The president of a Chicago suburb has dropped his attempt to obtain the identity of an anonymous MySpace user after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus brief detailing how the petition violated both the First Amendment and a federal statute that protects the privacy of online users.

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"We are grateful that Mr. Dominick has chosen to abandon his misguided attempt to unmask a critic through the use of the legal system," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "While litigants may pursue claims against speakers who have truly engaged in defamatory speech, it is not enough -- especially for an elected official -- to walk into court and demand the identity of an anonymous speaker supported with nothing but a vague allegation of wrongdoing."

The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive's lawyers, fought the NSL, challenging its constitutionality in a December 14 complaint to a federal court in San Francisco. The FBI agreed on April 21 to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case, making some of the documents available to the public.

Wikipedia has been caught up in a defamation case after a New Jersey literary agent received an unflattering entry in the online encyclopaedia.

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Wikipedia is being aided in the case by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and both groups filed a motion on 1 May asking for the suit to be dismissed.

"Wikipedia continues to be a tremendous resource for people around the globe, " said EFF senior staff attorney Matt Zimmerman.

"Without strong liability protection, it would be difficult for Wikipedia to continue to provide a platform for user-created content."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton Thursday filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the operator of the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, arguing that federal law immunizes it against suits over statements made by its users.

Literary agent Barbara Bauer filed a complaint in New Jersey Superior Court in January against Wikipedia posters as well as the site itself, claiming in part that the Wikimedia Foundation was liable for statements identifying her as one the "dumbest of the twenty worst" agents and that she had "no documented sales at all." In court papers filed Thursday, Wikimedia argues that under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, operators of "interactive computer services" such as Wikipedia cannot be held liable for users' comments. In addition, Wikimedia argues that the statements are protected speech under the First Amendment and New Jersey law.

Craigslist is defending itself against charges by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal that solicitations for prostitution are "rampant" on its Web site and demanding that Blumenthal retract statements it says are defamatory.

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But the court said the Communications Decency Act protects Web sites from liability for third-party postings. It's the latest in a series of similar rulings.

A staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Kurt Opsahl, said the ruling was "good news."

The protection provided by the law is essential to the Internet's free operation, he said.

The world's largest website name registrar, Network Solutions, is blocking web surfers from accessing an anti-Islam site - prompting concerns that fear of Islamic violence has become so powerful that it even controls WWW content.

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The Post reported that Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation - an organization that aims to champion free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights in digital and electronic issues - said it was the first case he'd heard of in which a U.S.-based registrar had preemptively suspended a domain name for violating its use policy. He admitted, however, that Network Solutions was within its legal rights in doing so.

As the Internet moved into the mainstream in the mid-1990s, John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, coined the phrase "the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

Gilmore's comments were a reference to the architecture of the Internet, which was designed to ensure that information was delivered by the most efficient means possible and render attempts to block content nearly impossible. Yet years later, a growing number of countries seem determined to challenge Gilmore's maxim.

Julius Baer & Company LTD on Wednesday abandoned, for now, its legal quest to shut down whistleblower website Wikileaks.

Lawyers for the Swiss bank filed a motion to dismiss the case five days after a federal judge in San Francisco ruled the website's postings of leaked documents is protected as free speech by the US Constitution.

"I think they are recognizing what the judge made clear on Friday," said Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Matt Zimmerman, who was on the Wikileaks defense team.

"It seems the plaintiff decided there wasn't much point in going forward and we agree with that."

A US federal court has reversed an order which had shut down the Wikileaks.org website.

The whistleblower site had been ordered to disable the domain after an earlier court ruled in favour of Swiss bank Juilus Baer which complained about leaked documents posted on the site.

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"We are very pleased that Judge White recognised the serious constitutional concerns raised by his earlier orders," said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Whistle-blowing site Wikileaks is getting legal help to fight an attempt to keep it offline.

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are planning to "intervene" for Wikileaks at the continuation hearing.

The rights groups claim the order that knocked Wikileaks offline in the US raises "serious First Amendment concerns".