An ineffectual order purporting to shut down the website Wikileaks has been vacated by the judge who imposed it. The judge who entered the order apparently realized that the First Amendment prohibits a court from shutting down an entire media outlet simply because it published information that was arguably private.

On Feb. 15, the judge, Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco, ordered the American address of the site, Wikileaks.org, to be disabled at the request of Bank Julius Baer & Company, a Swiss banking company, and its Cayman Islands subsidiary. They charged that Wikileaks had posted confidential, personally identifiable account information on some of the bank’s customers. ... In reversing himself at a hearing here on Friday, Judge White acknowledged that the bank’s request posed serious First Amendment questions and might constitute unjustified prior restraint.

Apart from his belated recognition of the First Amendment, Judge White expressed frustration that the site is mirrored elsewhere, effectively rendering his order a nullity. If anything, the publicity that followed the court's ruling probably sent many more readers to the site than it had before the court acted. [More...]