AU Authority Moves To Censor Net Filtering Protest Site 225
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."
The world is global now. (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't censor in secret anymore. Either you can pull a China/North Korea/Cuba/Most of the Middle East and just outright limit, filter and forbid in the open and go full tilt enforcement while not hiding the fact you're being a douche about it, or you can go hands off and only enforce your countries top level domain. Few people in the US use a .us top level domain, though the popularity is increasing. .com is for the world and can be hosted anywhere nearly transparently. It's time Australia figures that out.
No worries, mate. Unless you're not a fascist. (Score:5, Interesting)
AuDA is a fascist organization [organisation]. They do what they want, use their funds to hire high-powered lawyers, and out-spend those who seek to use their services within their fascist rules or even those used by the rest of the Internet world.
I think Australia is a beautiful wonderful place, and have many friends there. When they can free their government from AuDA and their Big-Content masters, it will be a better place.
Oh yeah I need a punchline to get the karma masters happy. AuDA and Australia fascists: step off.
E
Re:To be fair... (Score:2, Interesting)
not in .com.au, it isn't. Have you seen the requirements to register a .com.au? Satire doesn't cut it, I'm afraid:
Satire and Parody are constitutional free speech issues, not something that can be restricted by a TOS.
Australia seems to have waited until 2006 to pass parody/satire exemptions into law.
http://www.copyright.org.au/pdf/acc/infosheets_pdf/g083.pdf [copyright.org.au]
Re:Now does everyone realise (Score:3, Interesting)
They have these dreams of 100% renewable energy by 2020, but without massive debt and taxation, it would be impossible.
Also, their obsession with carbon emissions and their fear of nuclear power, means that their goal is near on impossible in the short to medium term.
Re:As evil as it sounds... (Score:4, Interesting)
its ironic these pricks of govt people love it when they see Iranians or Iraqis protesting their own govt or saddam , they love to see NK denouncing Kim Jong.
But the second the same thing happens in western countries, oh no, we have to ban it, its evil.
Get the F out of here you stupid politico fascists , we can shit on your face all day, we have that right. The fact the politicos get their own better retirement and health benefits proves they are above the human slaves.
Eh, the SITE is a parody, the registry isn't (Score:5, Interesting)
If I act/dress like Steven Conroy goose-stepping through the streets, THAT is parody. If I create a passport with his name on it, then that is fraud.
They should have registered the site in their own name, then it would be parody and they would probably win in court (don't know aussie laws on parody but presuming they are as similar to EU/US laws as you can expect from a continent of criminals).
Mind you, the fact that the registry changed its normal procedure for this case shows that this is a real attempt at suppression of critical thoughts. Then again, everyone knows not to use local registers for anything, they are all corrupt but without the global oversight the .com.org.net have to work under.
But if you want to parody/critize, you need to know what battles to fight. Like the show "Have I Got News For You". They can only do what they do because they got lawyers watching the entire show, who decide what joke/satire is worth it and which isn't. You can make far harder satire, if you give the enemy only the satire itself to fight. Not accidental criminal/libel stuff that they can use to shut you down.
For instance, I can say that George Bush is the monkey whose brain was served in The Temple of Doom, but if I then hint "which leads him to cheat on his wife" I am opening myself up to much to attack. This side is now attacked because it faked the registry, neatly allowing the attacked to side-step addressing the charge of facism.
Just as my post may now be modden down for attacking Bush, or the criminal aussie remark, rather then the main point I am trying to make.
Re:For what it's worth (Score:3, Interesting)
This would have worked better if ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... the domain name being registered was stephen-conroy-facist.com.au or stephen-conroy-destroys-freedom.com.au or something like that.