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AU Authority Moves To Censor Net Filtering Protest Site

Posted by kdawson on from the shortcutting-the-udrp dept.

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."

3 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. As evil as it sounds... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:As evil as it sounds... by bmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >I think this is somewhat justified.

      No, it's not. Not in the least.

      It's political speech. If there's *any* sort of speech that needs protecting, it's "controversial" political speech because mainstream political speech doesn't need protection as much. Stephen Conroy doesn't like criticism. Well, boo-hoo, cry me a river. It doesn't matter if it's "immature" or not. What's next, banning editorial cartoons that Steven doesn't like, or throwing people in prison that Steven doesn't like? He has now demonstrated that he won't stop at child pornography. This is *exactly* why Steven Conroy's "protect the children" censorship should be shouted down.

      Steven Conroy is a fascist with a stick up his arse, pure and simple.

      I'm in the States, and Steven Conroy makes me want to punch him.

      --
      BMO

  2. To be fair... by BrokenHalo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.