In its December newsletter, ISOC says it recognizes that WikiLeaks' posting of diplomatic cables is a worry to some, but knocking the site offline is illegal.

"Unless and until appropriate laws are brought to bear to take the wikileaks.org domain down legally, technical solutions should be sought to reestablish its proper presence," ISOC says, "and appropriate actions taken to pursue and prosecute entities (if any) that acted maliciously to take it off the air."

Wikileaks has suffered attacks and in response supporters of WikiLeaks have DDoS attacks of their own against Visa, Mastercard and Amazon.com.

"The Internet Society is founded upon key principles of free expression and non discrimination that are essential to preserve the openness and utility of the Internet," ISOC writes. "We believe that this incident dramatically illustrates that those principles are currently at risk.