Excellent analysis, on how this judgement steps on blogger's rights and free speech

Electronic Frontier Foundation blasts anti H-1B site take downs as dangerous and wrong.

Over the holidays, a New Jersey court issued an order requiring upstream providers to shut down three anti-H1-B websites that is deeply dangerous and wrong. The order not only tries to remove allegedly defamatory messages but also requires a complete shutdown of the websites and even purports to require the cooperation of the hosting companies and domain registrars of the websites to do so and for other service providers to identify anonymous speakers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation defends free speech and other rights in electronic media, especially online rights.

So, workers just got a powerful advocate with this posting.

The document and the surrounding controversy prompted further heated discussion in which the websites allegedly accused Apex of being a “bodyshop" that engaged in bad practices while employing H1-B visa workers from India. According to papers Apex filed with the court, at least one website claimed that its members provided evidence of widespread visa and labor fraud by Apex, which they apparently reported to the government. Apex denies any wrongdoing.

Rather than responding to the substance of the criticisms, Apex took the matter to court to try to remove them from the internet. On December 23, Judge James Hurley issued a prior restraint against endh1b.com, itgrunt.com and guestworkerfraud.com, ordering the websites to remove all postings about Apex Technology Group or its President, Sarvesh Kumar Dharayan, until further order of the court. The court also ordered the sites’ ISPs/domain name registrars (DiscountASP.NET, GoDaddy.com, Domains By Proxy and Network Solutions) to stop hosting and “immediately shut down and disable” the websites. Finally, the order requires the ISPs to provide identity information about their customers.

This order dangerously overreaches. By restricting access to entire websites, it places a prior restraint on all of the speech on the websites, even if that speech is unrelated to Apex or Mr. Dharayan. Imagine if a court could order Amazon.com or Yelp.com shut down because of a disparaging review of a single product.

Prior restraints are improper in cases such as this due to the obvious First Amendment problems they pose. Courts limit such injunction to the rare circumstances when (1) the activity to be restrained poses either a clear and present danger or a serious and imminent threat to a protected competing interest, (2) the order is narrowly drawn and (3) less restrictive alternatives are not available. Instead, damages are the preferred sanction for defamatory speech. Here, Apex says it is not even seeking damages. And even if Apex had a valid defamation claim, the wholesale shutdown of a website is not a narrow remedy for a few allegedly defamatory postings.

EFF concludes just how wrong this order is:

The New Jersey court order is therefore wrong in at least four ways: (1) it creates a prior restraint that takes down too much speech, (2) it wrongly punishes websites for the speech of their commenters, (3) it wrongly requires the identification of anonymous speakers without sufficient opportunity to challenge the disclosure, and (4) it wrongly enlists out-of-jurisdiction upstream providers who did not act in concert with the websites in taking down speech. We hope the parties and the upstream and domain name hosts involved will seek to overturn it.

Now the question becomes will the EFF take on this case? I hope so. What a dangerous precedent is it that a company can literally take down websites and shut down domains simply because they don't like the word getting out on how they treat their employees.