Why Are Canadian Sympatico Users Being Banned On EFNet?

An anonymous reader asks: "After being away from IRC for over a year, changing ISPs and moving my physical self to another apartment, tonight I tried to get back on EFnet. With a brand new IP, and a brand new computer, I discovered that all over EFnet, all channels related to Linux are banning all Canadian Sympatico users, this includes high speed customers, dial up users, and business users. In fact, the ban is quite severe and bans the entire sympatico.ca domain. I've tried to message several operators in #linux, #linuxhelp, and #slackware, but nobody is responding. What's going on?"

Comments

It's a protest...

[psyconaut]

The Canadian government has been working on a bill to make open source software illegal....only commercially sold and supported software will be legal as of June 1st 2003.

This all stems from the fact that the Canadian government has been in negotiations to sell British Columbia to Microsoft since 1999.

Re:It's a protest...

[psyconaut]

This was obviously humour....although there have been comments in the press before about Microsoft looking to buy B.C. ;-)

Re:Solicits a question...

[Anonymous Coward]

[Physics majors] ask WHY, Engineers ask HOW.
Accounting majors ask HOW MUCH and Liberal Arts majors ask....

Would you like fries with that?

Official Response from #linux

[raduga]

*** poptix is poptix@techmonkeys.org (· Matthew S. Hallacy ·)
*** on channels: @#linux #icons_of_vanity
*** on irc via server irc.secsup.org (Insert Tagline )
> poptix: do you have an official response to the Slashdot story I can send them?
> speaking on behalf of efnet #linux operators?
<poptix> radtuna: sure 'Canada sucks'
<poptix> ;)