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AU Authority Moves To Censor Net Filtering Protest Site
An anonymous reader writes "On Friday the Sydney Morning Herald reported that an Internet censorship protest site had been set up under the banner 'Stephen Conroy: Minister for Fascism' and was ironically registered under the very name of the Australian Communications Minister responsible for trying to mandate the compulsory filtering scheme in federal law, stephenconroy.com.au. Within hours of the story being published, auDA, the Australian Domain Name Authority, had shut down the site, giving the owners only 3 hours to respond to a request to justify their eligibility for the domain. Normally auDA would allow several days to weeks for this process. An appeal to request an extension was denied, with no reason given. The site was quickly moved to a US domain, stephen-conroy.com in order to stay active while the dispute with auDA is resolved."
not in .com.au, it isn't. Have you seen the requirements to register a .com.au? Satire doesn't cut it, I'm afraid:
1. To be eligible for a domain name in the com.au 2LD, registrants must be:
a) an Australian registered company; or
b) trading under a registered business name in any Australian State or Territory; or
c) an Australian partnership or sole trader; or
d) a foreign company licensed to trade in Australia; or
e) an owner of an Australian Registered Trade Mark; or
f) an applicant for an Australian Registered Trade Mark; or
g) an association incorporated in any Australian State or Territory; or
h) an Australian commercial statutory body.
There is no
i) in it for teh funnees.
auDA requires you have some right to the name, in this case they did, they registered the business name to go along with it. They have every right to the domain name under auDA's own policies.
smithm@michael:~$ whois stephenconroy.com.au
Domain Name: stephenconroy.com.au
Last Modified:17-Dec-2009 23:01:47 UTC
Registrar ID:Domain Central
Registrar Name: Domain Central
Status:pendingDelete (Client requested policy delete)
Registrant:SAPIA PTY LTD
Registrant ID: ABN 94140321240
Eligibility Type: Company
Registrant Contact ID: C032321-DC
Registrant Contact Name: Domain Manager
Registrant Contact Email: Visit whois.ausregistry.com.au for Web based WhoIs
Tech Contact ID: C032321-DC
Tech Contact Name: Domain Manager
Tech Contact Email: Visit whois.ausregistry.com.au for Web based WhoIs
Its not immediately clear to me how they qualified for this name.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The problem is not the domain name, it was the name used to register the domain name. Also, satire and parody are not welcome in .au domains. The domain name must be your business name, or a derivative of your business name. Anything else gets squashed. That's the rules for owning a .au address.
No it's clear cut corporate intervention, unless you want to go for the standard conspiracy theory crap.
Considering how irritatingly slow auDA are at handling any kind of request (think a month to 6 weeks, yes I have witnessed this), I find it highly unlikely that they weren't at least prod'd into action via external forces (ie Senator Conroy or one of his cronies).
I guess it's not like they have a history of doing this... Oh right they do -> Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
You are wrong about the commercial requirements. These are very minimal. Just placing some ads on their website selling Steve dolls or Steve posters etc would be enough to meet the auDA monetised website requirements.
Your first point is valid. Your second point is valid. 3rd point, about not being Australian? Doesn't matter. Men the world around can recognize a douche, no matter what language the douche speaks, or what culture the douche is from. Pussies are pussies, they need to be washed from time to time, and there really isn't much variation on douches. Form follows function.
Does anyone have an email, so that we can all tell the douche he is obviously a douche?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
As much as I agree with you, you don't seem to understand that the group that registered the domain committed fraud. also in Aus, to have a .com.au domain, you need to either have a registered business/trading name related to the domain, or have the domain be your actual name. as far as I can tell, neither of these were the case and so it is fraud.
In Australia at least it is a requirement that you actually have a registered business to obtain a .com.au domain name for a start. The domain name must also be directly related to your own business. auDA are well within their rights, as there is no evidence to show that the protest group actually has a business called 'Stephen Conroy'.
sudo mount --milk --sugar