Australian Net Filter Protest Site Returns 75
Posted
by
kdawson
from the pla-hol dept.
from the pla-hol dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Stephen Conroy 'Minister for Fascism' website, whose stephenconroy.com.au domain was forced offline by the Australian Domain Name Administrator, has now reclaimed the name after the initial 14-day injunction expired. During those 14 days, the protesters managed to comply with the Australian domain name registration criteria. However, contrary to auDA's own rules and contrary to public quotes by the auDA CEO, the protesters were continually refused the domain. Now, however, it seems that they have unequivocally shown that they have the right to the domain and have re-registered it."
Not about free speech at all. (Score:3, Interesting)
The domain name is stephen-conroy.com. I'd say, that's trademark infringement. Like, you could own stephen-conroy-sucks.com, but, having a site that has the capacity to mislead people in order to get hits is as wrong as calling something Cheerios when it is not.
The irony here is that they basically are saying that someone is a fascist in order to protect their right to lie. I wonder if, really, the rest of the their message is actually honest.
Re:These guys are not helping (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the business name was granted to them before auDA took their domain away.
It appears that they always did have a valid reason to have that domain and auDA's actions were taken hastily and in a manner that could have denied them the domain. The fact that they did not clearly state their valid reasons is in fact a very good argument AGAINST hasty action. Had auDA acted in a fair and reasonable manner the dispute could have been dealt with and resolved without needing all this hullabaloo.
auDA behaved like a bunch of pricks rather than like a responsible authority.
Re:These guys are not helping (Score:3, Interesting)
Mod parent up. AuDA are in fact a bunch of retards for many reasons, but this is not one of them. Simply, the domain as registered did not originally meet the criteria for a .com.au domain (a valid, registered Australian business).
Didn't know they got around this by actually registering a business called STEPHENCONROY. That is pretty funny :)