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Censorship

Australian Idol And ISP Censorship 335

Posted by CmdrTaco from the sex-censorship-and-a-land-down-under dept.
fembots writes "Teenage fans of the new Australian Idol Casey Donovan rushed to the homepage of a dead gay porn icon with the same name when a URL was advertised in major newspapers without the .au country code. ISP BigPond took matters to its own hand by redirecting millions of its subscribers' requests back to the Idol's website. On top of that, BigPond lodged a formal complaint with the Australian Broadcasting Authority on the basis Mr Donovan's site may contain X-rated material or material that would be denied classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification."
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Australian Idol And ISP Censorship More

Australian Idol And ISP Censorship

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  • I'd say... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:44AM (#10897849) Journal
    The complaint is one thing (I don't presume to tell Australians how their laws and enforcement thereof should work) but the redirection strikes me as an entirely sensible compromise favoring usability over cybergeezer purity.

    • Re:I'd say... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:48AM (#10897903) Homepage
      I don't know the Australian legal system works, but I do recall cases where ISPs have used a "common carrier" defense (similar to telcos) to claim that they do not control what illegal uses their subscribers use the services for.

      Does this make BigPond an "editor" for their users, thus nullifying the notion of their operation as a common carrier?

      • Re:I'd say... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by catwh0re ( 540371 )
        the reason why telstra bigpond was so concerned... Is because it was actually their ad which had the stuff up in it. Being the premier provider of all telecommunications in australia telstra then decided to use what powers it had to reverse this (at least for it's own users). Aside from that they did at least try to get everyone to update their pornographic+questionable material firewalls.

        I absolutely believe if it was someone else's mistake, then they wouldn't have bothered with any of this.

    • Yes and no.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by goldcd ( 587052 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:57AM (#10898011) Homepage
      I can see why they did what they did and I can see that it's probably prevented a huge number of complaints etc etc However. The site that sprang up when they punched in the .com URL was NOT the one that is supposed to come up (the content of the site doesn't matter a jot). What we have here is a precedent where an ISP has decided not to show you the page you asked for, but rather the page they thought you should look at - and without telling you. Maybe a slightly better solution would have been to tick up a page stating the cock-up with the printed URL, that this was a temporary measure and asking whether you wished to go to the .com or .com.au site. I think the point I'm trying to make is that this (although done for innocent reasons I'm sure) is worse than chinese-style site blocking. Imagine if you tried to look for something mildy subversive and your friendly big-brother ISP quietly substituted it for propaganda (and you never realised).

      • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Otter ( 3800 )
        Yes, obviously I understand what the objection is. But, on the other hand, slippery slope arguments are so easy to make that I don't regard them as showstoppers unless they're really compelling. At the point when an ISP is substituting "propaganda" for something "subversive" I'm happy to draw the line but I have no problem when a decision was made knowing it would affect approximately 0.00% of their customers.

        (The choice page is a good suggestion, though. That probably would have been a better alternative.)

      • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by James Foster ( 226728 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:08AM (#10898132)
        Actually, they do send you to a page informing you that you are being redirected:

        Please wait, you are being redirected to www.caseydonovan.com.au, the home page of Casey Donovan, the new Australian Idol.
        Please note that there is a US site with a similar address which contains adult content which is not suitable for minors. If you are over 18 and do not want to go to Casey Donovan's Australian Idol Site, please click here now www.caseydonovan.com

      • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) *
        I think it is a sensible thing to do, so long as it is temporary. If this is left as a long term solution, then it is very wrong.

        I would agree with the other compromise - redirect to a site stating the error, and proving the correct link - this will both educate people to the correct link, and allow those who want to visit the gay site to be able to do so (though I think that is illegal under Aussie law anyway, isn't it?)

        To an extent, it is also their own fault for having the .com.au domain - they probab

      • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Enigma_Man ( 756516 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:09AM (#10898144) Homepage
        the .com was the one that was _supposed_ to come up if you tpye in .com. It's the advertiser's fault for not specifying the .au. If you got directions to a concert in a city, but they listed the wrong subway stop, and the wrong stop brought you to the red light district, would you want the train to just skip that stop? It's all the fault of the damn advertisers for getting it wrong.

        If an advertiser can't advertise correctly, maybe they suck at life and shouldn't be in the advertising business? They only had to do one thing, and they failed.

        -Jesse

        • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by gbjbaanb ( 229885 )
          If you got directions to a concert in a city, but they listed the wrong subway stop, and the wrong stop brought you to the red light district, would you want the train to just skip that stop?

          If you got on the school bus to go to school, but the driver had a wrong address and brought them to the red light crack whore district, would you want the bus to stop there and turf the kids out anyway?

          Part of the problem with the web is that you don't know where you're going until you've got there, that and the mor

        • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dnoyeb ( 547705 )
          I can imagine someone in her camp saying, "wow we can get caseydonovan.com.au, its free, can you believe it!?"

          Last time I registered an address, I checked the corresponding .com, .net, .org, etc. I would have hoped they would do the same...

      • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:5, Funny)

        by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:10AM (#10898156)
        Not sure this would work. Anyone who's worked in IT for any length of time knows that something like this is likely...


        You entered caseydonovan.com.

        Due to a printing error, it is likely you really want caseydonovan.com.au. You won't bother reading this anyway - nobody ever does, they always click "yes" anyhow. So why we've gone to the hassle of setting it up I don't know.

        Are you sure?

        YES [caseydonovan.com] NO [caseydonovan.com.au]

      • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Shard013 ( 530636 ) <[moc.liamtoh] [ta] [310drahs]> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:14AM (#10898217)
        *cut*
        What we have here is a precedent where an ISP has decided not to show you the page you asked for, but rather the page they thought you should look at - and without telling you.
        *cut*

        They did infact tell you exactly what was happening. I am a Bigpond customer and they presented you with a nice clear page saying that you are being redirected to the idol site. It also says if you REALLY wanted to see the porn stars site, than click here. You only had about 3 seconds to read it all and click, but you still had the opportunity.
        • I am a Bigpond customer and they presented you with a nice clear page saying that you are being redirected to the idol site. It also says if you REALLY wanted to see the porn stars site, than click here.

          This cuts both ways: suppose I am a fan of that idol guy (so I know his name) and I guess his domain name, assuming that it ends in .com.au (as most .au domains I know do)... In that case, Bigpond is now offering me a link to the porn stars site which I would never have found otherwise!

          Ok, I admit, it's a

      • Re:Yes and no.. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dnoyeb ( 547705 )
        Open a page asking you if your sure you want to visit the pr0n site?

        This is the same thing the anti-abortion camp pushes in the USA. Trying to get doctors to present all sorts of information and extensive questioning to 'discourage' the practice.

        I know its not what you were thinking, but its a slippery slope.

    • Re:I'd say... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Stephan Schulz ( 948 )

      The complaint is one thing (I don't presume to tell Australians how their laws and enforcement thereof should work) but the redirection strikes me as an entirely sensible compromise favoring usability over cybergeezer purity.

      The complaint is indeed one thing. But the redirection is not a sensible compromise, but a violation of core internet protocols. They messed up once with the wrong ad, and once again with the reaction. On the "three strikes" theory, they've got one to go before their pipe should be c

      • Re:I'd say... (Score:3, Informative)

        by grover_99 ( 741385 )
        BTW, the original link points to a rather mild entry page with an legal age disclaimer - whoever clicks through this either knows what he does, or needs a medium shock to reactivate comatose parts of the brain anyways.
        The website didn't have the entry page when the story first broke. The site owner must have added it after a bit of prodding from Telstra.

      • Re:I'd say... (Score:4, Informative)

        by himi ( 29186 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @06:00PM (#10904211) Homepage
        You are misinformed - the redirection wasn't completely automatic, it went through a page that told you what was happening, and gave you a link to the .com site along with a warning about its content (see it at http://144.135.18.91 assuming it hasn't been taken down by now).

        Yeah, a direct redirection without any choice in the matter would be way over the top, but a redirection implemented this way seems quite reasonable.

        himi

  • Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:45AM (#10897857) Homepage Journal
    While fans of the dead Casey Donovan might be upset, this seems to be a legitimate thing bigpond to do. It's pretty clear that the vast majority got sent to the site they wanted to see, and in a few weeks/months everything can be returned to normal, and gay porn fans can get their Casey back.

    It's not a desirable thing but I subscribe to the cock-up (for want of a less apposite phrase) theory on this one. No-one's getting stiffed (ditto), its just an horrendous accident.

    Having said that, by own sensibilities mean I'm far more offended by Simon Cowell than I am by the goatse.cx guy.

    • Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:47AM (#10897897)
      While fans of the dead Casey Donovan might be upset, this seems to be a legitimate thing bigpond to do.

      Seems to me that if the Casey Donovan site was paying by traffic they really shouldn't be upset that they don't have to fork over the cash for THAT bandwith bill.

      • Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Interesting)

        by FuzzyDaddy ( 584528 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:49AM (#10898589) Journal
        Seems to me that if the Casey Donovan site was paying by traffic they really shouldn't be upset that they don't have to fork over the cash for THAT bandwith bill.

        Should the Ad agency be liable for the american site's bandwidth bill, in this case? Assuming they did get a huge bill, it would be due to an error from the original advertising agency. On the one hand, the american site is open to anyone to visit. On the other hand, someone else, through misinformation, directed a huge amount of traffic to their site.

        I can't say I have an opinion one way or another. It's analogous to telemarketing or spamming, in some sense - you have a publicly available way to be contacted, but overuse or inappropriate use can be a big imposition.

        • You _can_ sue an ad agency for some sort of action like this, provided you can prove it was malicious.

          But it is ultimately the site owners' duty to pay the bandwidth bill. The bandwidth provider doesn't care how the traffic was directed to your site, and whether it was wanted or not. At no point does the ad agency enter into that contract.

          If they can get any money back by suing for damages, I suppose that's the fairest outcome.

        • Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Mojojojo Monkey Inc. ( 174471 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:25AM (#10899069)
          I would think a better, more appropriate analogy would be Slashdot itself, or SomethingAwful's "Awful Link of the Day". If this Ad agency is liable for the bandwidth bill, then /. & SA would have been sued into oblivion years ago. In fact, they would be considered even more responsible, considering that the ad agency apparently just made a mix-up, while /. & SA intentionally direct thousands or millions of readers to sites that often can't handle the traffic. Therefore, the only conclusion if that they put something on the public web and you're not using illegal means (DDoS or hacking) to bring down the website, then it's fair game.

          • Re:Paranoia (Score:3, Insightful)

            by DunbarTheInept ( 764 )
            I couldn't disagree more strongly. When a site gets slashdotted, it is getting a higher than expected bandwith, but it IS bandwith of the expected type, by the expected target audience - it's just a lot of it at once. A gay porn site wouldn't be expecting every aussie pop-culture fan to be visiting them all of a sudden, and shouldn't be expecting that. Therefore they are getting bandwith that is unsolicited AND off-topic. In other words, they are getting spammed, so to speak. Whereas a site being slash

    • Re:Paranoia (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There is nothing whatsoever legitimate about this.

      Anyone who enters a URL and get directed to a different website than that URL belongs to is being hurt.

    • Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:53AM (#10897963)
      While fans of the dead Casey Donovan might be upset, this seems to be a legitimate thing bigpond to do. It's pretty clear that the vast majority got sent to the site they wanted to see, and in a few weeks/months everything can be returned to normal, and gay porn fans can get their Casey back.

      Indeed, and it is also worth pointing out that had they not done this, then someones hosting bill could have become horribly expensive or their entire site shut down because it's reached its allocated bandwidth.

      If it was my site wrongly pointed to in an ad, I've far rather than the whole of Austrialia were redirected for a couple of months rather than find myself on the recieving end of a huge bill or everyone else get inconvenianced by a completely inaccessable website.

      • Re:Paranoia (Score:3, Insightful)

        by over_exposed ( 623791 )
        That's not really the point unless BigPond contacted the admin of the porno site first. If they didn't, this sets a dangerous precedent where ISPs can guess what their customers were really looking for and redirect them there - kinda like a forced "I'm feeling lucky" google search. What's to stop BigPond from redirecting all web searches for "Australian ISP" to their own site and their affiliates? What if Coke decides they want the linkage and pays BigPond an "undisclosed amount" for 75% of searches for "so

        • What if Coke decides they want the linkage and pays BigPond an "undisclosed amount" for 75% of searches for "soft drink" to end up pointing to cocacola.com?

          What if Verisign decided that people really wanted all typo domains to go to their special search page...oh wait, they already did -- it was called Sitefinder. How is that any different from BigPond's redirection? Verisign claims that the majority of theis customers like Sitefinder, just like BigPond's customers. Hmm....

    • Re:Paranoia (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 )
      If the ISP wants to redirect anything, they should redirect it to themselves, to a nice plaintext page explaining the situation with links to _both_ websites. It would be a much more fair solution.
      • Except that a link to the redirected website wouldn't work, because it's redirected to the nice plaintext page explaining the situation with links to both websites ...

        But other than that, that's the right solution. Especially given that otherwise the target audience of the idol side won't know that they are using a wrong URI and will just hit the gay porn site at some later time when they try to connect again ...

      • Re:Paranoia (Score:2, Informative)

        by Shard013 ( 530636 )
        And that is exactly what they did.

      • Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Informative)

        by doowy ( 241688 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:03AM (#10898767) Homepage
        that's what they did. this is what users saw when they visited the printed URL:

        Please wait, you are being redirected to www.caseydonovan.com.au, the home page of Casey Donovan, the new Australian Idol.
        Please note that there is a US site with a similar address which contains adult content which is not suitable for minors. If you are over 18 and do not want to go to Casey Donovan's Australian Idol Site, please click here now www.caseydonovan.com

    • Re:Paranoia (Score:2, Redundant)

      by MadCow42 ( 243108 )
      It might have been more acceptable to intercept the request and give the user the option (explaining the error)... provide the CORRECT link, or continue to the one they really entered.

      I do not like censorship... and there's nothing illegal about a gay porn star's website. However, helping people recognize a legitimate error would be ok.

      Blind redirection is not an acceptable alternative in my eyes.

      MadCow.

    • Re:Paranoia (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kenja ( 541830 )
      So you think its the ISPs place to decide which site you realy wanted to go to? What if they decide that everyone who looks for information about the Patriot Act should get redirected to a partisan puff piece explaining how giving up our freedoms is a good thing? I could list other examples but I think you get the idea, if the ISP is going to claim to be a common carrier they have NO buisness redirecting traffic. As soon as they do that they become responsible for the content.
    • Next up: Comcast High-speed internet's administrators decide that when I type in http://www.directv.com/ , I really mean to visit http://goatse.cx/

    • Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Funny)

      by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:55AM (#10898655) Homepage Journal
      • While fans of the dead Casey Donovan might be upset, this seems to be a legitimate thing bigpond to do.

      I firmly agree. Not to be too rigid, but I've taken a long, hard look at this and come to the conclusion that the redirection really is ok.

      Even though the newspaper blew it with the bad URL in their spread, I think it was fine for BigPond to ramrod this solution. I'm sure it makes all their partners upset, but they had to suck it up, go for the glory, hole up in their bunkers and make the change.

      I just wish you wouldn't have put all those double entendres in your post. Really, that was almost offensive.

  • BigPong = Telstra (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sapphon ( 214287 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:45AM (#10897862) Journal
    It's worth noting that the incorrect URL was published in an advertisement run by telecommunications giant Telsta, who, as well as being an Idol sponsor, also own BigPond.

    Hence it's less suprising that the ISP arm of their company reacts to minimise the damage, rather than an independent ISP doing this out of goodwill.

    • Re:BigPong = Telstra (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Elm Tree ( 17570 )
      This makes it look worse! A major company is seizing a domain and linking it to someone they've sponsored? What's next, changing it so I can't access sites of other net providers?

  • Big Pond (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isn't it a violation of Internet access contracts to re-direct URLs at the level of Big Pond?

    If not, it sure is scummy.
    • more to the point, isn't it against Australian Law?

      CRIMES ACT 1914 - SECT 85ZD
      Wrongful delivery of communications

      A person shall not intentionally cause a communication in the course of telecommunications carriage to be received by a person or carriage service other than the person or service to whom it is directed.

      Penalty: Imprisonment for 1 year.

  • Cat got your...? (Score:5, Funny)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:45AM (#10897865)
    Mr Donovan's site, which has been running for a number of years, features a naked frontal picture of the erstwhile adult star. A government source looking into the matter described an aspect of the picture of Mr Donovan as "frighteningly large".

    The same source added that "heads will roll" over the incident.

    "Frightenly large full frontal nude porn" and "heads will roll" all in the same sentence.

    *ouch*.

  • huh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:45AM (#10897869)
    so thats why I was directed to that Australian idol site...
  • It sounds more like good customer service.

    If you don't want your ISP doing things like this then don't use a big mainstream one that caters to the great unwashed masses.
  • So now we have a private corporation (ISP) deciding on its own, what people actually want or what they should be viewing. It was bad enough having governments making decisions for us, but this... I can see it now, your with Time Warner, well we knew that what you actually meant to do was go to this sponsor's web site.
    • You typed www.linux.org - we are sure you wanted to go to www.microsoft.com instead ...

    • Re:Another Big Brother (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sapphon ( 214287 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:54AM (#10897986) Journal
      Considering the target audience of the Idol shows (young children to teenagers mostly), many would argue that BigPond were acting in virtually everyone's* best interests by re-directing traffic.

      Sure, there may have been a handful of people denied their man-porn for a few hours, but they will have been in the vast minority. These were exceptional circumstances, and seeing this as a step towards BigBrother-dom is overreacting IMO.

      Basically BigPond stopped little kiddies from being exposed to pr0n (as well as saving their own faces, see my earlier post), which is Good Thing (TM); though one could debate the relative qualities of what they viewed instead :->

      *Casey Donovan (the man)'s estate excluded, perhaps
      • Maybe, except there is no porn on the page they would have gone to.

        There _is_ a big warning about what the site is about, how you should only click through if you are over 18 etc. etc.

        No little kiddies with half a brain would have actually been exposed to porn as a result of this _unless_ they actually wanted to see it (and if the kiddies want to find porn on the internet they will anyway).

        What they are doing is abusing the DNS (I presume that's how they did it - might be proxy I guess if they enforce on
      • I don't think that's good enough.

        "virtually everyone's"

        "best interests"

        "vast minority" (oxymoron?)

        These are all scary terms to be throwing around. Especially when we add another scary term "precedence". it's tempting to say oh, it's gay porn - of course we should redirect, but if we set a precedent, then a commercial company can start redirecting us with opt-out rather than opt-in clicks.

        Who's got an ISP with Republican/Democrat/People's progressive party for democratic Communism leanings? Or owne

    • So now we have a private corporation (ISP) deciding on its own, what people actually want or what they should be viewing. It was bad enough having governments making decisions for us, but this

      I don't know about you, but I would prefer a business making decisions like this to the government. At least the business can't throw you in jail (or worse) if you speak out against them. All other things being equal, it's much easier to overthrow a business than it is a government.

      **Note**
      Yes I saw the post farther

  • No link??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:49AM (#10897908)
    Finally a link would have been posted on the front page of /. that wouldn't have caused a slashdotting!

  • For the children (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ValuJet ( 587148 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:53AM (#10897964)
    I'm so sick of everything being changed 'for the children.' If kids were as fragil as everyone wants us to believe, we never would have survied as a species.

    Kids are tougher than you think and changing heaven and earth for them isn't necessarily in their best interest.

    • Here's something interesting -- studies have been done on children in war-torn countries like Afghanistan. They mature faster and become hardened and more cold-blooded at very early ages. You're right -- they *are* able to handle it. Its also almost irreversable.

      Afghanistan has an entire generation of warlord children out there trying to figure out what this peace crap is all about.

      Just because they *can* handle it doesn't mean they should have to handle it. I don't want my kids having to experience t

      • Why then (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:09AM (#10898839) Homepage Journal
        Do you allow your children unsupervised access to the internet?
        Do you allow them to roam the streets at night without supervision?
        I don't want my kids having to experience the stress of life that I experience, and they shouldn't have to figure out porn either.
        Sorry, Charlie, but your kids are going to eventually experience "the stress of life" and "porn," too.

        As a parent, you have a choice: either teach them how to deal with that stuff at an early enough age so that they get a good education from you or you can shelter them so they don't have to learn about it until they get out on their own. We call the latter the "Freeway to Failure(TM) method of parenting."

    • While I'm tired of "for the children" as well, it's hard to argue that the greater good wasn't served in this case.

      In the end, the little teeny-boppers got to their intended website, and a few fans of gay fetish porn were inconvenienced for a short time.

      From a business point of view, it probably wasn't a tough choice to make.
    • Well then, perhaps you would be interested in SSCCATAGAPP (Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples And Teens And Gays Against Parasitic Parents)?

      (it's a Simpsons reference)

    • Re:For the children (Score:3, Insightful)

      by KarmaMB84 ( 743001 )
      BigPond was covering their owner's ass. It had virtually nothing to do with the children.

  • As an alternate view ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dustpuppy ( 5260 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:55AM (#10897989)
    Let's face it, the vast majority of viewers for that site will be kids (based on the published URL, not coz they are after a porn site :-). As a result, I would rather Bigpond redirects users in the short term then getting a whole lot of parents jumping up and down demanding that the Internet be censored.

    Frankly, i think the long term benefits far outweight the short term 'loss of rights' issues.
    • It's important in these cases to have the dissenting view of people who are upset by the ISP playing big brother.

      People take the absolutist view that it shouldn't be "censored" because when things like this happen and nobody says anything, at some point it may be a site with political views contrary to the management of the company... or Planned Parenthood sites redirected to the Operation Rescue site.

      The press and the people need to take notice and assure "faceless" corporations that we notice, and we ca

  • Am I reading this correctly? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SlashDread ( 38969 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:55AM (#10897998)
    A Big ISP pushes their services via a Big media hype, Idols, by advertising a winner-Idol's site.

    They however cock up: they fail to publish the .au extention, pretty major slip, the 'net is bigger then down under mate. They also fail to check if similar names are used on the 'net by people whom they wish not to associate with.

    And after all these blunders, they file a complaint because a website exists, with a -similar- name, about a dead Gay Porn star being indecent?

    So they -steal- the clickies to the dead porn star, claiming it really, probably, is their clickies...

    How weird is that? I must be misunderstanding this article.. yeah?

    If I was the Dead Gay Porn Star, id sue BACK, for re-directing -my- traffic to -their- website.

    Thats like stealing my mail, claiming the sender really did not want to send it me. That might be true, but how does that justify stealing someone elses mail, or traffic?

    "/Dread"

  • It Might not be a porn site, but ... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... she suspiciously looks like Ron Jeremy without the mustache.

  • A similar but worse Canadian SNAFU (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fr05t ( 69968 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:57AM (#10898026)
    Several years ago the Government of New Brunswick (The Canadian province, not some place in NJ USA) issued a bunch of "safety cards" to elementary school children. These cards had colorful pictures and good messages to warn kids about the dangers of drugs, etc, etc.

    One card of interest warned about the dangers of internet strangers and had an image of a snake peeking out of a computer.

    Now New Brunswick is an offical bi-lingual province (English/French) and all of the cards had to be bi-lingual. So to cut on production costs they would use words that where the same or similar in french and english when possible.

    So back to the dangers of the internet. This card had the innocent looking url anaconda.com to go along with the snake in the internet theme(if it's the same as it was I don't recommend for work viewing). Well the url went to a nice S&M site with a very umm colorful splash page.

    The big ISP/Telco here immediately blocked the site at the request of the government.

    Personally I love these PR nightmares for the entertainment value.

  • sort of offtopic, but funny (Score:3, Interesting)

    by squarefish ( 561836 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:58AM (#10898029)
    My girlfriends name is heather boyle and told me to google her when we met, so I did- here's the first link- NSFW [heatherbbw.com]

    I'm not really sure what my point was, but I thought this was somewhat related.

    people make mistakes with url's all the time- hell, Cheney even did it during the debate with factcheck.org [factcheck.org]
    and then there's always the whitehouse [whitehouse.com] site that's been screwing up kids, parents and teachers for 7 years

    of course none of this changes the fact that the isp should keep their fucking hands out of what their client host as long as it's not spam or child porn.
  • If they discovered that a subversive person was actually aware of the similar URL, and _intentionally_ provided it for publication.
  • ...the propogation of errant domain names into the media by Telstra was just an exercise in gaining publicity at the expense of morality.

    I mean, what better way to solidify the name in the eyes of teenage girls than to have news story after news story directing them to -- or explaining how people were being mistakenly directed to -- a website which features an image of a large penis (and the male human it's attached to).

    Very clever... and to top it off, Telstra BigPond get to be seen as making the interne
  • ... a story about dodgy URL's to be read at work,

    I am currently posting this on his home computer after being escorted of works premise with p45[1] in hand[2]

    [1] P45 - in the uk a slip to say "you're fired" (has tax details etc.. on it).
    [2] My excuse and I'm sticking to it

    With tongue firmly in cheek

    Jaj

  • Dear Telstra (Score:5, Funny)

    by goldcd ( 587052 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:03AM (#10898088) Homepage
    After your nefarious actions my gay 14 year old son was redirected towards a Pop Idol site and has turned quite banal. His mother is currently sobbing with shame at the trite, pre-packaged and artistically shallow lyrics he is now often found to be singing around the house. I can no longer even look my neighbours in the eye after they complained he was playing some auto-tuned squawker on his stereo as he washed my car last week. yours, a distraught father.
  • I'm all for them blocking access to the offensive web site to "protect" their customers for inadvertent exposure to objectionable content, but it seems to me that the redirection amounts to domain hijacking. Remember, in most cases of domain hijacking, it hijackers are promoting totally unrelated content. The fact that people correctly typing in the dead porn stars web address would get the "Idol" website amounts to free advertising, however small in scale. It's one thing to say "We understand it's likely
  • The Moral Entrez: "The Internet has become an important public space and to ensure the ability of our citizens to browse without being attacked by disgusting, vile content, it has become a necessity to actively prohibit webservers from abusing the Internet public space and must adopt fair, yet effective filtering for all websites reachable by our citizens."

    The Liberal Conscience: "While we believe we must preserve the freedoms of the Internet we also think some kinds of content are too objectionable and to
  • The person who chose the Australian Idol's URL should share in the blame. When registering a .com.au domain, one should realize that a good percentage of visitors will accidentaly type it in with just a .com at the end. The same goes for people registering .net or other non-.com domains. A good webmaster should be aware that since .com is what the majority of people are used to, a portion of their traffic will end up at the matching .com domain. That's why .com domains resell for much higher prices than
  • Perhaps BigPond should also redirect subscribers to CaseyDonovan.com.au when they try to look up tubgirl
  • The Age newspaper reports [theage.com.au] that Telstra/BigPond lodged the complaint primarily so "to enable it to advise web-content filtering providers about the site's content and to have it blocked for customers who subscirbed to filtering services.
    Because the site is R-rated, instead of X-rated, and hosted in the United States, it cannot be taken down or blocked."

    Egg on Telstra's face & damage limitation, that's all I'm drawing from this at the moment.

  • What The Fuck are they talking about? (Score:4, Informative)

    by 3.5 stripes ( 578410 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:13AM (#10898203)
    www.caseydonovan.com without any particular .html page extension takes you to a big blue page asking if you're sure you want to look at adult material, including the word gay (and porn star) 5 or six times.

    THERE IS NO PHOTO.

    This is pretty fucking stupid.
  • I wonder if you could use the same argument to redirect those that went to factcheck.com instead of factcheck.org after Dick Cheney mentioned the wrong site in his debate? Think about it. Lots of those that went to the wrong site were probably offended by what they saw. At the time, factcheck.com was an anti-bush site. So I'm sure that lots of those that went there were Bush/Cheney supporters and were quite offended by what they saw. Would it be acceptable if the ISP of factcheck.com forward requests to f
  • C. Pornstar Donovan's posthumous agent should file complaints against both the ISP for routing *all* traffic to C. Teenidol Donovan's website, and the newspapers for advertising their porno site as the other site. Then the agent should settle with no damages. I dunno about Australia, but in the US, trademark owners must "vigorously defend" their marks against "dilution": confusion of their mark with others, or with other trade - or *lose* the trademark exclusivity rights. One could argue that C. Teenidol Do
  • I called a 1-800 number once, and got a recording. It went something like this:

    "The number you have dialed, 1-800-nnn-nnnn, has been erroniously advertised to two different companies. To reach company A, press 1. To reach company B, dial the correct number, 1-800-abc-defg."

    An earlier respondant suggested the same idea for web pages that were mistakenly advertised.

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