German Wikileaks Domain Suspended Without Warning

mb writes to mention that Germany has gone one step further in impeding access to Wikileaks. Germany's registration authority, DENIC, recently suspended Wikileaks.de without notice. "The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government."

Comments

No sympathy for trust breakers

[onyxruby]

So a site dedicated to flagrantly breaking the law, peoples trust, peoples privacy and holding itself above any law or moral standard on the planet gets taken down. Why should anybody be sympathetic? This is far from the case of the pirate bay where they - followed Swedish law (no downloads on the site) - refused blatantly illegal material - and provided a genuine service to the community. Instead wikileaks is a site dedicated to junior high antics of playing the bigger ass.

Think about it, this is a site based on breaking trust and that knows no moral grounds. Would they post detailed documents from Iran's nuclear weapons program if leaked, how about biological weapons, how a government database full of citizens information that would be perfect for identity theft? These are all documents that could be used maliciously by the wrong people. They can't even compare against sites that provide full disclosure for security vulnerabilities when vendors fail to take action.

This isn't a genuine censorship fighting site like a proxy used to bypass the great wall of China, they don't provide services like the Pirate Bay, all they do is play tattle tale to the world. They aren't even a genuine anti-censorship site as they do no meaningful fact checking. Compare them to a respectable site like the smoking gun which actually fact checks their material - and as a result has never been successfully sued. Just ask yourself what do you expect from a wikipedia spin-off?

No, I'm not opposed to open source, file torrents or the like, I also pretty firmly oppose censorship. It's sites like wikileaks that make those that oppose censorship look like extremists. Wikileaks doesn't deserve the communities support, unlike so many other sites that do. The best comparison for wikileaks is a carders website with the biggest differences being that they have a larger selection and give everything away for free.

Where is the German bashing?

[Old97]

If the U.S. seems to trample on some personal rights or freedoms, especially when it crosses international borders to do so or even if it requests extradition, this site immediately fills up with a lot of America bashing. Its funny that when it is Europe or Australia doing this we don't see the same sanctimonious outrage. If course, the U.S. actually has a constitution that guarantees the right of free speech and most other countries do not. I guess if you don't strive for high standards you cannot be held accountable.