Northern Rock attempts internet censorship

[matgb]

This one made me laugh. Dramatis Personae:

• Northern Rock: British bank in a little bit of financial difficulty.


• Wikileaks: Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Set up intentionally to allow documents to be hosted without censorship.

And get this, this is the genius one...
• Schillings: Our old friends the Reputation managers with a reputation problem? who used libel law as such a blunt instrument against Tim et al.

The story? Well, it got Slashdotted:

Collapsed UK Bank Attempts to Censor Wikileaks

In their legal demand to Wikileaks, Northern Rock's well-known media lawyers, Schillings, invoke the DMCA & WIPO, claim it'll be 10 years in prison for Wikileaks operators for not following the UK injunction, but then, incredibly, refuse to hand over a copy of the order unless Wikileaks' London lawyers promise not to give it to Wikileaks.

That's right, not content to try to censor a blogger for republishing stuff already in his book, they've now managed to attempt to censor a website specifically set up to stop censorship, by claiming copyright on the documents. Now, of course, they may have a legal case, but, um, guys? Don't you think you could learn from your mistakes?

Odds of me looking at the document in question before today? Minimal. But I've read it now. Nice try guys.

Comments

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Thanks for providing my chuckle of the day! Schillings have done a really good job here - I had never heard of wikileaks before, now I've bookmarked them!

My favorite bit was wikileaks using the fact that they had been served an injunction as proof of the documents veracity.

Strange thing is I thought a lot of that document's contents were actually in the public domain - I am sure much of it appeared in the Independent a couple of weeks ago.

[matgb]

It's ages since I bought a print paper so can't say. But yeah, while I'd heard of leaks before, I'd not really paid much attention, this puts them front and center, and have to admit they've got a point.

OTOH, Major sued Staggers for saying he wasn't and Scallywag for saying he was at the same time so it's not really proof at all.

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

Wikileaks? Whoops, Schillings; I'd never heard of it before either. Schillings really ought to go into PR; they'd be a lot better at it!

Hmm, a bank with an incompetent senior business administration have hired an incompetent 'reputation management' firm - actually, phrased like that, it sort of fits, I suppose.

[matgb]

Well, they are in PR, a lot of PR is avoiding the negative as well as pushing the positive, Clifford keeps a bank of stories he can break at need to push a negative story for one of his clients off the front page for example.

But they're just not really any good at it when it comes to online stuff. Which is fun.