mycatharsis.com

Legally, if not effectively, shut down in the U.S. last month by a Swiss bank and rubber stamp decision by a federal judge,  Wikileaks has now leaked numerous photos and videos
from the recent crackdown in Tibet.   I find this story interesting because it really does seem to sit at the crossroads of the potential of the internet, and the self-interest of corporations (in this case, Julius Baer), to quell unfettered speech.   It really casts the efforts by Julius Baer in a more illuminative light.  I used to be convinced that corporations armed with lawyers are as big a threat to our Bill of Rights than our government.  The Bush administration has changed my thinking some in recent years, but not for the better.  As with the DMCA, a lot of companies realize that all they really have to do to quell speech on a practical level is to hire a lawyer to send out threatening letters.  Legal justification can be tenous at best, for either a judge or a blogger to back down.  Yet, as we can see here, for every company with a complaint, there is another side to the story and a compelling public interest in full disclosure.