internet

Wikileaks, the shadowy but seemingly genuine service for hosting leaked government and corporate documents, suffered a serious setback yesterday, when a US court forced their internet provider to remove their address records from their servers.

Recently Tom Cruise unwittingly acquired an additional 15 minutes of fame with this, a video where he talks in an "inspired" way about Scientology... it found it's way onto Youtube, provoking gales of hilarity... whereupon The Church of Scientology had it pulled and threatened (as is their inclination) to sue anyone who re-posted it. End of story. 

Or not. Good stories however, seldom if ever start at the beginning...Last year this appeared :: (09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5- 63-56-88-c0) an HD-DVD encryption key which was illegal to publish (under the terms of the reviled DMCA). It got published. Digg tried to censor it and it exploded. For a couple of days the front page of the news aggregation services were dominated by the key being copied thousands of times across thousands of blogs - an "I'm Spartacus" moment. It passed... but served (as a warning) to illustrate the internet's sensitivity to censorship. This key now sits proudly at the number one position of the "most dugg stories of all time" list.