Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Domain Registry Pulls Plug on Free Speech
An anonymous reader writes "The staff of a Canadian political candidate bragged today that he had managed to shut down a website critical of his involvement in a fundraising scandal, by having the country's registrar of domains pull the DNS records for the site. Criticism from bloggers and free speech advocates has been negative, and is coming from across the political spectrum."
Michael Geist's page (linked in the summary) contains this link to a mirror of the site that caused the furor: http://www.youthforvolpe.no-libs.com/p
Click here for the whole scoop and some mirrors:
.ca registrar after they emailed them demanding which part of the Registrant Agreement that they were in violation of. It turns out that it had nothing to do with anonymous registration:
UPDATE: I just got an email from the kids at youthforvolpe.ca. They received an email from their
From : CADNS.CA
Sent : June 1, 2006 8:41:26 PM
To : "Youthfor Volpe"
CC : archive@cadns.ca
Subject : RE: Domain registration for youthforvolpe.ca
Article 3.1
Paragraph (h) (i) and (ii)
(h) not engage in any direct or indirect activity which in CIRA's opinion is designed to bring, or may bring, the Registry into disrepute, is designed to interfere, or may interfere, with CIRA's operations or designed to expose, or may expose, CIRA to prosecution or to legal action by the Registrant or a third party including, but not limited to, any of the following kinds of activities:
(i) directly or indirectly, defaming or contributing to the defamation of any other Person,
(ii) unlawfully discriminating or contributing to the unlawful discrimination of any other Person; or
(iii) committing any other actionable wrong against any other Person including, without limitation, any other infringement of the Person's rights;
Yep, the reason given was because the registrar believed that the website somehow defamed Joe Volpe and the registrar believed that it might expose CIRA to a lawsuit.
This had nothing to do with a technicality of anonymous registration.
If you are a crooked politician, your critics are like hydra - cut one down and 1,000 spring up in their place.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Agreed, this is completely untrue, the Globe and Mail likes to act like things are newsworthy, when they are not. See what Michael Geist has to say about this.
Volpe's acceptance of these contributions was widely mocked and derided. The website cited in this thread was launched, and got a fair bit of coverage online.
Mr. Volpe subsequently decided to return the donations given by these kids. At about the same time, the website above had its DNS record SUSPD for one of many reasons (the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, CIRA cited a different reason in a press release (failure to provide valid Canadian contact information, as required by CIRA rules for a ".ca" domain) than that apparently given to the domain registrant (disrepute).
The interesting questions I find are (1) how influential were Volpe's minions in getting this site quashed, given that he was a member of the former Liberal government and CIRA operates under the authority of the Canadian Governmental department Industry Canada, and (2) what due process rights does any (".ca") domain owner have, given the speed with which this process executed (especially in light of all the legal expertise which is present on CIRA's board of directors, apparently not even bothering to ask for any court order or proper investigation against this site).