Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Censorship Takes Down 4500 Sites
uncadonna writes "According to activist group The Yes Men, the government of Canada has shut down two parody websites criticizing Canada's poor environmental policy. The article goes on to claim that 'In response to Environment Canada's request, Serverloft immediately turned off a whole block of IP addresses, knocking out more than 4500 websites that had nothing to do with the parody sites or the activists who created them. Serverloft was shown no warrant, and never called the web hosting company about the shutdown.'"
Umm, http://ec-gc.ca/ is working for me.....
in soviet russia web site Censors you!
URL or it didn't happen!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
... this is an odd play for the federation
I thought Canada was a bastion of civil liberties. What, with all the whiny hippies claiming they would move there if $event happened.
Offshore your servers. Just for fun.
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
So it does work out in the end? There is bound to be some high profile sites out there that got shutdown and will now switch to another provider that will shows some *sunglasses* backbone?
Just goes to show you that our Bill of Rights is worth about as much as this.
(Yeah, we're not much different in that from anywhere else; just in what's censored.)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
"The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." The solution is obvious: Move your servers to a more free-speech friendly country. When the US and Canada start to see that taking down sites at the drop of a hat is very harmful to their hosting businesses, then maybe they will do something about it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Canada used to be free before the Conservatives
Do you mean in Soviet Canada?
Between USA's Bush, Canada's Harper, and long string of other bozos in other countries governments, it seems like this past decade has been filled with myopic, self-centered, stupid (more than usual, anyway...) politicians. And it looks like the coming decade won't be any better.
My problem is that I can't tell if this is a new and disturbing trend, or if it was always this bad but the reporting just got more visible?
No, no, that's not it... they are dumping toxic waste in the rivers and feeding fish oil to seals.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
How can you blame the Canadian government for the hosting provider incompetence? They sent the provider a letter with their grievance, the provider is the one responsible for following through without due process, a warrant and apparently then they screw it up?
Sounds like hosting provider fail to me and the yes men crying like little whiners.
Uh, could the press release (from the Hoaxsters, no less) just be more of a Hoax?
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Is it me or is the Global Elite just getting lazy?
At least for the last 120 years they put some effort into hiding the fact that we are in fact all powerless pesants under the heel of an elite in which the law only serves said elite. At least we had the illusion of "equality, the rule of law, and freedom."
I for one an dissapointed in my ruling shadow government and would like to formally request that a new shadow government that plans to treat me like a pesant, rise up, over throw the existing elite, and establish a new global elite that will at least TRY and hide the fact there is a global elite that owns us, does as they please, and mearly offer us the illusion that laws apply to everyone equally.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
ive always known those isps up in canadia dont no anything
No, no, that's not it... they are feeding fish oil to seals.
So what's the problem? Fish oil is organic and organic is doubleplus Good.
This happens all the time in the U.S. The government even shut down a Spanish travel agency that arranged tours to Cuba -- they were foolish enough to register their domain name here. http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/2008/03/dont-register-or-host-your-domain-in-us.html
Commie bastard!! Your mother wear combat boots and your father drown in vodka !! You have merry turnstil jimp today !!
No, no, see they're dumping seals into rivers and feeding oil to toxic waste.
So the Canadian government says "jump" and the ISPs ask "how high?" before any kind of due process.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
From Wikipedia re The Yes Men: "...they create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they want to spoof, and then they accept invitations received on their websites to appear at conferences, symposia, and TV shows".
I would be looking at this with tongue firmly in cheek.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_yes_men
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
this is the downside to the ban on clubbing
The only thing Canada doesn't suck at is:
Views of Mountains
Drinking Age
Electronic Music propagation
Roaming Wildlife though city streets in Banff
Mostly cool citizens
oh and $9 packs of smokes (being an x-smoker I like that idea although mainly affected by currency trends not to deter smokers)
This is exactly the sort of the The Yes Menthrive on. Nobody was looking at the parody websites. Now everyone knows Environment Canada has a poor policy.
The Yes Men's entire raisin d'etre is publicity. It would make sense for them to specifically choose ISPs that are willing to roll over easily.
He loved casting the Canucks as free-spirited, tolerant, rigidly honest characters. Now they just seem as stupidly human as the rest of us.
Why don't you blame the people who are REALLY responsible? The voters.
As long as people vote for the guy who tells them they can keep their 2 suvs and that he will lower their taxes (never actually happened anywhere) you will get these kind of guys.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...but this is one good reason why we need commercial space flight.
With commercial space flight you collect money to put a pre-built server into orbit and serve pages from there.
Now granted the bandwidth wouldn't be fast but for things like free speech related documents you really don't need speed just stable retention. You could still store video up there as well it would just be slow to get on and off the server obviously.
As long as the system had power and a good antenna the data could be available for anyone with a satellite dish to point at it. (Though you could probably find a comsat company that would accept money to rebroadcast the signal if you could afford that.)
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Wouldn't the Canadian authorities really be lumberjackbooted? If so, do they have pointy high-heels? Those could really hurt!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Was that they infringed on copyrights and tradmarks.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
since the site seems to be fine from anywhere and a whole ip-segment was screwed, maybe these yes-men screwed up one of their own routers, suspected some conspiracy and then made up this story?
Wait, what? Oh fuck. Thanks, Canada, there goes my backup plan...
The Yes Men's entire raisin d'etre is publicity. It would make sense for them to specifically choose ISPs that are willing to roll over easily.
It would make even more sense for them to just release a hoax announcement claiming that the ISP shut down their parody websites, even though the websites are actually still online.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Shockingly the description is a bit off. They basically registered a domain very similar to the real domain with a very legitimate looking website to fool people into thinking it was the real thing. If they changed the domain name it would still be there. (which it seems to be anyway) No story.
Tried opening it from work, and I work at a Canadian federal government office (not Environment Canada)
Since the sites in question seem fine, I posted a comment on their site http://theyesmen.org/canadareacts?nocache=1#comment-7088, which is now queued for moderator approval... how lame is that.
Both sites appear to be working fine from here in Canada also.
Now that we've submitted our false news article to /. we are expecting these sites to shortly no longer be available.... so who's going to get the last laugh now eh?
Kind regards,
Web team @ gc.ca
If you visit any web site of the Government of Canada (GoC) there is a common look and feel (CLF) standard to which the web sites must comply for accessibility and other reasons. The two parody web sites in no way resemble nor utilize the GoC CLF and therefore could not possibly be mistaken for official government web sites.
Crude oil is also organic.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
What were the other 4500 related websites?
The government of Canada has obviously gone stark raving mad. This disease appears to be an imitation of the Reagen-Bush mentality that pretty much destroyed the US.
Do you mean in Soviet Canada?
Nah, it fascist Harper's government. You guys had to put up with Bush for 10 years, while we get this Harper guy. The sad thing is the alternatives aren't much better.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Indeed, why did Serverloft, a German company (according to TFA) react at all?
They should just have shown a huge phat finger to the Canucks, and say "you can't get us accross the huuuuge ocean". After all, it's not as if Canada was in a position of unleashing an Operation Desert Storm over Germany. One hosting company to avoid!
And such behavior would be entirely appropriate: after all that's exactly how Canada behaves when German citizens that have been wrongfully imprisoned in Canada want to seek compensation.
I am advocating that next election we simply remove the party leaders. They have shown over and over again that that are incapable of leading, and don't even seem to be able to work and play well with others.
As you so rightly pointed out there are no good choices. I for one would vote for the first one that can show me they realize that if you have $10 you can't spend $20. This simple concept seems to be beyond most/all politicians.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Yet another reason I can tell my clients to use us for hosting. Being their developers, we only host our own projects.
The Canadian government has decided to use RPGs to take out shoplifters.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The current government in Canada needs to go. I don't give a shit about environmentalists and their agendas, but they have every right to publish them on their web sites.
ServerLoft was most likely bullied into taking that action... it's the Harper government's MO. Behind closed doors, "or else" type directives. What a bunch of spineless fucks... they don't even have datacenters in Canada. Just the threat of being sued.
We all know what hosting datacenter to avoid now. ServerLoft can go piss up a rope. The negative publicity from this will punish them.
The sites are indeed still up, and look identical. However they look nothing like the Common Look and Feel (CLF) that Canadian Government sites are mandated by the Treasury Board to use. Environment Canada's site: http://www.ec.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=DA294545-1 shows a very different look. Anyone looking for a Government Contact or information would not be fooled. I think this whole thing is a bit of a hoax.
The Yes Men are notorious for all kind of Machiavellian stunts with supposed good intent done "in the name of the people". I wouldn't believe anything spewing forth from their mentally twisted pieholes.
I heard it was pretty good, but then it turns out they must be dumping oil in the rivers and feeding toxic waste to seals.
It's good in the national mythology. Beautiful soaring mountains, pristine lakes. Verdant forests. I saw it on the CBC, so it must be true! (All those things do exist. I've been to them. They're really cool).
The reality is that British Columbia is a giant clearcut once you go more than 100 km from Vancouver, and the prairie is being torn up as fast as possible in Alberta to get to the black gold that lies beneath.
It was Bush for 8 years, and his replacement happens to have a virtually identical domestic policy, which means we are essentially screwed.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
My first thought on reading the summary was that Serverloft was a bunch of tools. As I read more and realized the press release was probably a hoax, it made me think. I know the US and Canada have different laws, and IANAL, but if this were the US, I would tend to think Serverloft would have a decent case of libel against them. They can claim "parody" all they want, but if I had merely skimmed the surface, and not read deeper, Severloft woulda been stuck with a negative connotation for me all because these a holes want to screw around. How many of Serverloft's customers read that press release and immediately went and checked if their sites were up? How many are currently looking for a new provider right now? I am all for free speech. If I say "Company A sucks" then fine. Too bad for them. (In the US, of course, I'm sure some company's attorney would want to sue you over voicing that opinion.) But to say they killed 4500 customers in a knee jerk reaction when they didn't? That is not the same thing at all. That can have actual damages. And if I were Serverloft, I'd be consulting someone about it.
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
That's one thing I wish people would wake up about - just because something is "organic" doesn't mean it is good for you! There are a hell of a lot of deadly, toxic, nasty things out there that are organic.
It drives me nuts, all this "organic" nonsense these days.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
The sad thing is the alternatives aren't much better.
Then I would suggest voting for better alternatives.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I would like to do business with ISPs that have Warrant Canaries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
Like my offsite backup provider maintains:
http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
However, in absence of this (I realize this is rare) your ISP should at the very least have a stated policy as to how they respond to warrants and "requests".
Turning off an entire block of IP space because some joker calls you on the phone is absolutely terrible. If you continue to do business with "serverloft" you deserve whatever you get.
Yes-men: (dialing 911)
911 operator: hello emergency services, do you need police, ambulance, or fire?
Yes-men: Fire Trucks, right now, our offices are on fire and we have people trapped
911 operator: ahhh sure, our records show the calling number is from the "Yes-Men" organization who frequently do hoaxes
Yes-men: no! but this is for real! Oh no, Bob in accounting is on fire!
911 operator: haha very funny
we seem to be on a dangerous slope where governments are trying to censor every person who has an opinion that differs than theirs. Whats next? A list of banned words, sentences. 'No citizen shall use a negative verb and a noun representing a government person or place in the same paragraph....
It was Bush for 8 years, and his replacement happens to have a virtually identical domestic policy, which means we are essentially screwed.
Hey, now! Bush wanted to take our clumsy, wasteful pyramid scheme of a social security system and make it slightly worse, while Obama wants to take our clumsy, wasteful hellhole of a health care system and make it significantly worse. We may still be getting screwed, but it really is going in a different orifice.
Now, when it comes to foreign policy, it's all the same - spend absurd amounts of money bombing people until they learn to love us.
""According to activist group The Yes Men, the government of Canada has shut down two parody websites criticizing Canada's poor environmental policy. "
Isn't Canada suppose to be one of the countries better than the US?
Both of the above are off topic and trolling. Mods?
do you mean we have no choice ??? elect this guy or we're doomed ???
this is the downside to the ban on clubbing
Also, it forced all the douchebags out of the clubs and into public places...
(There is supposed to be a Sarcmark® here, but my $1.99 check hasn't cleared, yet...)
Off topic, sure - just like the post I was replying to. No argument there.
But trolling? Pretty ballsy for someone Cowering behind Anonymity.
And they really need to add a "-1 No Sense of Humor" mod.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
get attention to a hoax site with a hoax takedown story
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have never once witnessed a significant decrease of the size and power of the federal government during my entire lifetime
Same here. I think the last time there was a significant decrease in governmental power in the United States was when we declared independence from our previous government in 1776.
in Slovakia in 2007 did happen something simmilar, but the disconection was physical
http://digg.com/security/Slovak_Police_disconnected_servers_with_websites_and_emails_of_3500_clients
and was not because of parody
I think you are missing that this is not a letter that was sent from "the government" of Canada. This was someone who is an advisor in the Intellectual Property Branch of Environment Canada. http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/5100
For all I can tell from the government directory, this could be a private sector consultant. His entry doesn't look much different than my own when I'm on contract to the government. Try looking up my name in January in http://sage-geds.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/ , as I am returning to a contract at Agriculture Canada doing Linux Sysadmin/GIS work.
An email from me, regardless of what email address I use, should never be confused as an official statement from the Government of Canada.
Digital Copyright Canada forum
This just in! Eco-turds whining on the internet! Who saw THIS coming?!
It's ok. Once some more data is made up the cult will be right back on track.
That was not the case at the time that I posted. The website was very much alive and kicking and serving satirical content.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Sounds like this story is still in a state of flux.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
The Yes Men's entire raisin d'etre is...
raisin means grapes. The word you're looking for is raison.
How is one to do that when there aren't any on the ballot?
Free Martian Whores!
Don't know if it's the same in Canada, but in the states, ballot nominees are also determined by the voters during the primaries. And it's up to the voter to make sure they seek out and nominate the right lizard.. as opposed to waiting for FOX to present their endorsements to them. If we continue to refuse to take conscious control of our government and economy, we simply have no one else to blame...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I'm not illiterate. Just inept at typing. Curse you Mr Qwerty and your typewriter layout!
I usually play it safe in the primaries. I pick the candidate I least want to be elected, select that party's ballot, and vote against him or her. I usually select the party that's not in office, as an incumbant almost always gets nominated.
Free Martian Whores!