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."
Is this the preview site for Shrek 3? I was genuinely scared, give me dead gay people any day over this. This could be the next memetic nasty URL.
Shocking. I hope her singing voice makes up for it.
*shakes head*
I am a bastard.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
It might have been more acceptable to intercept the request and give the user the option (explaining the error)... provide the CORRECT link, or continue to the one they really entered.
I do not like censorship... and there's nothing illegal about a gay porn star's website. However, helping people recognize a legitimate error would be ok.
Blind redirection is not an acceptable alternative in my eyes.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
yes but then nobody can get to your page even you.
why not put up an inbetween page. very simple it explains the advertising blunder and has 2 links on it. simple and everybody is happy. you would of course have to get permission from CaseyDonovan.com first.
because as of right now a Major ISP has efectively stollen an domain.
--meh--
Maybe a slightly better solution would have been to tick up a page stating the cock-up
Seems to me that showing a cock-up is exactly what they were trying to avoid.