Canadian Censorship Takes Down 4500 Sites 227
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.'"
Hmmm (Score:1, Interesting)
I thought Canada was a bastion of civil liberties. What, with all the whiny hippies claiming they would move there if $event happened.
Downhill slide in gov'ts? (Score:1, Interesting)
Between USA's Bush, Canada's Harper, and long string of other bozos in other countries governments, it seems like this past decade has been filled with myopic, self-centered, stupid (more than usual, anyway...) politicians. And it looks like the coming decade won't be any better.
My problem is that I can't tell if this is a new and disturbing trend, or if it was always this bad but the reporting just got more visible?
Re:Works for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Ditto.
Either they turned them back on really quick, or the article itself is hoax-ad-ware? or something.. i'm sure there's some pre-ordained term for this from the Elders of the Internet
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Heinlein should be rolling over in his grave (Score:1, Interesting)
He loved casting the Canucks as free-spirited, tolerant, rigidly honest characters. Now they just seem as stupidly human as the rest of us.
self-inflicted? (Score:3, Interesting)
since the site seems to be fine from anywhere and a whole ip-segment was screwed, maybe these yes-men screwed up one of their own routers, suspected some conspiracy and then made up this story?
Hmm.. (Score:1, Interesting)
What were the other 4500 related websites?
Re:Invoking John Gilmore (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes... except that we are quickly running out of free-speech friendly countries (Canada was one of the most free). Soon we'll have to seriously think about putting pirate senders in orbit, just like the old off-shore pirate radio stations of the last century.
Re:Works for me (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree a bit, you apparently don’t know the Yes Men.
They are known for stunts where they impersonate government agencies, and then go e.g. to conferences and look how far they can go, until the audience starts to complain.
Turns out they can go further than even the tinfoil hat crowd could imagine.
They for example presented how one could catch the shit that’s going down the toilet, and making re-burgers out of them, to feed the 3rd world. Or how slavery is too expensive and the current model of letting them work there where you don’t even have to feed them at all, is much better.
And they got a whole room applauding at them.
They aim for a seriously presented but blatantly obvious and over the top parody.
And their point is, that people don’t get the parody and think it’s actually real.
Seems they won again. And we can all laugh at the Canadian government. The only reason we don’t laugh at you too, is because we can’t assume you did read TFA or saw their work. :) So I give you that.
It's not Canada who screwed up this time, but (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed, why did Serverloft, a German company (according to TFA) react at all?
They should just have shown a huge phat finger to the Canucks, and say "you can't get us accross the huuuuge ocean". After all, it's not as if Canada was in a position of unleashing an Operation Desert Storm over Germany. One hosting company to avoid!
And such behavior would be entirely appropriate: after all that's exactly how Canada behaves when German citizens that have been wrongfully imprisoned in Canada want to seek compensation.
Cut the head off. (Score:3, Interesting)
As you so rightly pointed out there are no good choices. I for one would vote for the first one that can show me they realize that if you have $10 you can't spend $20. This simple concept seems to be beyond most/all politicians.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)