Almost two weeks have passed since a federal judge ordered the host of the website wikileaks.org to shut down its service, though most web-savvy watchdogs have hardly noticed the difference. Despite the order, muckrakers and other curious web surfers can still access the site, which posts leaked corporate and government documents online, indirectly through the site’s IP address, mirror hosts or servers based in other countries. The case raises troubling questions, not only about the court’s respect for First Amendment rights, but for judge’s capacity to make informed rulings in the Information Age.

Apparently, the judge who ruled to shut down the website did not understand the implications of his decisions. In fact, the decision meant very little. Users can still access the documents in question — a series of proprietary documents allegedly stolen from a Swiss bank — through a variety of means, even though the site’s U.S. server agreed to shut down the .org site. Though the ruling was a flagrant violation of press freedom — no judge could order an entire newspaper to stop printing simply to restrain one article — it showed how little some judges and lawmakers understand about the web.

Ill-informed judicial decisions notwithstanding, governments may not matter if rogue websites continue to dodge censorship by hopping from one international server to another. Though nations like China may succeed in carefully vetting online material at the user end — at great expense — free nations that do not restrict what their citizens see online may eventually give up trying to shut down what servers post on the web. The massive online download site thepiratebay.com has evaded more attempts to shut it down than it can count, even when it appeared shutting down its Swedish server would spell the end of access to its often-illegal music and videos. By its nature, the Internet is designed to disseminate all kinds of information — regardless of legal or ethical ramifications — anonymously and without accountability. The sooner the legal establishment catches up to what most of the country has already realized, the more productive its rulings will become. Until then, the nation’s leaders could do with some humbling lessons in web technology, until they learn that online information is no easier to contain than the air in the atmosphere.