Slashdot Mirror

Plenty of articles reporting this---such as this one---give specific information on what Telus objects to on the blocked website:

"the company said the site suggested striking workers jam Telus phone lines, and posted pictures of employees crossing the union picket lines.

Telus spokesman Drew Mcarthur said advocating jamming lines hurt the company, and access to the pictures threatened the privacy and safety of employees."

However, I have to agree with everyone who says this was a deeply stupid idea. Several phone lines supplying communities of hundreds of people have been cut (see same link), which one would expect Telus to use to turn public opinion against the locked-out union members. As it is, they've committed a massive PR blunder---one that has now been picked up by national news services in Canada and widely distributed---that will weigh against them for (literally) years when people decide whether to use their service. According to comments on the union web site (unblocked proxy here), that's already started to happen. It's like they're trying to disprove the idea that no publicity is bad publicity...

It should also be interesting to see whether this is legal. While the Charter doesn't directly prevent censorship by private entities, Telus has a regional monopoly on local telephone service, and so quite possibly may be vulnerable to legal measures.

http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/

For anyone intrested in seeing the site who is currently connected through a telus account, you can use the following url:

http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/

Voices For Change, if you can access it, recommends using http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/. The owner does not-for-profit hosting for a number of organizations. It's a Free-BSD box at an Undisclosed Location.

My work leases a telus line so i can't see the page right now, but here is a proxy url that accesses the page:
http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/index.asp

How about this:

http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/

TELUS customers can pass this proxy URL to TWU members they know who uses TELUS as their ISP: http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/

site blocked to telus isp customers by telus (this is seen directly, not through proxy)

blocked site seen through the proxy that they recommend

Telus corporate home page (this is the isp home page)

Telus fair use policy (part of agreement with telus isp customers)

Just for the telus customers out there who wish to access the site. (from the Voices For Change website) TELUS customers can pass this proxy URL to TWU members they know who uses TELUS as their ISP: http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/ also there is always tor i cant think of a better thing for tor that situations like this http://tor.eff.org/

From My box:
traceroute to www.voices-for-change.com (204.14.106.29), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 192.168.196.43 (192.168.96.43) 1.372 ms 1.211 ms 1.144 ms
2 * * *

From a friend of mine (A telus business customer in another city):

traceroute to www.voices-for-change.com (204.14.106.29), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 10.X.Y.9 (10.X.Y.9) 11.937 ms 9.774 ms 9.080 ms
2 192.168.X.Y (192.168.X.Y) 6.888 ms 10.091 ms 9.272 ms
3 REDACTED.bb.telus.com (209.115.XX.XX) 175.486 ms 108.097 ms 203.427 ms
4 * * *

SSHing to a non-telus IP, I can access the website directly.

ping www.voices-for-change.com
PING www.voices-for-change.com (204.14.106.29): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 204.14.106.29: icmp_seq=0 ttl=115 time=107.100 ms
64 bytes from 204.14.106.29: icmp_seq=1 ttl=115 time=107.068 ms

According to the CBC, "People who use service providers other than Telus can still access the sites, and Telus subscribers can get in through a proxy site, http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/, Voices for Change said."