Wikileaks vows to continue

Wikileaks.org, the website that claims to blow the whistle on corporate and governmental fraud, is remaining defiant after it was ordered offline by a US court.

A US court order forced web host Dynadot to pull Wikileaks from its servers and lock the domain name, preventing it from being transferred to another provider. Swiss banking group Julius Baer brought the court order after documents were posted about its offshore activities.

But Wikileaks has vowed to keep on publishing documents and said that given "the level of suppression involved in this case" it will in fact step up publication of "documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices".

Its owners said: "The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint and is clearly unconstitutional. In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States."

The contested documents remain available on Wikileaks websites hosted in other countries including India and Belgium.

Wikileaks has hit the headlines for hosting documents such a recent confidential briefing document relating to the collapse of the Northern Rock bank.