Throughout America’s history, court cases have helped to determine exactly what our freedom of speech really means.

And, it looks like we may have yet another battle on our hands.

This time however, the topic at hand is freedom of speech over the Internet. As said in a “Time” article called “A Coming Chill Over Internet Freedom?” by Alex Altman, “The Web site, Wikileaks, is a venue for anonymous whistle-blowers to post documents alleging misbehavior without fear of recrimination.”

The Web site is currently being sued by a bank in the Cayman Islands for a document posted online.

“On Feb. 6, the Swiss-based Julius Baer Bank and Trust filed suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, claiming that an ex-employee provided stolen documents to the Web site. Wikileaks says the documents detail the bank’s methods of money laundering and tax evasion,” the article said.

The Web site was closed and disallowed from moving any content to a different domain. A correspondence between representatives of both parties involved can be found on the Web site (available through its IP address).

What is at stake here is freedom of speech online. It’s upsetting that more attention isn’t being put on the bank itself – whether or not the documents’ allegations are indeed true or false. Rather than looking at such a major detail, the court decided to shut down the site at the request of the bank.

This is a case of “prior restraint” censorship because the court took actions from letting speech be heard. Shutting a Web site down to keep anyone from viewing a bank document uploaded to the Internet does exactly that.

Prior restraint censorship is the worst kind of censorship because it does not let a voice be heard at all. Other examples of this kind of restrictions include confiscating copies of a book or denying a radio license.

The hearing for this case is scheduled for Friday.

The outcome of this case will be an interesting one.

The Internet is something that just about every college student on this campus has to use. Unless they only take courses from teachers who don’t use Blackboard or another similar Web site and don’t use e-mail, students are practically required to use the Internet.

For many college students, Internet freedom of speech therefore is very important, since the Internet is a part of the world we all live in.

It is unconstitutional to withhold the documents in question from being posted online, even if false.

I’d rather have the option to see something that is wrong and determine for myself that it is wrong, than to have someone tell me something is wrong and force me to take their word for it.

I hope the court grants that right to the public.