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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."
I think this is somewhat justified. Sure, where do you draw the line but this site was registered under a false name -- that of someone in Parliament. There's always the mature way and the immature way to handle things, and in this case with the people who created the same, they took the immature route. There's a time and a place for things, this sort of thing is more suited to personal jokes between friends and groups on Facebook.
I'm no fan of Stephen Conroy's Great Wall of Australia, but the owners of the site in question can't have any claim to legitimacy if they fraudulently use someone else's name to register it.
"The site was quickly moved to a US domain, stephen-conroy.com in order to stay active while the dispute with auDA is resolved.""
Aren't we suppose to be moving things FROM the US in order to avoid censorship?
yes and in any other case you'd only have 3 hours to respond? this is clear cut government intervention on a topic they should keep their fucking nose OUT of, and precisely the kind of thing that should be fought.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
...that Bob Brown is the best choice for PM, The Greens really have the only policies that make sense. Can you all imagine no Labor or Liberal bastards calling the shots and the country actually being run by someone who cares about it rather than these insane power hungry pollies with mad personal agendas to fulfill.
"this is clear cut government intervention"
No it's clear cut corporate intervention, unless you want to go for the standard conspiracy theory crap.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If something isn't true, it doesn't make it a fallacy.
I'd like to hear the details of this before I take it at face level. As much as I am opposed to Conroy and his barmy internet filters as an Australian I do also recognize that .com.au has different requirements than a .com domain, and still take stories like yours with a pinch of salt. Please back it up.
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That was exactly my first thought upon reading this - it definitely seems that they crossed the line. Of course, the more cynical line of thought is that maybe they pushed this purposely further than they should to provoke such a reaction which they can then use to justify their argument (look, the facist system is now shutting us down), while hoping the actual facts get buried in the snowstorm.
Wow, so you're comparing a website to a passport? That's really.... wow. Have you also given thought about multiple people having the name Steven Conroy?
Australia already holds the view that .com.au domains are for businesses, and that their name should be related to the company's name. I think this is a completely reasonable restriction; I would welcome it for .com as well. It would all but eliminate domain squatting if you had to get a business license to go with every domain, yet would not prevent savvy individuals from forming a vanity business for a single vanity domain. In any case, this is the way the rules are written for .au, though not for .us, so the standards are different. As a consumer, I welcome some meaningful protection; if you accept that trademarks are a legitimate concept, this isn't much of a leap.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"