WikiLeaks activist Julian Assange is to be released on bail after an appeal of the decision to the High Court failed Thursday morning.

Assange’s supporters have reportedly raised the £200,000 cash (roughly $315,000) that will be needed to spring him. There will be restrictions on his movements at least until his extradition hearing January 11.

Conceding to concerns that Assange is a flight risk the High Court required that more than the two people demanded by the lower court stand surety for his whereabouts, each posting a reported £20,000. The red tape could delay his release.

Assange will have to submit to electronic monitoring, a curfew and physically report in to the police every day. His passport has already been lifted.

Assange will be confined to the house on the 600-acre country estate of Vaughn Smith, who started and runs the Frontline Club for journalists in London where Assange spent some of his time “underground.” Reportedly Sweden will have to foot the bill.

It was apparently the Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that saw Assange as a flight risk and appealed the decision Tuesday to release him on bail and not Swedish authorities.

In fact, the Swedish prosecutors told the Guardian Wednesday that they had “not got a view at all on bail” and had no standing to appeal.

Apparently this news surprised Assange’s lawyers who told the paper that the CPS had told them that Sweden had asked that Assange be kept behind bars.

The Guardian is the British paper that like the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El Pais has been publishing the pilfered diplomatic cables under an agreement with WikiLeaks meant to legitimize their revelation.

The Times has noticed that WikiLeaks is recasting its identity on its web site to raise a First Amendment shield against US prosecution. It has been speculated that the US might deny that WikiLeaks is journalism or that Assange is a journalist.

The Times says WikiLeaks is now claiming to filter and analyze documents not just post raw text.

Rewriting history, the site now says its “journalists write news stories based on the material, and then provide a link to the supporting documentation to prove our stories are true.”

By the Times’ count the WikiLeaks submission page now uses the word “journalist” and forms of the word “news” 23 times.

The paper says the US government is looking for evidence that Assange colluded with Pfc. Bradley Manning and helped him extract a quarter of a million cables and documents from its computers. If such evidence exists, Assange could be charged with conspiracy. Manning, already in jail but not charged, is reportedly refusing to co-operate.

It is currently though the US would have a better chance of extraditing Assange from the UK than from Sweden where he is wanted for questioning in relation to sex crimes.