A US federal court has reversed an order which had shut down the
Wikileaks.org
website.
The whistleblower site had been ordered to
disable the
domain after an earlier court ruled in favour of Swiss bank Juilus Baer
which complained about leaked documents posted on the site.
Wikileaks was founded as an open forum for the anonymous posting of
government and corporate documents.
The site has been host to incriminating documents regarding the Northern Rock
crisis, human rights abuses in China, and political corruption in Kenya.
The San Francisco federal court decision overturns the previous ruling in
which the site would have been forced to disconnect the wikileaks.org domain,
cutting off the site's main URL.
The judge also overturned a restraining order preventing Wikileaks from
running any Julius Baer documents on its site.
Defenders of Wikileaks, which included the
American
Civil Liberties Union and the
Electronic
Frontier Foundation, declared the decision a victory for free speech.
"We are very pleased that Judge White recognised the serious constitutional
concerns raised by his earlier orders," said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff
attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"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."
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