The websites .org domain was shut down due to an injunction issued by a Californian judge. The reason an injunction was issued was because Swiss bank Julius Baer said that some confidential documents about them were published on the site. They complained to the judge and successfully got an injunction on the domain.

On February 27th, the Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a press release, announcing that they would intervene in this case. The EFF was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union in the case.

“Dynadot’s private agreement to disable access to its customer’s domain name — and the court’s endorsement of that agreement — raise serious First Amendment concerns,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman at the time. “This unwarranted injunction should remind everyone who hosts critical information on the Web that such information may only remain accessible as long as your service provider or registrar is willing to stand up for you against obviously overreaching legal attacks.”

Today, a new press release by the EFF was published on the case was issued announcing that the original injunction was dissolved by a court thanks to the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

“We’re very pleased that Judge White recognized the serious constitutional concerns raised by his earlier orders,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. “Attempting to interfere with the operation of an entire website because you have a dispute over some of its content is never the right approach. Disabling access to an Internet domain in an effort to prevent the world from accessing a handful of widely-discussed documents is not only unconstitutional — it simply won’t work.”

The domain for Wikileaks.org has returned. On the front page, it quotes Emile Zola, J’accuse from 1898 whom said, “The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice. I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight!”

The permanent injunction was dissolved as well as a restraining order lifted. The restraining order said that the access to the 14 documents in question must be permanently disabled.

“On Feb 14 Wikileaks was unconstitutionally censored!” The Wikileaks websites homepage said while asking for donations, “Take action! Help Wikileaks fight to get the truth out and change the world for the better.”

The court documents have been posted (PDF) on EFFs website. A webpage dedicated to the case was also posted. The webpage features many court documents and reading materials.

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Judges_Injunction_Dissolved_WikiLeaks_org_Domain_Returned’;

What is Wikileaks? Wikipedia describes the site with the following:

Wikileaks is a website running on modified MediaWiki software which allows whistleblowers to release (whilst remaining anonymous) government and corporate documents, allegedly without possible retribution. It claims that postings are untraceable by anyone attempting to do so. It was launched in December 2006 and, as of November 2007, had contained over 1.2 million documents. It provides mirrors which can be used during outages.

It is true, Wikileaks is still accessible with other domains such as wikileaks.cx and wikileaks.be which are among a massive massive list of domains that could be used to access the website still. It appears that only the .org domain was shut down.

DailyKos broke the news yesterday evening saying that, “One of the most important web sites in recent months has been Wikileaks.org. Wikileaks has upset the Chinese government enough that they are attempting to censor it, as is the Thai military junta. Wikileaks is now under attack from a censorship effort by a California court.”

The story quickly made it to many sites including the most popular blog BoingBoing where reader Pukebazooka said, “even though this prevents the wikileaks.org link from working, it doesn’t actually take down the site: everything is up and running at 88.80.13.160.”

“Now censorship has extended to the United States of America, land of the First Amendment. As of Friday, February 15, those going to Wikileaks.org have gotten Server not found messages. Today I received a message explaining that a California court has granted an injunction written and requested by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers.” Stephan Soldz said in a posting on the site, “It seems that the bank is trying to keep the public from accessing documents that may reveal shady dealings. Wikileaks was only given a couple of hours notice “by email” and was not even represented at the hearing where a U.S. judge took such a drastic step attempting to totally shut down an important information outlet.”

The injunction itself says, “Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.”

It seems evident that shutting down the site will require much more effort if it is even possible at all, but some find it troubling that a judge can order a DNS to be taken down so quickly.