ACMA blacklist proves too popular for Wikileaks

Wikileaks claimed late Friday night to be in possession of a new complete ACMA blacklist, but within hours the entire Wikileaks site was out of action.

"Wikileaks is overloaded by global interest," the site reads, before a brief message calling on supporters to donate to the site.

"Wikileaks is down due to high traffic, hardware failures and weekend unavailabilities," the organisation later wrote in its Twitter feed. "Nothing is lost, nothing got censored."

The Stockholm-based site had previously uploaded a list purporting to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority's blacklist, but the authenticity of the list was questioned by ACMA, several Internet filtering vendors and Australia's communications minister, Senator Stephen Conroy.

One of the main points of contention was the list's size and that the latest URLs added to the list appeared to be entered in August 2008.

Late Friday evening Wikileaks posted a new list that included URL's submitted up to March 18.

Administrators at Wikileaks used the opportunity to take a further swipe at Senator Conroy's threat to prosecute those responsible for the leak.

"Under the Swedish Constitution's Press Freedom Act, the right of a confidential press source to anonymity is protected, and criminal penalties apply to anyone acting to breach that right," the organisation said.

"Should the Senator or anyone else attempt to discover our source we will refer the matter to the Constitutional Police for prosecution, and, if necessary, ask that the Senator and anyone else involved be extradited to face justice for breaching fundamental rights."