Wikileaks!

In my Media and Society class, we have been following the Wikileaks story- which I believe is a great example of a few things we've discussed. First is, the fact the internet isn't governed; its hard to apply laws. Especially in this case as the owner of the site is not American, yet America is involved a great deal... who has digital jurisdiction here? Also, we have discussed in the past with the idea of user-generated content and citizen journalism is the sense of responsibility users must take, as well as the risks associated with user-generated content. For those of you who are unaware of what Wikileaks is - it is created by Julian Assange who now faces a variety of challenges after his most brazen disclosure yet: posting 391,832 secret Pentagon documents on the Iraq war. Twelve weeks earlier, he had posted some 77,000 documents on the Afghan conflict. However, as i am typing this and I attempted to go on the site, my browser is telling me that the domain cannot be found. Various news articles report it may have  been shut down, at least in the US.


Some article I found of interest. 


This article goes more in depth on parts of the founders life- including the fact that he faces rape and molestation charges; in other words he's not the wholesome person he evidently claimed to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html?_r=1


http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B24WT20101203