Slashdot Mirror
Australian Idol And ISP Censorship
fembots writes "Teenage fans of the new Australian Idol Casey Donovan rushed to the homepage of a dead gay porn icon with the same name when a URL was advertised in major newspapers without the .au country code. ISP BigPond took matters to its own hand by redirecting millions of its subscribers' requests back to the Idol's website. On top of that, BigPond lodged a formal complaint with the Australian Broadcasting Authority on the basis Mr Donovan's site may contain X-rated material or material that would be denied classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification."
Mr Donovan's site, which has been running for a number of years, features a naked frontal picture of the erstwhile adult star. A government source looking into the matter described an aspect of the picture of Mr Donovan as "frighteningly large".
The same source added that "heads will roll" over the incident.
"Frightenly large full frontal nude porn" and "heads will roll" all in the same sentence.
*ouch*.
so thats why I was directed to that Australian idol site...
So now we have a private corporation (ISP) deciding on its own, what people actually want or what they should be viewing. It was bad enough having governments making decisions for us, but this... I can see it now, your with Time Warner, well we knew that what you actually meant to do was go to this sponsor's web site.
Finally a link would have been posted on the front page of /. that wouldn't have caused a slashdotting!
... she suspiciously looks like Ron Jeremy without the mustache.
Several years ago the Government of New Brunswick (The Canadian province, not some place in NJ USA) issued a bunch of "safety cards" to elementary school children. These cards had colorful pictures and good messages to warn kids about the dangers of drugs, etc, etc.
One card of interest warned about the dangers of internet strangers and had an image of a snake peeking out of a computer.
Now New Brunswick is an offical bi-lingual province (English/French) and all of the cards had to be bi-lingual. So to cut on production costs they would use words that where the same or similar in french and english when possible.
So back to the dangers of the internet. This card had the innocent looking url anaconda.com to go along with the snake in the internet theme(if it's the same as it was I don't recommend for work viewing). Well the url went to a nice S&M site with a very umm colorful splash page.
The big ISP/Telco here immediately blocked the site at the request of the government.
Personally I love these PR nightmares for the entertainment value.
After your nefarious actions my gay 14 year old son was redirected towards a Pop Idol site and has turned quite banal. His mother is currently sobbing with shame at the trite, pre-packaged and artistically shallow lyrics he is now often found to be singing around the house. I can no longer even look my neighbours in the eye after they complained he was playing some auto-tuned squawker on his stereo as he washed my car last week. yours, a distraught father.
Not sure this would work. Anyone who's worked in IT for any length of time knows that something like this is likely...
You entered caseydonovan.com.
Due to a printing error, it is likely you really want caseydonovan.com.au. You won't bother reading this anyway - nobody ever does, they always click "yes" anyhow. So why we've gone to the hassle of setting it up I don't know.
Are you sure?
YES NO
Which is exactly why the cybersquatters at whitehouse.gov need to be shut down. They're giving the real whitehouse a bad name.
Don't want to check to closely whilst working on client site.
(it's a Simpsons reference)
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I firmly agree. Not to be too rigid, but I've taken a long, hard look at this and come to the conclusion that the redirection really is ok.
Even though the newspaper blew it with the bad URL in their spread, I think it was fine for BigPond to ramrod this solution. I'm sure it makes all their partners upset, but they had to suck it up, go for the glory, hole up in their bunkers and make the change.
I just wish you wouldn't have put all those double entendres in your post. Really, that was almost offensive.
sigs, as if you care.
Worse, the evildoers at whitehouse.gov have been known to engage in the same activities as the organization at whitehouse.com, which is a clear trademark violation. They must be stopped!
Please wait, you are being redirected to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie, the home page of Internet Explorer, the most secure web browser available.
Please note that there is a site with a similar address which contains content which is not suitable for windows users. If you are over 18 and do not want to go to Microsoft's Internet Explorer site, please click here now http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Feer.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.