Wikileaks Case Due Back in Court

An effort at damage control has snowballed into a public relations disaster for a Swiss bank seeking to crack down on a renegade Web site for posting classified information about some of its wealthy clients.

In federal court in San Francisco, the bank asked a judge to take down the site. Much to the outrage of free speech advocates and others, the judge did.

But instead of the information disappearing, it rocketed through cyberspace, landing on other Web sites and Wikileaks' own "mirror" sites outside the U.S.

Masnick said the bank's lawsuit demonstrates the ineffectiveness of such legal actions in the Internet age, when anyone with a computer and online connection can thumb his nose at a judge's ruling and resurrect the "banned" information elsewhere.