Bank That Suppressed WikiLeaks Gives It Up

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?"

I wonder if...

Can Wikileaks recover any legal expenses?

Re:I wonder if...

It seems so. From TFA:

Lawyers for the intervening parties in the case had threatened to try to recover legal fees in the case under a California law intended to prevent frivolous lawsuits, said Paul Alan Levy, a lawyer at Public Citizen who argued against the judges order at the hearing on Friday.

Re:I wonder if...

I don't know if that applies to Wikileaks. The quote says:

Lawyers for the intervening parties had threatened to try to recover legal fees...

I think that refers to all the groups that filed amici curiae (friends of the court) briefs. These included (off the top of my head) Public Citizen, ACLU, EFF, and some dozen or so media companies. Wikileaks never went to court and never filed any legal motions! I don't think you can reimbursed for responding to frivolous e-mails from stupid lawyers (which, I understand, is all they did).

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).

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What legal expenses? The reason for the injunction in the first place was that they did not answer the case.

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...

Short answer

is there a more practical way to interface emergent technology with our legal system while retaining civil rights over corporate rights?"

No.

Longer answer: We don't need more knowlegable judges, we need more intelligent ones.

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In the early days of automobiles, there were laws written concerning the hay the new transport would consume. Legal systems are by their nature designed to look backward for precedent not forward. Those attracted to this profession share this basic na

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The point of precedence in the legal system is to allow it to adapt to changing circumstances. Those sitting on the cusp will, of course, have to put up with the pain of new interpretations of statutes, but what's the alternative? The system works, for t

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unfortunately I cannot quote the source; it was a humor book on legal foolishness I read some 20 years back. but. I do think if you google "hay" and "taxi" you will find that Australian taxi cabs are by law still required to carry a bail of hay in thei

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is there a more practical way to interface emergent technology with our legal system while retaining civil rights over corporate rights?"

Ummm, kill all the lawyers?

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In this case it how ever has very little to do with the law. Whilst the principles of the law are clearly being abused, that is not the real focus of what is going on and how it is being challenged. This is all about late twentieth century mass marketing,

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Seriously, we can't even interface antiquated technology [washingtonpost.com] with our legal system and retain our civil rights over corporate rights.

Re:Short answer

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.

Interface

I'd say a more practical interface is to plug the lawyers into something electrical and then turn it on.

Wrong approach

Its not an issue of making laws for every single new techonology. Its about making laws that cover our basic rights and are upheld purely on those basis. So this means company's cannot take our information and share it whoever they want, because we have a law against it. Its fundamental issues that are in need of clarification, not little laws for every application.

Sure we can.

There are these mystical people called "Consultants." I know that that's a dirty word in most people's minds, but seriously.

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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Define how you can tell the difference between a real expert and a snowjob artist.

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 bel

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"Define how you can tell the difference between a real expert and a snowjob artist."

Their fee.

Four words.

Define how you can tell the difference between a real expert and a snowjob artist.

I can do that in four words.

Peer review and publication.

Corporations don't have rights.

Corporations are not people. Therefore, corporations do not have rights.

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.

A corporation is a person.

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.

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It's not -really- a person, though. It is an -entity-, yes, but not an actual -person-.

Unless corporations have gained the right to vote and to hold public office while I wasn't looking?

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I think I just did. As a personal example, when I ran an apartment rental business, I incorporated. That way my own personal assets were protected, and I could only be sued for what the business had in assets. If that isn't a huge protection for "The Peopl

Just a thought

I don't know if anyone else has thought about this, or if it's even practical, but why not establish a court system for High-Tech cases? They could hear things like the **AA cases and examples such as this one, and would have judges that are actually paid to keep up with the changes in technology. In fact, I'm sure you would have no problem finding volunteers among the existing pool of judges that are actually aware of legal issues. So you take a pool of existing judges with knowledge of tech issues, ask them to keep their knowledge current (I'm sure they have aides to help them with this), and have any cases dealing with computer crime and/or civil cases involving the Internet go through this 'special' court system. It would not be any more lenient than the existing courts, however the parties involved would have a basic understanding of the issues that face high tech companies and individuals. Of course, the hard part would be to determine which cases go before this court. For this, I propose that all cases have to be heard before the regular system, and if one or more of the parties involved wants to have it moved to the high tech court, both parties should have to make an argument as to why / why not. Thoughts, anyone?

The real problem is the domain registrar

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.

Yeah, its pretty simple.

I don't mean to come off as a troll, but I think the answer is: "Stop fucking with us."

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.