WikiLeaks moves domain to Switzerland

Just a few hours after having its DNS servers terminated by a US company, WikiLeaks has anounced a move to a Swiss domain: wikileaks.ch. The domain is registered by the Pirate Party of Switzerland and it currently points to a single IP address in Sweden.

This move increases the resilience of the WikiLeaks site. Unlike wikileaks.org, the wikileaks.ch domain is not registered with a US company and is thus less likely to bow to pressure from the US government.

WikiLeaks also points out that "Free speech has a number", referring to the Swedish IP address that can be entered into a browser's address bar (http://88.80.13.160). The Swedish website does not host any WikiLeaks content; instead, it redirects browsers to an IP address in France, which does host the content (http://213.251.145.96)

French company OVH has now delegated a block of 16 IP addresses to WikiLeaks, which suggests more than a temporary relationship between the two organisations:

inetnum:        213.251.145.96 - 213.251.145.111
netname:        WIKILEAKS

Curiously, the wikileaks.ch domain is configured to use EveryDNS.net as a DNS provider. This is the same US company that terminated DNS services for the wikileaks.org domain earlier today. It could be interesting to see what happens next in this cat and mouse game.

Real-time performance graphs for wikileaks.ch can be viewed here.