Thanks to commentator 09F9 1102, a link to Media Statement on Behalf of Dynadot in re: Wikileaks Litigation:
The following constitutes Dynadot’s response to the Feb. 15 court order in the case of Bank Julius Baer & Co., Ltd v. Wikileaks, et al., which is pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.
“This case raises First Amendment issues that are for the Courts to decide, not my client, Dynadot,” stated Garret D. Murai of Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean, LLP, who represents Dynadot. “The only agreement by Dynadot was to comply with the Court’s previous order to preserve evidence, including preventing Wikileaks from transferring its domain name to another registrar and from changing its account settings – essentially, to preserve the status quo. Dynadot did not agree to remove the name server settings for wikileaks.org or to produce any information. This was requested by Julius Baer and granted by the Court.”
“It was explained to the Court that Dynadot only provides domain name registration services to Wikileaks. Dynadot is not the DNS provider nor is it the web host provider that maintains the content of wikileaks.org,” explains Kathryn Chow Han, in-house legal counsel for Dynadot. “Our company does not take a position on the merits of this litigation. However, if Julius Baer is concerned with the posting of its confidential documents on the wikileaks.org web site, it could have sought a more narrow remedy than seeking to have the entire wikileaks.org web site shut down.”
In Declaration of Evan Spiegel (attorney for plaintiffs), the declarant avows on p.65 (p.3 in PDF):
Mr Spiegel’s declaration supports plaintiffs’ contention in Memorandum of Points & Authorities (Docket 6) on p.3 (p.8 in PDF). There plaintiffs aver:
Anyone who knows anything about the technical operation of the .org gTLD should realize that this representation is misleading—at best.
I agree. The representation is EXTREMELY misleading. Sad isn’t it?
Yes, SO misleading. Everyone knows that the gennectigezoink doesn’t have anything to do with the whosiwhatzit, but actually technically comes from the thingamabob.
Professor Boyden—please don’t be an insufferable git. And please don’t troll. Your point about Judge White’s technical cluelessness is reasonable—just ill-made here and now. Here at Professor Froomkin’s blog there is some reason to hope that our host has a grasp on the intersection between the technology and the politics.
This case has caught international attention: If a U.S. judge can order Dynadot to take down wikileaks.org, then a U.S. judge can order Verisign to take down .ir or .cn.
Judge White has just fucked a decade’s worth of U.S. international telecommunications diplomacy.
Meanwhile, Dynadot’s media statement above needs to be examined closely in light of the Stipulation for Entry of Permanent Injunction and Order (Docket 47) and attached Proposed Order. The proposed order appears to have been adopted by Judge White without changes.
From p.2 of the stipulation:
(Emphasis added.)
But from the media statement above: “Dynadot did not agree to remove the name server settings for wikileaks.org or to produce any information.”
This looks bad.
And, finally, it will not have escaped anyone’s attention, that most of the world is just not following Judge White’s order. Unconstitutional as the order is, the judge is still most likely going to be hopping mad.
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…taking a constable to your assistance, to make strict and diligent search for John Entick, the author, or one concerned in the writing of several weekly very seditious papers, intitled The Monitor, or British Freeholder, No. 357, 358, 360, 373, 378, 379, 380… …this shall be your warrant. Given at St. James’s the 6th day of November 1762…
Dynadot indeed agreed to all of the terms in the injunction as presented to them by **the bank**, not by the court. This was what Dynadot thought it needed to “pay” to get out of the lawsuit. Dynadot and the bank BOTH suggested this order to the court. It was totally voluntary on Dynadot’s part. And totally unnecessary, since Dynadot already had easy outs provided by the law. (Domain name registrars cannot be held liable for the postings on the domains themselves.)
Personally, I would never recommend that anyone register with Dynadot if this is how they “protect” their customers. In fact, if I were registered with them, I’d switch my registrar (and host) ASAP!