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Comment by bl4k | Hacker News Reader

The bad things about this case is that whatever happens to Mr Assange, or how he is perceived in the media and by the wider world, directly impacts the credibility of wikileaks itself (like it or not).

A site that is built on a great ideal can now be easily dismissed by doubters and opponents because of the actions of its figurehead.

The people behind wikileaks should have remained anonymous and not given their enemies a target to attempt to take down.

Instead, Mr Assange reveled in the attention and tempted opponents of wikileaks to make a case of him.

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I think the fact that they were not anonymous tremendously helped the credibility of wikileaks.

That that backfires now is not a reason to say it was bad of them to do this in the first place.

Also, there is nobody guilty until they've been proven guilty.

If this is a smear job and it comes out as such in the longer term then wikileaks stature will only grow, if it isn't and Assange steps down I don't doubt that the next person to take his place will know that he/she is living in a glass box and needs to act accordingly.

wikileaks > Julian Assange.

"wikileaks \> Julian Assange."

Well that remains to be seen. Sure they have some sysadmins and lawyers in the background, but how many people are there going to be willing to live the lifestyle mr. Assange lives, traveling around the world from city to city, relying on a wide support network to provide him with places to stay, secure contacts, means of communication? Not much is known about him, but the journalists who have been digging into his past mostly come up with a highly unusual individual, not someone who can easily be replaced by an ad in the Economist like so many international aid organizations traditionally do when they lose a high-level employee for one reason or another.

I know of at least one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rop_Gonggrijp

He's already involved in wikileaks.

It is a smear campaign, so they don't have to wait for a guilty or innocent verdict - the charges alone are doing enough damage.

I like the old wikileaks, before Julian starting getting his face on the news as being the spokesperson. Wikileaks is now editorialized, which makes it easy for the right to write it off as part of the liberal media. It all started with the 'collateral murder' video (the chosen title says a lot).

They should let the documents speak for themselves, and leave wikileaks to be the online de facto venue for such documents.

If, hypothetically, a rape had actually occurred (which we can't speak to at this time), could a genuine prosecution occur without accusations of a smear campaign? What if he really is a rapist? If that were the case, should he not be prosecuted because of the work he does with Wikileaks?

But I agree that Wikileaks has been editorializing too much. I liked it when they were acting as journalists, not activists.

Actually I didn't word what I wrote correctly, what I meant to say is that no matter what happens, some will see it as a smear campaign.

Sweden is country advanced enough that you would assume that they don't just charge people with rape without there being some evidence to support the charge. We can also assume that the legal system in that country is stable enough to grant Julian a fair trial and judge him based on the evidence.

To date his only defense has been that this is a deliberate attempt by unnamed powers-that-be to smear his name because of his role at wikileaks. I can't recall him directly addressing the allegations (a good lawyer would advise him to save it for the courtroom).

It is an interesting case because of who he is - it will also be interesting if he mounts a 'this is a false allegation because of who I am' defense in court.

> it will also be interesting if he mounts a 'this is a false allegation because of who I am' defense in court.

It will be very short in that case.

The thing that makes this look like a smear job is the fact that it's two women that know each other at a very convenient time combined with the fact that Assange had already gone public before the alleged rape had happened with the warning that 'dirty tricks' were in their future.

It all seems a bit too convenient. The way the Swedish authorities went about the case to date also doesn't smell like roses.

Time will tell. As for the Swedish legal system being pure, I recall that not that long ago there was a ruling in the Pirate Bay case that a judge that had substantial ties with the recording industry was deemed impartial enough to judge their case.

Sweden is country advanced enough that you would assume that they don't just charge people with rape without there being some evidence to support the charge.

Is this really necessary? You're now actively participating in the smear campaign.

This is a great example of why the net still needs a lot of work to make it less centralized.

The problem here is that Wikileaks is Wikileaks. It is an entity with a face, a central location, etc.

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