need more knowlegable judges, we need more intelligent ones.
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It must be worth a good laugh
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Ummm, kill all the lawyers?
There are good lawyers (Although I have to admit my salary comes partly from the local law foundation so I have a bias.) Lawyers get a bad rap because there are some exceptionally scummy ones (Jack Thompson) but I'd prefer a country with lots a lawyers to a country with none. Look at any where the lawyers are few, non existent, or powerless and you'll find places where the rule of law is weak or non existent. the Rule of law is necessary for the management of large groups of people because there is always
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So in this case the bank wanted to temporarily silence it critic whilst it own public relations and marketing teams created a lie to cover it over and via mass media define their l
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Re:Short answer (Score:4, Insightful)
If only we could require judges to undergo rigorous mental training and prove their humanity (on pain of death) before they get to sit in judgement of others. Legislators even more so.
Parent
Interface (Score:4, Funny)
Wrong approach (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no good answer in any system designed to cover so many eventualities.
Sure we can. (Score:4, Insightful)
We should have an independent group of people who ACTUALLY know what they're talking about that can be called upon by judges who don't understand what's going on. Judges can't be expected to have a grasp of every field of knowledge that may come up in their cases.
I don't see it actually happening, but that's life.
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This is the problem with the current Expert Witness system (which works vaguely like you suggest). You can get expert witnesses to say all sorts of stuff and people will believe them.
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Their fee.
Four words. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can do that in four words.
Peer review and publication.
Parent
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Corporations don't have rights. (Score:5, Insightful)
End of story.
Now, laws can be passed to protect corporations to limit what they can and can not do, but they do no have unalienable rights. Those are reserved for people.
Re:Corporations don't have rights. (Score:4, Informative)
From wikipedia: "A corporation [wikipedia.org]is legally a citizen of the state (or other jurisdiction) in which it is incorporated (except when circumstances direct the corporation be classified as a citizen of the state in which it has its head office, or the state in which it does the majority of its business)."
Corporations are protected under the Bill of Rights in the U.S., the same bill of rights that protects U.S. citizens.
Parent
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Unless corporations have gained the right to vote and to hold public office while I wasn't looking?
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That's right, it's not really a person. It's all based on a pun, the fact that they used to be called "corporate persons", and since that's the same word used in the 14th Amendment (though not the same sense of the word), it was argued that corporations should have equal protection under the laws as actual persons. A really bad pun is what caused all this mess.
Fun Fact: The 14th Amendment language regarding "persons" w
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Corporations are not people. Therefore, corporations do not have rights.
In law, corporations have rights (as a tool of defining injustices). Morally, neither corporations nor people have rights, but obligations. Eg: not to steal, to help the vulnerable of society, etc. Rights are implicit but not absolute, despite what the U.N. charter says, rights have always been merely a human construct and as such are not part of any religious code and traditionally not considered part of the natural order.
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So, that corporations have rights granted by the state I understand, but to speak of them as tho they are on the same level as a human being and inalienable rights does baffle my mind and sicken my stomach.
But in law, no right is inalienable really. I mean, look at killing, for example. It's off the statue books in many countries (death penalty), but they don't have any problem with their armies killing people, and the law upholds this. So much for inalienable! Is a right infringed upon every time a person dies? That's the point I'm making. Rights are used for law, where you have to describe what a legal entity is entitled to and what it can and can't do. It's no big deal if a person or a company or a fami
Powerful Lesson? (Score:2, Insightful)
While I hope this will be the case, the various courts handling RIAA cases haven't seemed to know anything
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Just a thought (Score:5, Insightful)
In answer to the question... (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Codify into Law (Score:2)
What about slandering a company? Or libel against a company? Simple -- the company must prove the individual wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The real problem is the domain registrar (Score:5, Informative)
The legal system worked. As soon as Wikileaks got involved in the case, the judge reversed himself almost immediately.
The real problem here is with Dynadot, the domain registrar. Like most domain registrars, Dynadot tries to wriggle out of the concept that domains are the property of the registrant, substituting one-sided terms of service [dynadot.com] which give them discretionary power over the domain. That's the problem.
They made a deal with Bank Julius Baer to shut down the site, and got the court to sign off on the deal, without even notifying the registrant. That was Dynadot's doing. That's where the problem started.
Interestingly, Dynadot has one of those indemnification clauses in their agreement that everyone ignores. This time, it matters. It reads: You agree to release, indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Dynadot ... against any losses, liabilities, claims, damages or costs, ... relating to or arising out of Your registration, application, transaction request, resale, or use of services provided by Dynadot and Your account with Dynadot ....
Should Dynadot be threatened with a lawsuit or receive notice of a filed or pending lawsuit by a third party, Dynadot may seek written assurances from You concerning Your promise to indemnify Dynadot. Your failure to provide such written assurances may be considered a material breach of this Agreement.
One could argue that Dynadot's insertion of such a clause created an obligation on Dynadot to promptly notify the registrant of any threatened litigation. Dynadot has claimed in their contract that the registrant has responsibility for claims against Dynadot by third parties. Yet Dynadot did not properly notify the registrant of such a claim. Instead, they apparently went to court before notifying the registrant. That's usually considered negligence or worse.
emergent technology (Score:2)
Yes. Make sure the troublemakers get Focused. Oh wait, civil rights?
Legal System Break Down. (Score:2)
Corporations have no rights over civilians rights. In fact, corporations have no rights except as defined by their corporate charter in the city, state, nation that holds their articles of incorporation. In fact, I'd even suggest that corporations are ONLY legal entities, artificially constructed, that serve the members of tha
Yeah, its pretty simple. (Score:4, Interesting)
The things that we citizens of the Internet (if there is such a thing), nearly universally, seem to agree on is that we want to be left alone from the "powerful". Spammers? Leave us alone. Advertisers? By and large, leave us alone. Eavesdropping, corporate or governmental, leave us alone.
We reserve the right to poke, prod, and change the world around us by using the Internet, but we do not appreciate, nor do we seem to stand for, the reverse to hold true.
Shouldn't the answer be obvious? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course that may not work since very often the venue for many cases involving technology and patents are selected simply for its lack of expertise and knowledge perhaps to win through bullshit misconceptions. (Consider the pactice of jury selection where they always choose people who have the least understanding of law or legal procedure.)
Yea, great.. until one day.. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not a lack of understanding on the part of these banks. They hire people like us all the time and are in many cases more versed with security and the realities of the Internet than 99% of us. It's a concern that, without adequate controls or cooperation from online presences and technologies, one day real damage will be done and there'll be nothing that can stop it.
They're not worried about injustices. Those are just their legal departments trying to build precedent for future legal actions. They're worried about real, actual damage when private, secret, or sensitive data is released through the same channels and nobody cooperates in removing it or halting its spread.
You idealistic types can gnash your teeth about the curtailing of your online freedoms, but what you're failing to grasp is the simple fact that Your Opinion Is Not Perfect. Your idea of what deserves to be free isn't the same as your neighbour's idea, and when pictures stolen from your webcam of you and your wife engaging in something that you think should be legal but isn't, are circulated to every major visitor-supported voyeur pornsite, you'll be sitting there thinking that maybe, just maybe, being forced to trust anonymous individuals on the Internet who are well beyond the reach of any punishment you can effect, isn't the utopia you thought it would be.
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Those are just their legal departments trying to build precedent for future legal actions. They're worried about real, actual damage when private, secret, or sensitive data is released through the same channels and nobody cooperates in removing it or halting its spread.
I'd rather have real data spread around than silence someone because of what they might say.
You idealistic types can gnash your teeth about the curtailing of your online freedoms, but what you're failing to grasp is the simple fact that
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Why cant law (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a Big Shock (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, however, the injunction vanished, and the lawsuit was threatening to become a liability to the company. Making the lawsuit disappear minimizes the liability (but may not eliminate it).
(( IANAL. Wanna pay for my law school? ))
Foreign entities and American registrars (Score:3, Interesting)
This situation gives American courts jurisdiction over foreign entities who would otherwise be outside the American legal system. So, why hasn't someone in a place like Antigua set up a domain registration service for these TLDs? I realize that ultimately all roads lead back to Verisign (not a healthy thing either, in my opinion, but that's for another day). Still these cases have been directed against the registrars (eNom and Dynadot), not Verisign. I'm not up on all my ICANN politics and policies these days, so I'm asking for some help here. Is there some provision in how jurisdiction over com/net/org is set up so all the registrars must be in the US, or could there be off-shore registrars for these TLDs immune from American jurisprudence?
(Please don't reply just to say, "Let them register in their ISO domains." The visibility of