EasyDNS Falsely Accused of Unplugging WikiLeaks 267
kdawson writes "EasyDNS, a DNS and hosting provider, was mistakenly identified in press accounts as the entity that knocked wikileaks.org off the Net. It wasn't them, it was EveryDNS, a completely separate outfit. EasyDNS suffered a series of online reprisals as the false attribution spread. When WikiLeaks approached them to add to the robustness of their DNS support, EasyDNS said yes." And just to be fair on the disclosure thing- I've been using EasyDNS for many many many years and have always had great service, so I just thought it was cool that they stand up for the cause.
kdawson (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Stand up for the cause"? (Score:5, Informative)
Your poor wording aside, it is not illegal to publish classified documents as decided by the Supreme Court in New York Times Co v United States. Leaking classified documents is only a crime for government employees.
Too bad people can't see this for what it is: a foreign national releasing illegally-obtained classified information in a coordinated effort to deliberately try to influence public opinion and US policy.
Other than your claim that Assange obtained the documents illegally, which I just showed to be a complete lie, that description applies equally well to Rupert Murdoch, but I don't see you calling for his arrest.
not the government that works on behalf of the people
If you had bothered to read even a fraction of what Wikileaks put out you wouldn't be so ignorant as to make the claim that the US government works "on behalf of the people".
It results in an environment where closed and repressive societies have an advantage in the information realm over open and democratic societies.
Did it even occur to you that you just spent your entire post attacking someone who has done nothing illegal and arguing that the media should shut up and only publish whatever information the government decides they should? Sounds like you would enjoy living in a closed and repressive society to me.
Not really "EveryDNS" either (Score:3, Informative)
The name of the company is DynDNS.com. You know, the company that bought EveryDNS; disabled the ability to sign up for new EveryDNS accounts?
And has been in the process of transitioning accounts from EveryDNS to "DynDNS.com" custom services over 2010, probably so they can eventually discontinue the free services and force everyone to pay?
If they made the decision to kill Wikileaks' services, they should take responsibility for the shutdown, and not hide behind the legacy EveryDNS name which will be a distant memory in some time.
Re:Mob Justice (Score:5, Informative)
So many people, especially the slashdot crowd, are cheering on Anonymous and other parties who are DDOSing parties involved in the whole Wikileaks thing as some sort of testament to free speech.
No, I don't think that's all that fair of a brush to paint with. In the last story on the /. main page, the one regarding Anon's threat of DDOSing Amazon, I just read at least five highly moderated comments that read along the lines of, "This is a criminal activity and the idiots doing it should be persecuted as such." I also read a few, "They're only making things worse. Retards..."
So saying that slashdot is cheering on Anonymous is pretty disingenuous. So far as I can tell, the slashdot crowd is pretty evenly divided on this particular topic, as they are on most (not all) things.
EasyDNS letter to all customers (Score:5, Informative)
This notice is being sent to all active domain holders on the system.
Your easyDNS username is:
Email address on file for account:
Date username was created:
Username was created from:
In this email:
1. The WikiLeaks Situation
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1. The WikiLeaks Situation
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It is not very often we send out an all-member email blast, so when we do, it's usually pretty important.
First and foremost, everything is ok. Please read the information that follows carefully but understand that we would never do anything that we thought put our members at risk.
The Basic Background:
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On Friday, Dec 6th, easyDNS was mistakenly identified in various online channels as the DNS provider who revoked DNS Services for the controversial website Wikileaks, and a large internet backlash ensued against us. In fact, the Wikileaks DNS provider was a free DNS provider in New Hampshire called "EveryDNS.net". At some point this was mistakenly reported as "easyDNS", and it gathered momentum from there. The problem was compounded on Saturday, Dec 7th when the New York Times picked up the story, also incorrectly identifying us as the party who "unplugged" Wikileaks. The U.K based Guardian did the same thing again on Tuesday, December 7th.
A timeline of events has been posted here:
http://easyurl.net/5119e [easyurl.net]
And our original rebuttal to the misinformation was posted here:
http://easyurl.net/a3191 [easyurl.net]
easyDNS Added To WikiLeaks.ch DNS
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On Sunday, Dec 5th, we were approached by a group acting on behalf of Wikileaks and asked to provide DNS for their fallback domain WikiLeaks.ch. We agreed to this on several conditions.
http://easyurl.net/fbbff [easyurl.net]
We did not take this decision lightly, and whichever side of the fence you fall regarding what Wikileaks is doing, after being falsley accused of unplugging Wikileaks and taking an enormous amount of backlash for doing so, we felt we did not have much choice in the matter but to forge ahead and take on this challenge.
http://easyurl.net/507d8 [easyurl.net]
We actually consider this part of the situation to be well in hand. Tonight the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail ran a story about this bizarre sequence of events and we expect it to run in the print edition (possibly as the cover story) on Thursday, Dec 10.
That story is here: http://easyurl.net/gandm [easyurl.net]
However, and this is large part of the motivation for this email, the Globe story concluded with the following quotation, which we feel sends the wrong message, as I mispoke when I said the following: "Our lawyers have basically told us that if they want to shut us down they'll show up with an injunction and we'll have to follow it and then try and have it overturned later," This may connote that we think we, as a company, may be shut down. We do NOT think this is going to happen at all. What I meant to convey in the quote is: "If they want US (easyDNS) to shut THEM (WikiLeaks) down, they'll show up with an injunction, and we'll have to follow it, etc etc". And if that happened, we would be terminating service to wikileaks alone. Further information about this clarification is here:
http://easyurl.net/gm2 [easyurl.net]
We wanted to let you know as an easyDNS member, that we are taking every measure to ensure that this situation does not disrupt the continuity of your domain services at all. In conclusion, we believe we have taken the course of action that fits who we are as a company. If you've been dealing with us for any amount of time then hopefully you know w