The Canadian government has convinced a German ISP to shut down two environmental parody sites that were developed by the "Yes Men" and garnered considerable attention during the Copenhagen climate conference. The ISP complied with the request without seeking a court order first and in the process blocked an additional 4,500 sites hosted on the same IP block.
Canadian Gov’t Convinces German ISP To Shut Down Environmental Parody Sites
8 Comments
Recent Posts
Skillful Negotiation or Legislative Fail? Taking Stock of the Bill C-18 Deal With Google 
Salvaging Bill C-18: Government Upends Legislation To Bring Google Onside the Online News Act 
Accountability and Antisemitism: The Canadian Heritage Committee Needs To Step Up 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 186: Andy Kaplan-Myrth on the CRTC’s Last Ditch Attempt to Fix Canada’s Internet Competition Problem 
On Media Bailouts and Bias: Why Government Media Policy Is Undermining Public Trust
Hoax?
This reads a little bit like a hoax. The “Yes Men” certainly do not seem to be below pulling their own site or fabricating a call from the “government” in order to increase their own profile.
Looks Real
Looks to be real to me:
http://www.ec-gc.ca/
Conservative cowardice never ceases to amaze me…
… and I’s even more amazed at how many in any country are willing to swear blind allegiance to them and obey them above and beyond legal allowances.
Contents of the site
Are there any screen captures of the site? I’m curious to know if the offending site was constructed in such a way that made it hard/impossible for the average person to know it was a parody or criticism.
More details can be found here in German:
http://www.basicthinking.de/blog/2010/01/04/serverloft-the-yes-men-und-4-500-gesperrte-kanadische-websites/
Basically the site was depicted as a Fishing site by the Canadian government so that the German government’s IT security department issued a request to the server operator to take it down. The server op contacted the website owner who did not respond so the op shut down the entire server, thereby taking the other websites down as well.
Here is the URL again:
http://tinyurl.com/y9y5axx
Thanks German. If the YesMen parody site mimics the real Canadian Government websites to such a degree that a common person cannot realize the commentary isn’t the Canadian Government justified in their actions?
I should also add that the other 4500 sites that got pulled down is indeed unfortunate but seems to be the fault of the ISP.