An Internet service provider based in Richmond Hill is one of hundreds mirroring the controversial WikiLeaks website, which has come under fire for disclosing diplomatic documents.

David Gilbert, a technical worker for EI Catalyst Corp., responded to WikiLeaks’ call for mirrors on Sunday morning and set up the domain http://wikileak.eicat.ca. It’s one of about 1,300 sites, including nine in Canada, that has cloned the original website and taken on some of its traffic load.

“The Internet is no longer just a collection of computers and routers and fibres. The Internet also includes the people and so in this case, with WikiLeaks being under attack, the people responded,” Gilbert said.

WikiLeaks moved its website address to the Swiss http://wikileaks.ch last week after two American Internet providers ditched it and Paris tried to ban French servers from hosting its leaked information database.

The website has continued to make secret information public despite cyberattacks and the detention of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on allegations of sexual assault. The original source of the leaked cables is not known.

EI Catalyst Corp. is a small company that provides Internet to hundreds of individuals and businesses. It has been attacked for hosting controversial sites in the past and Gilbert said the company has developed defences that make it “uniquely ready to support a WikiLeaks mirror.”

“We’re obviously concerned about customers,” he said. “There’s always that risk but I think the fact that there’s more than 1,000 mirrors means it would be pretty bad press.”

Gilbert said he’s just doing his part to protect freedom of speech, and the sentiment is unanimous among his colleagues at EI Catalyst Corp.

“Putting up a mirror was a tiny, small thing. I put up a mirror because it was the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s an example of the Internet routing around failure. The failure is the American government’s ability to try and take out WikiLeaks, the routing around failure is the mirrors popping up around the world.”