February 20th, 2008
WikiLeaks Not Shut Down
WikiLeaks has not been shut down. It’s more available than ever.
I had not intended on commenting about this story. I have seen it and seen it, ever since the Web was spun. Local government tries to suppress something, data gets routed offshore.
Chinese people can still (if they are careful) learn about Falun Gong, and Tienanmien, and Taiwan. French people can still learn about Nazis. Germans can get the “good news” about Scientology. And Americans can get the bad.
Censorship just makes the news bigger, and making it harder to get makes it more attractive. Successful censorship isolates entire countries, economy and all.
The real news here is that an increasing number of journalists understand this, although there remain many who are clueless.
David Gallagher of The New York Times is among the clued-in. Same with Techtree, which prints the site’s IP address. Reason’s headline is Read the Website a Judge “Shut Down.”
Digital Trends notes that the site is just shut down in the U.S. Mediapost writes the site has got the last laugh, and then notes the documents in question are available via BitTorrent. Techdirt wonders what the fuss is about.
It would take a worldwide agency, using a treaty which has not been negotiated, to begin to shut down any Web site. Even then, torrents and caches would still spread the word far and wide, while the controversy would assure an audience for that word.
Julius Baer, the bank which tried to keep its secrets, and Judge Jeffrey S. White, the Bush appointee who tried to help it do so, are going to learn the hard way what the rest of us have known for over a decade.
While the year-old Wikileaks has just made its bones.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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