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Canadian Censorship Takes Down 4500 Sites

Posted by timothy on from the now-that's-what-I-call-political-science dept.

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.'"

12 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Works for me by FPCat · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    1. Re:Works for me by epiphani · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

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    2. Re:Works for me by compro01 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    3. Re:Works for me by JWSmythe · · Score: 3, Informative

          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.

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      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    4. Re:Works for me by JWSmythe · · Score: 4, Informative

          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??

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      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    5. Re:Works for me by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:Works for me by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 3, Informative
      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.

    7. Re:Works for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  2. Think hoax till proved otherwise. by stimpleton · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

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    In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
  3. Re:misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Hmmm by MadnessASAP · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."

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    I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
  5. Re:Wow! PR fail! by Rary · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

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    "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein