Australian Idol And ISP Censorship

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Australian Idol And ISP Censorship

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @02:40AM from the sex-censorship-and-a-land-down-under dept.

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."

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Re:Automated domain registrations by DrSkwid · 2004-11-23 02:49 · Score: 4, Informative

whitehouse has been a pornographic magazine for over 20 years, their website is a natural extension of that hence the .com

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Re:Paranoia by Mr_Silver · 2004-11-23 02:53 · Score: 3, Informative

While fans of the dead Casey Donovan might be upset, this seems to be a legitimate thing bigpond to do. It's pretty clear that the vast majority got sent to the site they wanted to see, and in a few weeks/months everything can be returned to normal, and gay porn fans can get their Casey back.
Indeed, and it is also worth pointing out that had they not done this, then someones hosting bill could have become horribly expensive or their entire site shut down because it's reached its allocated bandwidth.
If it was my site wrongly pointed to in an ad, I've far rather than the whole of Austrialia were redirected for a couple of months rather than find myself on the recieving end of a huge bill or everyone else get inconvenianced by a completely inaccessable website.

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Re:Another Big Brother by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-23 03:02 · Score: 1, Informative

Telstra / Bigpong is 51% goverment owned, atleast untill john howard and the rest of his party sells the rest of sometime in the near future.
Re:Yes and no.. by James+Foster · 2004-11-23 03:08 · Score: 5, Informative

Actually, they do send you to a page informing you that you are being redirected:

Please wait, you are being redirected to www.caseydonovan.com.au, the home page of Casey Donovan, the new Australian Idol.
Please note that there is a US site with a similar address which contains adult content which is not suitable for minors. If you are over 18 and do not want to go to Casey Donovan's Australian Idol Site, please click here now www.caseydonovan.com
Re:Paranoia by Shard013 · 2004-11-23 03:08 · Score: 2, Informative

And that is exactly what they did.
What The Fuck are they talking about? by 3.5+stripes · 2004-11-23 03:13 · Score: 3, Informative

www.caseydonovan.com without any particular .html page extension takes you to a big blue page asking if you're sure you want to look at adult material, including the word gay (and porn star) 5 or six times.

THERE IS NO PHOTO.

This is pretty fucking stupid.

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He tried to kill me with a forklift!
1. Re:What The Fuck are they talking about? by 3.5+stripes · 2004-11-23 03:19 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Sorry, Big Black Page, Blue text...
  
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  He tried to kill me with a forklift!
2. Re:What The Fuck are they talking about? by miaDWZ · 2004-11-23 04:34 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  There was.
  
  I thought I'd checkout the .com site just to see what everyone was going (no, really...) on Monday afternoon, Australian time, when the story starting hitting online news sites. I was presented with a picture of our friend, the dead gay porn star, naked, in all his glory with quite a... large... piece of equipment pointing at the world.
  
  Below that said image, they started showing pictures of all his videos available for purchase.
  
  One of the news articles I read on Monday said that Telstra was in talks with the owner of the .com site and discussing options. I'm guessing Telstra applied a lot of pressure and made the webmaster of the .com put up a warning page prior to letting the viewer see a pictures of our friend.
3. Re:What The Fuck are they talking about? by rmlane · 2004-11-23 07:10 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Wen the ad was first published 24 hours ago, http://www.caseydonovan.com/ was directed to a page very similar to what's now at http://www.caseydonovan.com/home.html. There was no splash page, that must be new, and probably added after Telstra panicked and started hassling the owner of Casey "dead gay porn star" Donovan.
Re:Yes and no.. by Shard013 · 2004-11-23 03:14 · Score: 5, Informative

*cut*
What we have here is a precedent where an ISP has decided not to show you the page you asked for, but rather the page they thought you should look at - and without telling you.
*cut*

They did infact tell you exactly what was happening. I am a Bigpond customer and they presented you with a nice clear page saying that you are being redirected to the idol site. It also says if you REALLY wanted to see the porn stars site, than click here. You only had about 3 seconds to read it all and click, but you still had the opportunity.
Re:Paranoia by doowy · 2004-11-23 04:03 · Score: 5, Informative

that's what they did. this is what users saw when they visited the printed URL:

Please wait, you are being redirected to www.caseydonovan.com.au, the home page of Casey Donovan, the new Australian Idol.
Please note that there is a US site with a similar address which contains adult content which is not suitable for minors. If you are over 18 and do not want to go to Casey Donovan's Australian Idol Site, please click here now www.caseydonovan.com

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..mork
The redirecting link by rohanl · 2004-11-23 05:14 · Score: 3, Informative

here is the actual redirecting link
Re:Yes and no.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-23 08:25 · Score: 1, Informative

You get 4 seconds to choose before being sent to the "correct" site. A cookie is put in your browser so the next visit causes an automatic redirect, which is what annoys me the most.
Re:I'd say... by grover_99 · 2004-11-23 09:40 · Score: 3, Informative

BTW, the original link points to a rather mild entry page with an legal age disclaimer - whoever clicks through this either knows what he does, or needs a medium shock to reactivate comatose parts of the brain anyways.
The website didn't have the entry page when the story first broke. The site owner must have added it after a bit of prodding from Telstra.
Re:I'd say... by himi · 2004-11-23 11:00 · Score: 3, Informative

You are misinformed - the redirection wasn't completely automatic, it went through a page that told you what was happening, and gave you a link to the .com site along with a warning about its content (see it at http://144.135.18.91 assuming it hasn't been taken down by now).

Yeah, a direct redirection without any choice in the matter would be way over the top, but a redirection implemented this way seems quite reasonable.

himi

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Re:Yes and no.. by mian · 2004-11-23 11:00 · Score: 2, Informative

it should also be mentioned that the advertiser who made the mistake was Telstra, who also happen to own BigPond so they were actually covering up their own mistake.
Re:Yes and no.. by lazybeam · 2004-11-23 13:42 · Score: 2, Informative

She (Casey) is an individual, so she probably should have gotten an .id.au domain, which is meant for individuals! I know I've had one from almost as soon as they were available.

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