WikiLeaks, a wiki site that helps insiders release information anonymously, was in the news last month when its primary domain name (wikileaks.org) was removed from the Domain Name System. A San Francisco judge ordered the move, which effectively made it impossible to reach any part of the wikileaks.org website directly. Fortunately for whistleblowers worldwide, the site was still accessible via an alternate domain name — wikileaks.be — which was registered in Belgium, and therefore not subject to injunctions from US judges. (Technically, it was also accessible by IP address for those motivated enough to bypass the DNS.)

Two weeks later, the judge reversed his own decision, and wikileaks.org came back online. The case raises some interesting questions, starting with, when you’re dealing with a wiki, who do you sue? The “owner” of the wikileaks.org domain is in Australia, the physical servers are in Sweden and Belgium, and the contributors are anonymous and unlogged. So, when the bank Julius Baer wanted to sue someone for leaking internal documents, the only domestically identifiable party was Dynadot, the San Mateo-based registrar of the wikileaks.org domain. (Of course, the bank’s approach backfired, as it only drew more attention to WikiLeaks — and to Julius Baer’s alleged wrongdoings — than ever before, which was exactly what they wanted to avoid. I, for one, had never heard of WikiLeaks before I heard about the case in the news.)

WikiLeaks is a case study in something completely new: a collectively authored publication where every contributor is fully anonymous and untraceable. At least one other site I’ve seen, Strictly No Photography, uses a similar model to share protected information (photos, in this case). It will be interesting to watch these models evolve, paying close attention to how various legal structures react to them.