Pursuant to notice posted on the website www.switch.ch, despite many requests addressed to the registry regarding removal of wikileaks.ch, this site will not be blocked. Issues regarding blockage and removal of this site are subject solely to a court decision, SWITCH representatives reckon
The registry for national domains .ch (Switzerland) and .li (Lichtenstein), SWITCH doesn’t hold itself responsible for content posted on these domain names. Furthermore, SWITCH does not host wikileaks.ch. Physically, the site is located in a different place and SWITCH only provides the domain name support.
The registry explains its position quite simply: first, domain name blockage will not result in the removal of website content. One may get to the website by typing its IP-address in a browser. Second, wikileaks.ch boasts of numerous mirrors in various countries worldwide – over 1,000 as of 7 December 2010 - and blockage or removal of one domain name will not make this site less available for the Internet users.
SWITCH has underlined that removal of a domain name requires a legal ground, for example, a court decision.
At the same time, by no means is it possible to accuse SWITCH of supporting “terrorist” websites: merely two weeks earlier the company, being also the largest Swiss hoster, informed its users on the onset of a very tough fight against sites containing grayware. Effective from 25 November 2010, upon receipt from the user of a complaint against the site content, SWITCH sends to both its administrator and service provider who support the site a request to remove the grayware. In case no measures are taken to remedy the situation during one working day, the site is removed. Such a tough stance is due to a great number of viruses and other grayware which a user may catch simply visiting a site without having enough time to do anything – the user may not even notice anything. “Each week we receive over a hundred notifications of websites which contaminate computers with grayware. This is an emergency situation, that is why we promptly remove the website,” – informed head of SWITCH security department, Serge Droz. To recap, the Swiss Internet space is being considered as one of the safest in the world and such a tough approach provides guarantees for compliance with the Internet security standards.
Background:
Domain name delegation of notorious resource Wikileaks.org which posted the US government secret documents has been put on hold by EveryDNS.net service at the beginning of December. The project director, Julian Assange, consequently obtained the domain name of wikileaks.ch and turned to the Internet users with a request to set up a network of mirrors of the site all over globe ”in order to make shutdown of Wikileaks physically impossible.” Even now it is clear that the project is a success, and though hosters and registrars in various countries of the world are taking different stances regarding this controversial site, in the majority of cases a point of view similar to the SWITCH’s position prevails: blockage and shutdown of the website will be carried out solely following a decision rendered by the court of law. Facebook has also refused to block Wikileaks page explaining that “Wikileaks Facebook Page does not infringe terms and conditions of the usage and our standards for information.” It is interesting that the US authorities strongly pushed for blockage of Wikileaks. Earlier, they condemned other countries for blocking access to opposition movements’ websites.
