In recent weeks there have been two similar scenarios in which a company has attempted to stiffle or cover-up information that is on the internet by threatening/taking legal action, pulling domains and/or hosting services of certain websites.

This seems like a reasonable course of action, but the issue is that even if the legal arguments win–the cat is already out of the bag.  The information is cached, blogged about, and indeed covered in the media.  When one threatens legal action against a site, all you’re going to do is draw more attention to what you’re trying to cover up.

First example:  Wikileaks, a site where whistleblowers can anonymously post confidential documents, received documents alleging money laundering, asset hiding and tax evasion practices by Bank Julius Baer.   When Bank Julius Baer went after Dynadot, Wikileaks’ domain registrar, pulling the wikileak.org domain, it drew intense scrutiny.  Frankly before all this happened I’d never heard of Wikileaks or Bank Julius Baer, and never would have if they hadn’t draw so much attention to themselves with the legal action.  If they’d have done nothing, nobody would have ever heard about the scandal, but now, regardless of if the allegations were true, when anyone thinks of Bank Julis Baer, they will think “money laundering off-shore bank”.

A similar thing happened with a site called Howard Forums.  A user posted a link to an unprotected XML file on the servers of MobiTV (a mobile streaming video provider), which listed the company’s unprotected streaming QuickTime URLs that enable anyone on the internet to watch TV for free (albiet in low resoultion form designed for cell phones).  Rather than implement security methods that would prevent this from happening, they decided to threaten legal action against the owners of the site under the DMCA. What ended up happening though, is that by threatening the site, they ended up stirring up a hornet’s nest of interest from bloggers, forum members, and news site.  Now the information that they are trying to cover up is available from hundreds of different sources.  I’d never heard of Hardware Forums or MobiTV before but now I know how to get free TV on my mobile phone or computer.

The bottom line is that the Internet is about information–and once it is out, its out.  There is nothing you can do to put the cat back in the bag.  By attempting to do so, all you’re going to do is draw more attention to the thing you’re trying to hide.  You’re giving validation to your detractors.

When it comes to dealing with false information on the Internet (although it is just as valid for true information) my advice is to ignore it.  Or in the case of when you’re trying to hide a security breach, just fix the breach as quickly and quietly as possible.