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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."
Appears scum are easier to frame than honest, upstanding people. Thanks for playing, but hope you and your filth go down in flames, spinning or otherwise.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
how he was able to accomplish this.
However, the article does imply that noone is willing to admit to setting up the site.
Maybe the site's operator didn't provide accurate information when registering it. If that is the grounds for deregistering it, then it's not quite the free speech issue it's made out to be.
"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.."
Shouldn't that read, "The former staff..."
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
from one of the blogs:
.ca domain name with anonymous details, the domain name can be removed under the CIRA's rules. However, one first needs to point it out (as Joe Volpe's campaign did).
.
UPDATE (supplemtary info): There's more information to the story. The deletion of the domain name was in full compliance of rules of the CIRA (just because it's a rule, doesn't make it right). Supposedly, if one registers a
This doesn't necessarily make it right, however. .
Whatever. Everyone assumed that it was a huge abuse of power, when in reality it was just someone using a tactic that anyone can use. Complaining that someone isn't following the rules, and following an established procedure to remedy the situation.
As usual, people get all up in arms, bloggers go nuts, emails and phone calls are made... and then we find out nothing really wrong was done.
The big public relations screw up was bragging about it on a mailing list. But otherwise, he didn't do anything that ANY political campaign wouldn't have done in the same situation.
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.
Articles tend to disappear off of the Globe and Mail site after a week or two:
."
."
----8<----
Campaign gets tangled in website spoof
JANE TABER
It was all the buzz in official Ottawa yesterday -- a hilarious political whodunit in this age of websites, platforms and templates.
Overnight, someone built a website spoofing Liberal leadership candidate Joe Volpe and his acceptance of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from children, including the 11-year-old twins of a former vice-president of a generic drug company.
By early yesterday afternoon, the Volpe team had the website pulled down.
It was called youthforvolpe.ca and asked children to donate $5,400 and indicate whether the credit card being used is "mommy's or daddy's. . .
It also included testimonials, and under the heading, "How can you help," it said: "Want to support Joe, but don't know if you can? Talk to your parents, you might have already done your part."
Early yesterday, the website address was flying into the inboxes of politicians, political staffers, journalists and even the strategists from other leadership campaigns.
Mr. Volpe's campaign had the site shut down without knowing, it seems, who put it up: "Hi Everyone," wrote Brenden Johnstone, who is with the Volpe campaign, in an e-mail to other leadership campaigns. "There has been concern about how the issue of the Volpe donations was reflecting on the leadership race.
"My Office has had the website suspended through CIRA [Canadian Internet Registration Authority] and CDNS [Canadian Domain Name Services] and it will be down as soon as 6 p.m. I think the issue with the website has been dealt with. . .
At one point, the Michael Ignatieff campaign's Quebec youth director, Marc-André Gendron, was suspected because the website was similar to other political sites he had created. Mr. Gendron denied any involvement, pointing out that one of the testimonials was from two children named Chris and Toby Aggarwal. As it turns out, Sachin Aggarwal is the Ignatieff campaign's director of operations.
". . . It strikes me as an effort to frame us," a senior Ignatieff strategist said.
---->8----
I adblock all animated gifs.
Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
Is he any relation to Dick Hertz, or the Dover twins, Ben and Eileen?
I've been outside of Canadian politics for a while now, so I can't comment on on Joe Volpe or how internet saavy he or his people are.. However, seems you've just discovered that the domain is owned by... Mike Hunt... Mike Hunt... say it out loud.
I mean, there's always the chance that the person registering the domain had a very unfortunate name. On the other hand this lends credibility to another poster's claim that perhaps the domain was nixed thanks to inaccurate contact info.
This is not, in any way, shape or form, a free speech issue.
...... this is the first rule he's since since he launched his leadership campaign that he had tried to have enforced. Hopefully, it's the start of a trend.
CIRA's rules clearly state - and have for as long as *I* can remember - that annon registrations are not acceptable. THat was, and IS, grounds to pull the DNS records.
If there is *any* story here, it should be how the hell did the site get registered in the first place, given that it didn't meet the most basic requirements.
As for Volpe? He has my congradulations
You are aware, aren't you, that Mike Hunt is a joke name? Like Mike Hawk, Dick Hertz, Ben Dover? Read it out loud, laugh a little, and then you can do some more snooping to see that the address and phone number are fake too.
Some updates have come in, and apparently there has been no censorship of any kind whatsoever. The registrants provided false contact information, and Canadian registrars require valid contact information.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The important question is... Will you come to the defense of Mike Hunt? Mike Hunt is clearly in need of help right now, and only the actions of truly altruistic individuals like yourself can make bare the facts of this obviously hairy situation.
Reports have it that some of Mike Hunt's other staff members - namely Mr.s Jack Mehoff and Holden McGroin - are organizing and mobilizing a grass-roots defense. I suspect they'll be tempted to use some dirty tactics, but this is clearly not the time to be hitting below the belt. We must hold ourselves to the highest standards and refuse to sink into the deep, dank, stinky chasm of corruption.
After all, that's what Mike Hunt would expect of us all.
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I was going to write an "In Soviet Russia" joke, but all my ideas already worked in their original order.
...at least the cream cheese story had some substance.
This commentary seems critical of that politician.
Keep an eye on Slashdot's DNS entries...
"store isn't following the fire code"
Except that isn't the case, if you read the next update. The rule cited by the registrar was one where they feared they'd be sued for defamation, and that can't happen where they'd lose because there was no defamation present, just some good ol'e political parody of which is common in Canada.
It's as if the store had a minor code violation that could be fixed, and then a phony trumped up charge was used to close it instead.
Oh You POS
> Globe and Mail likes to act like things are newsworthy, when they are not
.ca domain make them pretty worthless. If your registrar has to approve of whatever you put on your website and will take it down if they do not (even if it violates no actual *law*), well, why the hell would you host anything on a .ca, even if you are in Canada? There are plenty of .coms left, once you realize that you're not restricted to words you can find in the dictionary...
Good point, he should be glad that all those sites come back up, so that even more children, and not merely those of one of his largest corporate supporters, can enable all of their kids to donate the maximum of $5,400 allowed under Canadian law...
Just think how much he can raise with all the mirror sites going up now!
In the mean time, it has come to my attention that the CRIA's requirements for having a
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).
Are Captain's Quarters, Pajama's Media and Little Green Footballs "across the political spectrum?" All three are so far to the right they make most American Republicans look like Trotskyites.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Google already cached it:w w.youthforvolpe.ca/+&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=1&clie nt=firefox-a
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:MW-vckW5UbEJ:w
No images, but you get the text and layout at least!
Bored?
Also, you do not give up such a right to oppose the government, although to exercise your right might harm your career. If what you are saying were true, it would be absolutely impossible to have any kind of reasonable democratic debate; as an example, the question of how strongly to go into Europe has divided British cabinets through time. For the sake of a larger peace, and also for the sake of democracy, cabinet members have been allowed to campain against government policy without even being demoted.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I've known a number of people named Mike Hunt. Their reactions to the joke ranged from complete obliviousness to mild annoyance.
However, I've never actually met anyone named Heywood Jablome.