Court orders whistle-blower site offline in U.S.
Court Alerts
[##_1L|1319711305.jpg|width="130" height="93" alt=""|_##]A California district court has shut down a controversial Web site in the U.S. that allows whistle-blowers to post corporate and government documents online anonymously. A site known as Wikileaks.org has been taken offline in the U.S. due to a court order from the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. However, the site remains online in other countries, including Belgium and Germany.
The order in the U.S. came after a Swiss bank, the Julius Baer Group, filed a complaint earlier this month against the site and San Mateo, Calif.-based Dynadot LLC, Wikileaks' domain name registry, for posting several hundred of the bank's documents.
Some of those documents allegedly reveal that the Julius Baer Group was involved in offshore money laundering and tax evasion in the Cayman Islands for customers in several countries, including the U.S.
The court ordered that "Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS-hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name," according to court documents. It also said that Dynadot should prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org Web site, or any other Web site or server other than a blank park page until further notice.
A spokesman for the Julius Baer Group could not be reached for comment Monday.
According to its Web site, the purpose of Wikileaks, founded in 2006, is to develop "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis."
Wikileaks has been plagued by controversy since its inception, coming under fire from institutions whose confidential documents have been posted on the site and from critics who have questioned the motives of the site's founders. Still, others have praised the site for supporting the free dissemination of information.
Wikileaks posted a press statement on its site about the U.S. order, calling it "clearly unconstitutional" and said it "exceeds its jurisdiction."
Related listings
-
Court Won't Hear Ex-Ala. Coaches' Appeal
Court Alerts 02/19/2008The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to hear an appeal from two former Alabama assistant football coaches who lost their jobs following an NCAA investigation of the Crimson Tide's football program.The justices rejected the case of Ronnie Cottrell and I...
-
Court declares Steve Fossett legally dead
Court Alerts 02/16/2008Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett has been declared dead by a Chicago judge five months after his plane disappeared.The 63-year-old went missing on September 3 after taking off in a single-engined plane from a Nevada airstrip.His wife had asked fo...
-
Cop may plead guilty to bar beating
Court Alerts 02/15/2008The burly Chicago cop whose alleged beating of a female bartender was caught on videotape -- might be ready to plead guilty, his lawyer said Wednesday.But the alleged victim, Karolina Obrycka, told the Chicago Sun-Times she is still reeling from the ...
Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC
A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party
Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party
However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.