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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?"
Can Wikileaks recover any legal expenses?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'd say a more practical interface is to plug the lawyers into something electrical and then turn it on.
No Nyarlathotep, No Chaos
Know Nyarlathotep, Know Chaos
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.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mr. Levy said that the judge's decision to withdraw his order would offer a powerful message in future cases in which plaintiffs might try to shut down Web sites because of the content they display. "A judge who's confronted with a request like the bank's in the future is going to be much more reluctant to give this order," Mr. Levy said. "The lesson of the case is going to be taken very seriously."
While I hope this will be the case, the various courts handling RIAA cases haven't seemed to know anything about each other, or learn from previous findings, so I remain skeptical.
The internet is quite a disruptive technology, and it necessitates a complete realignment of parts of the law to address the way things are. Unfortunately the ones who should spearhead that effort are the paid lackeys who gave us the DMCA...
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
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?
.sig
A corporation is a person.
From wikipedia: "A corporationis 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.
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?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
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 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.
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.
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 People" I don't know what is. You see, corporations are made up of "The People", and most corporations in the US are small businesses and not huge conglomerates.
"But this one goes to 11!"
There are many technologists out there who have either found themselves displaced, replaced or burned out in their fields. Perhaps it would be a good time for some to change careers to law? The EFF might do well to offer scholarships to the best and brightest of those to become lawyers and then try to become judges.
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.)
I can do that in four words.
Peer review and publication.
.. everyone decides that something that shouold be private, isn't, and some poor individual, company, or country gets screwed by the same technologies that we have all grown to know and love.
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.
It's not -really- a person, though. It is an -entity-, yes, but not an actual -person-.
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" was applied to corporations (not people) before it was applied to women (people) and homosexuals (people).
Wonderful world, eh?
The enemies of Democracy are
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 Your Opinion Is Not Perfect.
So what? I have the right to say what I feel.
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.
heh, this is exactly like shutting someone down because you don't like what they say.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
be more like medicine were only a specialist familiar with the problem can actually advise or operate. Can you imagine a plastic surgeon doing brain surgery, no and it would have massive legal consequences if it did happen. So why can Judges with no technical understanding in regards to the subject matter he is dealing with advise or take any action ?
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? ))
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Straw men..
What strikes me as amazing is the silence about this topic in Switzerland.
We are rather touchy about our banks and normally a leak of this magnitude would be considered top news. Yet, the topic was given no news coverage in Switzerland. After all, an internal document leaked which pointed towards illegal activities of the bank!
And before all the trolls have a party: no, this is not a normal business practice of a Swiss bank.
Disclaimer: Working for a Swiss bank, I am biased.
This case, and the one concerning the European travel agent I submitted earlier this week, both raise important questions about the policies for registering in the com/org/net TLDs. In both cases the offshore entities found their domains embargoed because their registrars were located in the United States even though the domains' owners and their operations were off-shore.
.com throughout the world makes that a non-starter for many businesses and leaves unresolved the question of what to do with all the existing registrations in the worldwide TLDs.)
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