(CNN) -- Under heavy pressure from the United States and allied governments, WikiLeaks appealed to supporters worldwide to mirror its website Sunday as it continued the process of releasing thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables.
"Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack. In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, we need your help," the site told followers Sunday. The message was followed by instructions on how website operators could set up mirror sites that would distribute the documents as WikiLeaks released them.
On the microblogging site Twitter, supporters have rallied by offering their sites or by posting links to other mirrors. In an echo of "Spartacus," the 1960 film classic about a slave revolt against ancient Rome, many adopted the hashtag #imwikileaks.
"All the censoring of WikiLeaks is more alarming than the actual content of the leaks. It only further justifies WL's actions," read one widely distributed comment.
WikiLeaks, which facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information, began posting the first of more than 250,000 U.S. State Department documents last week. Since then, the site has been hit with denial-of-service attacks, been kicked off servers in the United States and France, and lost a major revenue source on Friday when the U.S.-based PayPal cut off its account.
PayPal said WikiLeaks violated its policy against activities that "encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity." And a U.S.-based domain name provider shut down WikiLeaks early Friday, but the controversial website announced hours later that it had employed a company in Switzerland and was back up. CNN
