On December 14, 2004, the New York City Independent Media Center filed a response to a subpoena filed in November of 2004. The subpoena requests information pertaining to a protest march for "Animal and Earth Liberation" that was held on the second day of protests against the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in NYC in 2002. During the protest, activists smashed windows and defaced property at an apartment building where a major backer of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company using vivisection, lived. The subpoena asks for emails between the NYC IMC and various animal rights organizations as well as pages on which discussions of the WEF protests appeared.

In the legal response, a lawyer for the NYC Independent Media Center argued that the majority of the requested documents are readily available to investigators via search engines and that the terms of the subpoena violate the First Amendment protections of news organizations. Additionally, the NYC Independent Media Center made it clear that it was opposed to the nature of the subpoena--which seems to function as much as a form of intimidation as it does a means of receiving information of assistance to prosecutors investigating the the organizers of the march for "Animal and Earth Liberation."

This subpoena was the fourth legal action against the NYC Independent Media Center since August of 2004.