Wikileaks - a much needed new insitutional form?

The last edition of The Sunday Age had a good article on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Of course Australians are only too pleased to claim anyone as their own if they have a hint of celebrity and there is no doubting Assange's mystery and latent celebrity potential (as much as he no doubt abhors the idea).

But what is Wikileaks an example of? Is it a new institutional form that had to emerge as other historical institutional forms, such as universities, now increasingly corporatised, lose their social purpose i.e. as sources of independent, validated knowledge about issues that matter in our world?