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.'"

Comments

Works for me

[FPCat]

Umm, http://ec-gc.ca/ is working for me.....

Re:Works for me

[epiphani]

I can somewhat understand where the Canadian government is coming from on this one. The .gc.ca domain is Canadian Government sites. This site is obviously designed to look like an official government site - using a domain that could confuse people.

I have a problem with censorship, but I also have a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come after you.

Re:Works for me

[compro01]

Both sites appear to be working fine from here in Canada also. This is either some quick backpedaling or bogus.

Re:Works for me

[JWSmythe]

    They're not operating very far away from the phishers. Well, except they'll accept your invitations to speak at events, and get paid for it, as if they were the real people.

    They're not doing any good. They're actually very intentionally trying to pick fights with the government, and large corporations.

  The only thing they're not doing quite yet is accepting the money from online places. They are still actively committing fraud, under the guise of parody.

    It's folks like this that endanger free speech for everyone. I won't say to stop them, but I will strongly suggest that they shouldn't do it any more.

Re:Works for me

[JWSmythe]

    I can't believe anyone is believing a press release done by a group who intentionally does bogus press releases and web sites. No one else sees the problem with this??

Re:Works for me

[ArsenneLupin]

Yeah, I'd agree, except using government muscle to come after people who mislead others is kind of a crappy thing to do.

It was a German company that pulled the plug. They were under no obligation whatsoever to honor the request. It's them who screwed up most in this affair.

Re:Works for me

[ArsenneLupin]

Indeed, it seems to:
# tcptraceroute enviro-canada.ca 80
Selected device ppp0, address xxxxxxxxx, port xxxx for outgoing packets
Tracing the path to 188.138.4.45 on TCP port 80 (www), 30 hops max
...
8 tge-4-0-0-0a.cr1.fra.routeserver.net (80.81.193.21) 21.938 ms 23.390 ms 21.860 ms
9 sl6.fra.routeserver.net (62.75.135.6) 23.359 ms 24.462 ms 23.199 ms
10 vm5.pi.dk (188.138.4.45) [open] 23.449 ms 22.716 ms 25.587 ms
==> so it's hosted in Denmark now!

I recommend that the 4498 unrelated sites should do likewise, and find a hosting provider with a spine.

Re:Works for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's unfair to expect an AC to RTFA, but if you had - it stated that the government requested Serverloft "make every effort to prevent any further attempts concerning other environment-related domains (enviro, ec-gc, etc.) originating from [their] servers." Serverloft responded by shutting down a block of 4500 IP addresses. While this request from the government is arguably overreaching - Serverloft's actions in response to the request were basic incompetence. Serverloft is where most of your complaint should be directed. The government's request may be naive, but Serverloft was plain stupid.

Offshore your hosting and registration

[efalk]

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

Think hoax till proved otherwise.

[stimpleton]

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

Re:Hmmm

[causality]

Under the current conservative party government

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I am not Canadian but I believe the name of the party is The Conservative Party. The word "conservative" lost its meaning a long time ago, particularly in the USA. How else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as "conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and power of government?

Re:misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't what I'm disputing.

Subject: Canadian censorship takes down 4500 sites

Actually, no, it wasn't Canadian censorship. Its a misleading and hyped up title that does little in way of giving credibility to the topic.

Re:Hmmm

[MadnessASAP]

As a Canadian I can confirm that they are in fact called "The Conservative Party of Canada" or more colloquially "The assholes who somehow managed to win an election and try to claim divine mandate with less then 25% of voting Canadian behind them."

Re:Wow! PR fail!

[Rary]

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.

Re:Worth about as much

[rickb928]

I'm not sure Canada has a Bill of Rights. Here in the U.S., it's worth as much as you want it to be.

Remember, the three boxes.

Re:in soviet russia web site Censors you!

[Midnight Thunder]

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.

Re:Worth about as much

[Beardo the Bearded]

Yes we do:

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Re:Hmmm

[oldspewey]

I'm pretty sure Harper has done more to dismantle transparency in the last 3 years than Chretien/Martin did during their tenure.

Just a sampling of things I can recall off the top of my head since 2006: This, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

And I'll repeat again what I said above: all this (and more that I suspect I've mercifully forgotten over the last 3 years) has taken place under the watch of an autocrat who explicitly ran on the promise of transparency and accountability in the 2006 election.

... and people wonder why the general public thinks politicians are a bunch of assholes ...

The letter was not from the Government of Canada

[Russell McOrmond]

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.