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.'"
I can somewhat understand where the Canadian government is coming from on this one. The.gc.ca
domain is Canadian Government sites. This site is obviously designed to
look like an official government site - using a domain that could
confuse people.
I have a problem with censorship, but I also have
a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming
censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come
after you.
I
have a problem with censorship, but I also have a problem with
intentionally misleading people, then screaming censorship when the
folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come after you.
I
can't disagree with that, but the real misdeed here is the lack of due
process and the negligent clobbering of the unrelated 4500 sites. I'm
not a Canadian lawyer, but I sure wish I was one right now.
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.
Germany has a sketchy concept of free speech
[wikipedia.org] to begin with. Perhaps they figured this would fall
under "incitement of the people," albeit the Canadian people.
They're not operating very far away from the phishers.
Well, except they'll accept your invitations to speak at events, and
get paid for it, as if they were the real people.
They're not doing any good. They're actually very
intentionally trying to pick fights with the government, and large
corporations.
The only thing they're not doing quite yet is accepting the
money from online places. They are still actively committing fraud,
under the guise of parody.
It's folks like this that endanger free speech for
everyone. I won't say to stop them, but I will strongly suggest that
they shouldn't do it any more.
We
need to take censorship seriously. This begins by refusing to position
fraud masquerading as parody as a freedom of speech issue, which is
terribly disrespectful of real censorship. Freedom of speech was never
meant to be used as a day pass to Dorkville.
I can well imagine
the childhood of someone who signs up the domain ec-gc.ca to engage in
serious debate. I was played against his likeness in an online poker
room yesterday, a fellow playing under the identity "Custard Pump" with
a unkempt mop of hair over a naked upper torso icon posed with a
conspicuous, demure, downward gaze.
Cluster Hump goes all-in on
the first hand, and miraculously doubles up. Mustard Sump goes nearly
all-in again on the second hand, and this time gets busted down to 100
chips. The next hand Cluetard Rump craftily bids himself down to 1
chip, whereupon he does nothing but sit there on every bid opportunity
running down his bid clock (15s per bid plus his one-time 60s extra
time clock), to express the emotional futility of his existence to
everyone else at the table. Took half a dozen deals for the blinds to
come around and knock him out.
Climate change is an important
debate. If you've got something serious to say, show up and play, and
stop hiding behind a daffy-ass parody pretence.
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.
Yeah, I'd agree, except using government muscle to come after people who mislead others is kind of a crappy thing to do.
It was a German
company that pulled the plug. They were under no obligation whatsoever
to honor the request. It's them who screwed up most in this affair.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday December 29, @04:59PM (#30587196)
I
know it's unfair to expect an AC to RTFA, but if you had - it stated
that the government requested Serverloft "make every effort to prevent
any further attempts concerning other environment-related domains
(enviro, ec-gc, etc.) originating from [their] servers." Serverloft
responded by shutting down a block of 4500 IP addresses. While this
request from the government is arguably overreaching - Serverloft's
actions in response to the request were basic incompetence. Serverloft
is where most of your complaint should be directed. The government's
request may be naive, but Serverloft was plain stupid.
Lies
or deception coming from government or from lobby groups are the same.
It should not be tolerated. I'm glad our government is taking action
and I would expect the same from anyone who is being misrepresented.
This is not a freedom of speech issue but a trade name issue.
I
can understand anyone or any group not wanting to be impersonated and
having said impostors make false statements or claims on your behalf,
but this is ridiculous on the part of both the Canadian gov't &
that hosting company. I don't know the specifics of Canuck law, but
considering it's a parliamentary democracy, I can't imagine there
aren't some due processes of law by which an aggrieved party, whether
government department or private citizen, can ask the police/justice
department to look into just that one specific website doing the
impersonation, ask that just it and it alone be suspended/removed, not
have a basic request not backed by any warrant result in an entire
block of IP addresses being shut down. That is outrageous. If the
article is to be believed, the government's next request is downright
absurd...
Landreville also asked the ISP to "make
every effort to prevent any further attempts concerning other
environment-related domains (enviro, ec-gc, etc.) originating from your
servers."
It's like the RIAA attitude is rubbing off everywhere. "Please act on
our behalf to protect our image/intellectual property/etc, because we
just don't feel like getting off our lazy asses to manage our own
affairs." Ludicrous. I'm not advocating belligerence toward the law,
but this kind of blind, sniveling compliance verges on the sort of
grovelling a lackey does at the feet of his master. Whatever happened
to "Get a warrant?"
I can somewhat understand where the Canadian government is coming from on this one. The.gc.ca
domain is Canadian Government sites. This site is obviously designed to
look like an official government site - using a domain that could
confuse people.
I have a problem with censorship, but I also have
a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming
censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come
after you.
On another note, I'll say that maybe people
shouldn't use Serverloft if they can't rely on them to at least make an
effort to stand up for their customers.
Don't do business with businesses that don't respect you.
I can't believe anyone is believing a press release done
by a group who intentionally does bogus press releases and web sites.
No one else sees the problem with this??
Or
some nimble work finding another hosting provider. Hehe, wouldn't it be
funny if 4498 unrelated sites were offline, but the two sites that were
targeted were online again at a different provider:-)
Indeed, it seems to:
# tcptraceroute enviro-canada.ca 80
Selected device ppp0, address xxxxxxxxx, port xxxx for outgoing packets
Tracing the path to 188.138.4.45 on TCP port 80 (www), 30 hops max ...
8 tge-4-0-0-0a.cr1.fra.routeserver.net (80.81.193.21) 21.938 ms 23.390 ms 21.860 ms
9 sl6.fra.routeserver.net (62.75.135.6) 23.359 ms 24.462 ms 23.199 ms
10 vm5.pi.dk (188.138.4.45) [open] 23.449 ms 22.716 ms 25.587 ms
==> so it's hosted in Denmark now!
I recommend that the 4498 unrelated sites should do likewise, and find a hosting provider with a spine.
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
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
Nope no
pre-ordianed term. We didn't need one back in the day, since internet
censorship was the feavered dream of a mad man back then.
Either they turned them back on really quick, or the article itself is hoax-ad-ware?
...
or the sites picked another hosting provider? Indeed, tcptraceroute
shows that enviro-canada.ca is now hosted in Denmark, whereas
serverloft is in Germany.
I hope that the 4498 unrelated sites that have been clobbered along with them will find another hosting provider as well.
So
a few questions pop to mind. Did Serverloft shutdown the sites? Or was
there a temporary outage that these "yesmen" interrupted as a
deliberate take down? If Serverloft did take the sites down, why were
4500 other sites affected? Can they not shut down one or two sites
without taking down every other site that shares the same IP? Why would
a German ISP respond (briefly) to a request from "some guy" in a
government job in another country, and then enable the
Well,
you do need to work on that bit in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
which allows for prior restraint. (i.e. you have freedom of speech
until a judge rules that you don't).
The issue here is that an
ISP outside of Canada got a nastygram from the Government of Canada and
folded like origami paper rather than saying "We're sorry. This is not
Canada. Please feel free to seek legal remedy from a court in this
jurisdiction and we will comply with that request immediately!"
Our
charter of rights and freedoms works fine. S.1 however states that the
government can override any part of it for a 'just' cause. Seriously
they need to stop teaching kids in highschool criminal and civil law
and teach them government policy instead.
Oh you might have
noticed that the website(s) aren't censored either. You've just happily
flown off the handle for a well known hack-group that does this stuff.
OTOH the Federal Government can get them shut down for use of a domain
name/site that looks close to an official government one. That type of
stuff isn't looked highly on by anyone, not even the courts here.
"The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
[wikiquote.org] The solution is obvious: Move your servers to a more
free-speech friendly country. When the US and Canada start to see that
taking down sites at the drop of a hat is very harmful to their hosting
businesses, then maybe they will do something about it.
Move your servers to a more free-speech friendly country.
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.
The solution is obvious: Move your servers to a more free-speech friendly country.
That's
what they did. Serverloft is a German company. But apparently, Germany
is not free-speech friendly enough... so now the sites are hosted in
Denmark! Hehe...
Hmmm, but why doesn't the Canadian government simply lean on the.ca registry, that would be much easier...
When
the US and Canada start to see that taking down sites at the drop of a
hat is very harmful to their hosting businesses, then maybe they will
do something about it.
That's
what I'm starting to think, and I'm finding it absolutely hilarious,
given that this is exactly the sort of stunt "The Yes Men" stage all
the time. This particular stunt would be peanuts compared to some of
their others.
Is it me or is the Global Elite just getting lazy?
At
least for the last 120 years they put some effort into hiding the fact
that we are in fact all powerless pesants under the heel of an elite in
which the law only serves said elite. At least we had the illusion of
"equality, the rule of law, and freedom."
I for one an
dissapointed in my ruling shadow government and would like to formally
request that a new shadow government that plans to treat me like a
pesant, rise up, over throw the existing elite, and establish a new
global elite that will at least TRY and hide the fact there is a global
elite that owns us, does as they please, and mearly offer us the
illusion that laws apply to everyone equally.
You
know what's REALLY funny is that I recently watched a documentary
comparing modern life to that of peasants in the middle ages, and when
you strip away the comforts we have because of modern technology
(plentiful high calorie foods, great medical care, comfortable cheap
living materials, etc), the average peasant spent less time working for
his lord than we do working for the government (i.e. taxes). Most all
peasants had their own plot of land to work and a house that was their
own, and they were generally more free to do whatever they wanted
compared to us today. They didn't have the comforts we have, but that
is simply a technological difference.
We have far more
distractions which help us ignore the fact that we are far more
oppressed than those who lived in the fiefdoms of the past. That's sad,
especially since we consider the average peasant of old to be a quite
oppressed individual.
We
poor modern peasants work a LOT more than our peasant forefathers did,
thanks to our ginormously longer life expectancy. How grossly unjust!
The
life of a middle age serf was nasty, brutish and short. My peasant life
is fairly pleasant, protected from brutes by the cops and the army, and
long-lived.
Oh, how I yearn from the idyllic peasant life of yore! When a peasant knew his place and stayed exactly the fuck there!
The site was
offshore. I was hosted in Germany, not Canada. That makes the whole
affair even more outrageous. Why serverloft didn't simply ignore the
request is a mystery.
From
Wikipedia re The Yes Men: "...they create and maintain fake websites
similar to ones they want to spoof, and then they accept invitations
received on their websites to appear at conferences, symposia, and TV
shows".
I would be looking at this with tongue firmly in cheek.
...but this is one good reason why we need commercial space flight.
With commercial space flight you collect money to put a pre-built server into orbit and serve pages from there.
Now
granted the bandwidth wouldn't be fast but for things like free speech
related documents you really don't need speed just stable retention.
You could still store video up there as well it would just be slow to get on and off the server obviously.
As long as the system had power and a good antenna the data could be available f
What do we do when bandwidth is not enough? We outsource the data and
post only magnet links. I could easily imagine a server in space
continuously broadcasting nothing more than pages and pages full of
magnet links.
And
then the gov't calls you and says "It sure would be a shame if that
nice shiny new satillite of yours were to 'accidentally' get hit by
some flying space debris."
While I can't argue against that
I think it's not really all that likely in the short term. Especially
since there's no easy way to forcibly de-orbit a satellite without
either shooting it with something or bumping something into it.
And
you'd really have to piss someone in the government off for them to
waste an existing million dollar satellite to get rid of yours.
Though
if we're discussing this in the framework of an existing cheap
commercial space flight scenario you could easily put more than one up
there.
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?
Nah,
it fascist Harper's government. You guys had to put up with Bush for 10
years, while we get this Harper guy. The sad thing is the alternatives
aren't much better.
It
was Bush for 8 years, and his replacement happens to have a virtually
identical domestic policy, which means we are essentially screwed.
Hey, now! Bush wanted to take our clumsy, wasteful pyramid scheme of a social security system and make it slightly worse, while Obama wants to take our clumsy, wasteful hellhole of a health care system and make it significantly worse. We may still be getting screwed, but it really is going in a different orifice.
Now, when it comes to foreign policy, it's all the same - spend absurd
amounts of money bombing people until they learn to love us.
That's
one thing I wish people would wake up about - just because something is
"organic" doesn't mean it is good for you! There are a hell of a lot of
deadly, toxic, nasty things out there that are organic.
It drives me nuts, all this "organic" nonsense these days.
I heard it was pretty good, but then it turns out they must be dumping oil in the rivers and feeding toxic waste to seals.
It's
good in the national mythology. Beautiful soaring mountains, pristine
lakes. Verdant forests. I saw it on the CBC, so it must be true! (All
those things do exist. I've been to them. They're really cool).
The
reality is that British Columbia is a giant clearcut once you go more
than 100 km from Vancouver, and the prairie is being torn up as fast as
possible in Alberta to get to the black gold that lies beneath.
Under
the current conservative party government, we've been on a slow, quiet,
insidious slide toward fascism. Suppression of information is a
frequent and favourite tactic of this government - which is ironic
considering they campaigned on "openness and accountability" during the
'06 election.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I
am not Canadian but I believe the name of the party is The Conservative
Party. The word "conservative" lost its meaning a long time ago,
particularly in the USA. How else do you explain the politicians who
self-identify as "conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and
power of government?
As
a Canadian I can confirm that they are in fact called "The Conservative
Party of Canada" or more colloquially "The assholes who somehow managed
to win an election and try to claim divine mandate with less then 25%
of voting Canadian behind them."
As a Canadian I can confirm that they are in fact called "The Conservative Party of Canada" or more colloquially "the fuckers."
FTFY.
(I am also Canadian.) They got in riding the anti-gay-marriage ticket.
The next two elections were done when the other parties were hurting,
hoping that they'd win a majority. (Turnabout is fair play -- Cretin
did this years ago.) No issues have been brought forward in any way
that makes the citizens of this country go out and vote.
It
pisses me off when they (and I mean any party) call us "voters",
"constituents", or "taxpayers". We aren't any of those things. We're
citizens, and they exist at our whim.
The problem we have is that not one party up here is worth voting for. Our choices are: 1. Sweatervest, 2. Clueless, 3. Dr. Moustachio, 4. La Wall Briq, and 5. Outcast.
None of these people deserve to run the country, and none of them have done a thing to impress the Canadian public.
I
am advocating that next election we simply remove the party leaders.
They have shown over and over again that that are incapable of leading,
and don't even seem to be able to work and play well with others.
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.
That's
why we need electoral reform and proportional representation. When the
cast of characters you list above are forced to work with 2-3 other
parties as well as a handful of independent MPs in order to get
measures passed through parliament, they will suddenly discover that
autocratic, partisan bullshit will harm their ability to get things
done and to remain in power.
5 minutes with a spreadsheet and any system can be gamed.
57%
of the Canadian population lies within a 75000 km^2 urban area between
Windsor and Quebec City, throw a bone to BC and 99.25% of the area of
Canada have no voice. Arguably a good thing, but fairness and equity
aren't its strengths.
The only meaningful electoral reform would
be 90+% voter turnout; but in a world of milquetoast politicians afraid
of being beaten by their masters, it isn't likely.
How
else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as "conservative"
who are so eager to expand the size and power of government?
That's
an easy one. The core philosophy in conservatism is maintaining the
existing power structures in society. The size of government is
immaterial, and will be increased when necessary and decreased when
unnecessary to the achievement of this aim. The existing power
structure in the USA is based around the military industrial complex,
which dictates big, big, big government (but which spends very little
on actual social programs). The power structure in Canada is based
around the resource economy, which dictates government small enough
that the energy, mining, and forestry companies can override popular
opposition. That pretty much explains everything you need to know about
the differences between American and Canadian conservatives.
They forgot that part. Perhaps that happens in Canada only. In the USA,
I have never once witnessed a significant decrease of the size and
power of the federal government during my entire lifetime. Ever. I have
seen this on the state and local levels, but never on the federal level.
That
simply means that smaller federal government has never served the aims
of the military-industrial establishment. It's not that they forgot,
it's that smaller government is actually contrary to their aims. The US
military alone spends more than all state and local governments
combined, and that is only one federal department. Conservatives who
think conservatism has anything to do with small government are
borderline romantics, thinking back to a pre-WWII America, even a
19th-Century America where the USA was individualistic, isolationist,
and still driven by the pioneer spirit. It's an appealing national
myth, but a myth nonetheless in the 21st Century.
The
word "conservative" lost its meaning a long time ago, particularly in
the USA. How else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as
"conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and power of
government?
Well, we still have the word "libertarian" so we
can tell who actually wants to make government smaller, although even
that one has to be taken with a bit of skepticism sometimes.
Just
the obvious question since I live in Canada and have been involved in
politics for 15 years, but..where were you when the Liberal party was
in power and were actively censoring everyone and everything that could
get them removed from office and interfering in official investigations
at the federal level. Including shutting down agencies that do that
investigation.
You really sound like another party hack that's
upset that the liberal didn't get a 20yr majority. Too bad they were
fucking the entire country over and using it for their own personal
play thing.
I thought Canada was a bastion of civil liberties.
Haha. Coffee-splutter! You owe me a new keyboard.
In Canada you can get imprisoned for 3 months without seeing a judge,
attorney, your embassy, or even a doctor, and without access to a
telephone, simply for criticizing how the Rotary Club runs a
Shelterhouse. After these 3 months, when your visa (luckily) runs out,
you're shipped back to your home country sans luggage.
Now, good luck on getting any redress or compensation. Or even getting your luggage back.
No, Canada is not the fairy-tale land of civil liberties that everybody believes.
If you're a hippy (especially if you're a hippy...) don't set foot in
Canada under any circumstances, if you value your backpack and its
contents:-)
Or if you absolutely must, don't offer up any environmental advice that
might upset powerful locals. And make sure your visa is not one day
longer than needed.
It
isn't just Bush and Harper. It is most government officials. Just
because you agree with the current (or do you?) administration (or
opposition) doesn't mean they are any better. In fact, I would suggest
that as stupid as you think Bush is, many people think the same thing
of Reid, Pelosi and Obama.
They are all bozos. I actually think it is a requirement for the job, and reflection of the population.
Why don't you blame the people who are REALLY responsible? The voters.
As long as people vote for the guy who tells them they can keep
their 2 suvs and that he will lower their taxes (never actually
happened anywhere) you will get these kind of guys.
Why don't you blame the people who are REALLY responsible? The voters.
You
need to extend the blame a bit further, to citizens in general. The sad
fact is "the voters" is just a small subset of the citizenry, and the
apathy of those who don't vote is more to blame than the misguided
ideals of those who do.
I remember the one time Bush actually
attempted to reduce the automatic increase in the national budget one
year (he did not, in fact, attempt to spend any less money, just not
increase spending by as much as usual) and he was crucified for it on
almost all sides. Ever since then he was spend spend spend. He'd cut
taxes, sure, that would make him popular, but he realized cutting
spending would be political suicide. It is very sad indeed, given the
fantastic promises our current president makes along those same lines,
and the fact that once an imperfect bill goes into law it is almost
never fixed.
I'd
like a little more confirmation before I believe the Canadian
Government issued a take down notice. At best, its an employee of the
Government. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere that an elected official
had any part in this.
Also, the ISP is in Germany. If an employee
from some department in some other company sent me a take down notice,
I doubt I'd jump. If this is being reported accurately (and I have some
doubts), I'd have more questions for the ISP than I would for the
Canadian Government. For
The
Yes Men's entire raisin d'etre is publicity. It would make sense for
them to specifically choose ISPs that are willing to roll over easily.
It
would make even more sense for them to just release a hoax announcement
claiming that the ISP shut down their parody websites, even though the
websites are actually still [enviro-canada.ca] online [ec-gc.ca].
Rocket Propelled Grenades aren't too effective vs people... make alot of mess
Now
a good sized boxset of DnD or WoW collectors edition carefully aimed
will take the shoplifter out without too much collateral damage so
assume you mean the later use of RPG;)
My
first thought on reading the summary was that Serverloft was a bunch of
tools. As I read more and realized the press release was probably a
hoax, it made me think. I know the US and Canada have different laws,
and IANAL, but if this were the US, I would tend to think Serverloft
would have a decent case of libel against them. They can claim "parody"
all they want, but if I had merely skimmed the surface, and not read
deeper, Severloft woulda been stuck with a negative connotation for me
all because these a holes want to screw around. How many of
Serverloft's customers read that press release and immediately went and
checked if their sites were up? How many are currently looking for a
new provider right now? I am all for free speech. If I say "Company A
sucks" then fine. Too bad for them. (In the US, of course, I'm sure
some company's attorney would want to sue you over voicing that
opinion.) But to say they killed 4500 customers in a knee jerk reaction
when they didn't? That is not the same thing at all. That can have
actual damages. And if I were Serverloft, I'd be consulting someone
about it.
Works for me (Score:5, Informative)
Reply to This
Re:Works for me (Score:4, Informative)
I can somewhat understand where the Canadian government is coming from on this one. The .gc.ca
domain is Canadian Government sites. This site is obviously designed to
look like an official government site - using a domain that could
confuse people.
I have a problem with censorship, but I also have a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come after you.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Works for me (Score:2)
I have a problem with censorship, but I also have a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come after you.
I can't disagree with that, but the real misdeed here is the lack of due process and the negligent clobbering of the unrelated 4500 sites. I'm not a Canadian lawyer, but I sure wish I was one right now.
Reply to This
Parent
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.
Reply to This
Parent
Re:It's not Canada who screwed up this time, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Reply to This
Parent
Re:Works for me (Score:4, Informative)
They're not operating very far away from the phishers. Well, except they'll accept your invitations to speak at events, and get paid for it, as if they were the real people.
They're not doing any good. They're actually very intentionally trying to pick fights with the government, and large corporations.
The only thing they're not doing quite yet is accepting the money from online places. They are still actively committing fraud, under the guise of parody.
It's folks like this that endanger free speech for everyone. I won't say to stop them, but I will strongly suggest that they shouldn't do it any more.
Reply to This
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not really a fraud. If you are a fraudster, you do it for personal profit. This more like a variation of civil disobedience.
Re:Works for me (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Saying something - speech.
2) Taking money or goods under false pretenses - fraud.
I don't understand your confusion here. There's already laws against 2). No need to bring 1) into a legal discussion at all.
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Re:Works for me (Score:3, Insightful)
But you contradict yourself.
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Re: (Score:2)
We need to take censorship seriously. This begins by refusing to position fraud masquerading as parody as a freedom of speech issue, which is terribly disrespectful of real censorship. Freedom of speech was never meant to be used as a day pass to Dorkville.
I can well imagine the childhood of someone who signs up the domain ec-gc.ca to engage in serious debate. I was played against his likeness in an online poker room yesterday, a fellow playing under the identity "Custard Pump" with a unkempt mop of hair over a naked upper torso icon posed with a conspicuous, demure, downward gaze.
Cluster Hump goes all-in on the first hand, and miraculously doubles up. Mustard Sump goes nearly all-in again on the second hand, and this time gets busted down to 100 chips. The next hand Cluetard Rump craftily bids himself down to 1 chip, whereupon he does nothing but sit there on every bid opportunity running down his bid clock (15s per bid plus his one-time 60s extra time clock), to express the emotional futility of his existence to everyone else at the table. Took half a dozen deals for the blinds to come around and knock him out.
Climate change is an important debate. If you've got something serious to say, show up and play, and stop hiding behind a daffy-ass parody pretence.
Re:Works for me (Score:3, 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.
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Re:Works for me (Score:3)
Yeah, I'd agree, except using government muscle to come after people who mislead others is kind of a crappy thing to do.
Uhh, isn't that precisely what trademark law, and the enforcement thereof, exist to do?
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Re:Works for me (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I'd agree, except using government muscle to come after people who mislead others is kind of a crappy thing to do.
It was a German company that pulled the plug. They were under no obligation whatsoever to honor the request. It's them who screwed up most in this affair.
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Re:Works for me (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Works for me (Score:4, Funny)
The government's request may be naive, but Serverloft was plain stupid.
Serverloft is obviously too big to fail.
/me runs.
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Re:Works for me (Score:2)
Lies or deception coming from government or from lobby groups are the same. It should not be tolerated. I'm glad our government is taking action and I would expect the same from anyone who is being misrepresented. This is not a freedom of speech issue but a trade name issue.
Re: (Score:2)
It's like the RIAA attitude is rubbing off everywhere. "Please act on our behalf to protect our image/intellectual property/etc, because we just don't feel like getting off our lazy asses to manage our own affairs." Ludicrous. I'm not advocating belligerence toward the law, but this kind of blind, sniveling compliance verges on the sort of grovelling a lackey does at the feet of his master. Whatever happened to "Get a warrant?"
Re: (Score:2)
I can somewhat understand where the Canadian government is coming from on this one. The .gc.ca
domain is Canadian Government sites. This site is obviously designed to
look like an official government site - using a domain that could
confuse people.
I have a problem with censorship, but I also have a problem with intentionally misleading people, then screaming censorship when the folks you're trying to quietly impersonate come after you.
On another note, I'll say that maybe people shouldn't use Serverloft if they can't rely on them to at least make an effort to stand up for their customers.
Don't do business with businesses that don't respect you.
Re:Works for me (Score:5, Informative)
Both sites appear to be working fine from here in Canada also. This is either some quick backpedaling or bogus.
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Re:Works for me (Score:5, Informative)
I can't believe anyone is believing a press release done by a group who intentionally does bogus press releases and web sites. No one else sees the problem with this??
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Re:Works for me (Score:3, Insightful)
This is either some quick backpedaling or bogus.
Or some nimble work finding another hosting provider. Hehe, wouldn't it be funny if 4498 unrelated sites were offline, but the two sites that were targeted were online again at a different provider :-)
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Re:Works for me (Score:4, Informative)
# tcptraceroute enviro-canada.ca 80
Selected device ppp0, address xxxxxxxxx, port xxxx for outgoing packets
Tracing the path to 188.138.4.45 on TCP port 80 (www), 30 hops max
8 tge-4-0-0-0a.cr1.fra.routeserver.net (80.81.193.21) 21.938 ms 23.390 ms 21.860 ms
9 sl6.fra.routeserver.net (62.75.135.6) 23.359 ms 24.462 ms 23.199 ms
10 vm5.pi.dk (188.138.4.45) [open] 23.449 ms 22.716 ms 25.587 ms
==> so it's hosted in Denmark now!
I recommend that the 4498 unrelated sites should do likewise, and find a hosting provider with a spine.
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Re: (Score:2)
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
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Nope no pre-ordianed term. We didn't need one back in the day, since internet censorship was the feavered dream of a mad man back then.
Re: (Score:2)
Either they turned them back on really quick, or the article itself is hoax-ad-ware?
... or the sites picked another hosting provider? Indeed, tcptraceroute shows that enviro-canada.ca is now hosted in Denmark, whereas serverloft is in Germany.
I hope that the 4498 unrelated sites that have been clobbered along with them will find another hosting provider as well.
Re: (Score:2)
"Joe job" may cover it.
Re: (Score:2)
i'm sure there's some pre-ordained term for this from the Elders of the Internet
Yes. We call it "Robert" (pronounced "Wobbert").
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yup, both sites are working for me as well.
So a few questions pop to mind. Did Serverloft shutdown the sites? Or was there a temporary outage that these "yesmen" interrupted as a deliberate take down? If Serverloft did take the sites down, why were 4500 other sites affected? Can they not shut down one or two sites without taking down every other site that shares the same IP? Why would a German ISP respond (briefly) to a request from "some guy" in a government job in another country, and then enable the
Re:Works for me (Score:2)
If the claim is legal and backed by the appropriate institutions then I would believe it happens.
Point is, in this case the claim was not legal. The claim was issued by a foreign government which has no jurisdiction in Germany.
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like shit to me.
Screenshot:
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/7672/serverloft.jpg [imageshack.us]
Worth about as much (Score:2)
Just goes to show you that our Bill of Rights is worth about as much as this [fotosearch.com].
(Yeah, we're not much different in that from anywhere else; just in what's censored.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure Canada has a Bill of Rights. Here in the U.S., it's worth as much as you want it to be.
Remember, the three boxes.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes we do:
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms [www.efc.ca]
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you do need to work on that bit in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which allows for prior restraint. (i.e. you have freedom of speech until a judge rules that you don't).
The issue here is that an ISP outside of Canada got a nastygram from the Government of Canada and folded like origami paper rather than saying "We're sorry. This is not Canada. Please feel free to seek legal remedy from a court in this jurisdiction and we will comply with that request immediately!"
Re: (Score:2)
Our charter of rights and freedoms works fine. S.1 however states that the government can override any part of it for a 'just' cause. Seriously they need to stop teaching kids in highschool criminal and civil law and teach them government policy instead.
Oh you might have noticed that the website(s) aren't censored either. You've just happily flown off the handle for a well known hack-group that does this stuff. OTOH the Federal Government can get them shut down for use of a domain name/site that looks close to an official government one. That type of stuff isn't looked highly on by anyone, not even the courts here.
Invoking John Gilmore (Score:2)
Re: (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: (Score:2)
Canada was one of the most free
Only as long as you don't upset the Rotary Club or other similar criminally corrupt organizations.
Re:Invoking John Gilmore (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And that’s why a “global government” is going to fuck us, hard.
Where will you go, if there is only one country? Or a group, and they are all just as bad.
To an island with a satellite dish? Just wait until they cut off the connection, the supplies, and come with a ship full of snipers, if needed.
Re: (Score:2)
The solution is obvious: Move your servers to a more free-speech friendly country.
That's what they did. Serverloft is a German company. But apparently, Germany is not free-speech friendly enough... so now the sites are hosted in Denmark! Hehe...
Hmmm, but why doesn't the Canadian government simply lean on the .ca registry, that would be much easier...
Re: (Score:2)
When the US and Canada start to see that taking down sites at the drop of a hat is very harmful to their hosting businesses, then maybe they will do something about it.
Invade said countries?
Uh, More Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, could the press release (from the Hoaxsters, no less) just be more of a Hoax?
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Re:Uh, More Hoax? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what I'm starting to think, and I'm finding it absolutely hilarious, given that this is exactly the sort of stunt "The Yes Men" stage all the time. This particular stunt would be peanuts compared to some of their others.
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Question (Score:2)
Is it me or is the Global Elite just getting lazy?
At least for the last 120 years they put some effort into hiding the fact that we are in fact all powerless pesants under the heel of an elite in which the law only serves said elite. At least we had the illusion of "equality, the rule of law, and freedom."
I for one an dissapointed in my ruling shadow government and would like to formally request that a new shadow government that plans to treat me like a pesant, rise up, over throw the existing elite, and establish a new global elite that will at least TRY and hide the fact there is a global elite that owns us, does as they please, and mearly offer us the illusion that laws apply to everyone equally.
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Re: (Score:2)
You are hilarious. If I'm living a peasant life, I wonder what kind of life those in 3rd world countries live!
Fat, happy peasants of the world UNITE! You have nothing to lose except your consumer goods!
Re: (Score:2)
You know what's REALLY funny is that I recently watched a documentary comparing modern life to that of peasants in the middle ages, and when you strip away the comforts we have because of modern technology (plentiful high calorie foods, great medical care, comfortable cheap living materials, etc), the average peasant spent less time working for his lord than we do working for the government (i.e. taxes). Most all peasants had their own plot of land to work and a house that was their own, and they were generally more free to do whatever they wanted compared to us today. They didn't have the comforts we have, but that is simply a technological difference.
We have far more distractions which help us ignore the fact that we are far more oppressed than those who lived in the fiefdoms of the past. That's sad, especially since we consider the average peasant of old to be a quite oppressed individual.
Re: (Score:2)
We poor modern peasants work a LOT more than our peasant forefathers did, thanks to our ginormously longer life expectancy. How grossly unjust!
The life of a middle age serf was nasty, brutish and short. My peasant life is fairly pleasant, protected from brutes by the cops and the army, and long-lived.
Oh, how I yearn from the idyllic peasant life of yore! When a peasant knew his place and stayed exactly the fuck there!
Offshore your hosting and registration (Score:2, Informative)
This happens all the time in the U.S. The government even shut down a Spanish travel agency that arranged tours to Cuba -- they were foolish enough to register their domain name here. http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/2008/03/dont-register-or-host-your-domain-in-us.html [blogspot.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Think hoax till proved otherwise. (Score:5, Informative)
I would be looking at this with tongue firmly in cheek.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_yes_men [wikipedia.org]
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I would be looking at this with tongue firmly in cheek.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068680/ [imdb.com]
(yeah, that was the best I could come up with...)
Not to cross the streams here... (Score:2)
With commercial space flight you collect money to put a pre-built server into orbit and serve pages from there.
Now granted the bandwidth wouldn't be fast but for things like free speech related documents you really don't need speed just stable retention. You could still store video up there as well it would just be slow to get on and off the server obviously.
As long as the system had power and a good antenna the data could be available f
Re: (Score:2)
What do we do when bandwidth is not enough? We outsource the data and post only magnet links. I could easily imagine a server in space continuously broadcasting nothing more than pages and pages full of magnet links.
Re:Not to cross the streams here... (Score:2)
And then the gov't calls you and says "It sure would be a shame if that nice shiny new satillite of yours were to 'accidentally' get hit by some flying space debris."
While I can't argue against that I think it's not really all that likely in the short term. Especially since there's no easy way to forcibly de-orbit a satellite without either shooting it with something or bumping something into it.
And you'd really have to piss someone in the government off for them to waste an existing million dollar satellite to get rid of yours.
Though if we're discussing this in the framework of an existing cheap commercial space flight scenario you could easily put more than one up there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be easier just to put the server deep underground? A satellite in orbit would be trivial for a government to take down.
And underground is always owned by some government when it comes down to it. By current policy space is owned by nobody.
Question about jackbooted thugs (Score:2, Funny)
The real problem with ths site (Score:2)
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?
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Or maybe they would just make the whole thing up, since their bread and butter is fooling dumbasses who don't check their facts?
I'm pretty sure the OP, the editor, and 90% of the commentors on this post have been duped. No doubt The Yes Men find it absolutely hilarious.
Incidentally, so do I. :)
Re: (Score:2)
in soviet russia web site Censors you!
URL or it didn't happen!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Do you mean in Soviet Canada?
Nah, it fascist Harper's government. You guys had to put up with Bush for 10 years, while we get this Harper guy. The sad thing is the alternatives aren't much better.
Re: (Score:2)
It was Bush for 8 years, and his replacement happens to have a virtually identical domestic policy, which means we are essentially screwed.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
It was Bush for 8 years, and his replacement happens to have a virtually identical domestic policy, which means we are essentially screwed.
Hey, now! Bush wanted to take our clumsy, wasteful pyramid scheme of a social security system and make it slightly worse, while Obama wants to take our clumsy, wasteful hellhole of a health care system and make it significantly worse. We may still be getting screwed, but it really is going in a different orifice.
Now, when it comes to foreign policy, it's all the same - spend absurd amounts of money bombing people until they learn to love us.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What's up, eh? (Score:2)
That's one thing I wish people would wake up about - just because something is "organic" doesn't mean it is good for you! There are a hell of a lot of deadly, toxic, nasty things out there that are organic.
It drives me nuts, all this "organic" nonsense these days.
Re:What's up, eh? (Score:2)
I heard it was pretty good, but then it turns out they must be dumping oil in the rivers and feeding toxic waste to seals.
It's good in the national mythology. Beautiful soaring mountains, pristine lakes. Verdant forests. I saw it on the CBC, so it must be true! (All those things do exist. I've been to them. They're really cool).
The reality is that British Columbia is a giant clearcut once you go more than 100 km from Vancouver, and the prairie is being torn up as fast as possible in Alberta to get to the black gold that lies beneath.
Re: (Score:2)
The government never should have issued the letter in the first place.
Wussy provider or not, issuing a bogus takedown notice is a dick move by itself.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
That isn't what I'm disputing.
Subject: Canadian censorship takes down 4500 sites
Actually, no, it wasn't Canadian censorship. Its a misleading and hyped up title that does little in way of giving credibility to the topic.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I am not Canadian but I believe the name of the party is The Conservative Party. The word "conservative" lost its meaning a long time ago, particularly in the USA. How else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as "conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and power of government?
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
As a Canadian I can confirm that they are in fact called "The Conservative Party of Canada" or more colloquially "The assholes who somehow managed to win an election and try to claim divine mandate with less then 25% of voting Canadian behind them."
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Re: (Score:2)
As a Canadian I can confirm that they are in fact called "The Conservative Party of Canada" or more colloquially "the fuckers."
FTFY. (I am also Canadian.) They got in riding the anti-gay-marriage ticket. The next two elections were done when the other parties were hurting, hoping that they'd win a majority. (Turnabout is fair play -- Cretin did this years ago.) No issues have been brought forward in any way that makes the citizens of this country go out and vote.
It pisses me off when they (and I mean any party) call us "voters", "constituents", or "taxpayers". We aren't any of those things. We're citizens, and they exist at our whim.
The problem we have is that not one party up here is worth voting for. Our choices are:
1. Sweatervest,
2. Clueless,
3. Dr. Moustachio,
4. La Wall Briq, and
5. Outcast.
None of these people deserve to run the country, and none of them have done a thing to impress the Canadian public.
Cut the head off. (Score:2)
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: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
5 minutes with a spreadsheet and any system can be gamed.
57% of the Canadian population lies within a 75000 km^2 urban area between Windsor and Quebec City, throw a bone to BC and 99.25% of the area of Canada have no voice. Arguably a good thing, but fairness and equity aren't its strengths.
The only meaningful electoral reform would be 90+% voter turnout; but in a world of milquetoast politicians afraid of being beaten by their masters, it isn't likely.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
How else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as "conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and power of government?
That's an easy one. The core philosophy in conservatism is maintaining the existing power structures in society. The size of government is immaterial, and will be increased when necessary and decreased when unnecessary to the achievement of this aim. The existing power structure in the USA is based around the military industrial complex, which dictates big, big, big government (but which spends very little on actual social programs). The power structure in Canada is based around the resource economy, which dictates government small enough that the energy, mining, and forestry companies can override popular opposition. That pretty much explains everything you need to know about the differences between American and Canadian conservatives.
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Re: (Score:2)
They forgot that part. Perhaps that happens in Canada only. In the USA, I have never once witnessed a significant decrease of the size and power of the federal government during my entire lifetime. Ever. I have seen this on the state and local levels, but never on the federal level.
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Re: (Score:2)
In the USA, I have never once witnessed a significant decrease of the size and power of the federal government during my entire lifetime. Ever.
That's because the military-industrial complex has also been increasing in size. Did you not read/comprehend the post that you replied to?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Succinct, cogent and accurate. Are you sure you're on the right site?
Re: (Score:2)
The word "conservative" lost its meaning a long time ago, particularly in the USA. How else do you explain the politicians who self-identify as "conservative" who are so eager to expand the size and power of government?
Well, we still have the word "libertarian" so we can tell who actually wants to make government smaller, although even that one has to be taken with a bit of skepticism sometimes.
-=Steve=-
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Which word? Their legal name is the Conservative Party of Canada [conservative.ca] (or Parti conservateur du Canada).
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just the obvious question since I live in Canada and have been involved in politics for 15 years, but..where were you when the Liberal party was in power and were actively censoring everyone and everything that could get them removed from office and interfering in official investigations at the federal level. Including shutting down agencies that do that investigation.
You really sound like another party hack that's upset that the liberal didn't get a 20yr majority. Too bad they were fucking the entire country over and using it for their own personal play thing.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
I thought Canada was a bastion of civil liberties.
Haha. Coffee-splutter! You owe me a new keyboard.
In Canada you can get imprisoned for 3 months without seeing a judge, attorney, your embassy, or even a doctor, and without access to a telephone, simply for criticizing how the Rotary Club runs a Shelterhouse. After these 3 months, when your visa (luckily) runs out, you're shipped back to your home country sans luggage.
Now, good luck on getting any redress or compensation. Or even getting your luggage back.
No, Canada is not the fairy-tale land of civil liberties that everybody believes.
If you're a hippy (especially if you're a hippy...) don't set foot in Canada under any circumstances, if you value your backpack and its contents :-)
Or if you absolutely must, don't offer up any environmental advice that
might upset powerful locals. And make sure your visa is not one day
longer than needed.
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't just Bush and Harper. It is most government officials. Just because you agree with the current (or do you?) administration (or opposition) doesn't mean they are any better. In fact, I would suggest that as stupid as you think Bush is, many people think the same thing of Reid, Pelosi and Obama.
They are all bozos. I actually think it is a requirement for the job, and reflection of the population.
Why don't you blame the people who are REALLY (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't you blame the people who are REALLY responsible? The voters.
As long as people vote for the guy who tells them they can keep their 2 suvs and that he will lower their taxes (never actually happened anywhere) you will get these kind of guys.
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't you blame the people who are REALLY responsible? The voters.
You need to extend the blame a bit further, to citizens in general. The sad fact is "the voters" is just a small subset of the citizenry, and the apathy of those who don't vote is more to blame than the misguided ideals of those who do.
I remember the one time Bush actually attempted to reduce the automatic increase in the national budget one year (he did not, in fact, attempt to spend any less money, just not increase spending by as much as usual) and he was crucified for it on almost all sides. Ever since then he was spend spend spend. He'd cut taxes, sure, that would make him popular, but he realized cutting spending would be political suicide. It is very sad indeed, given the fantastic promises our current president makes along those same lines, and the fact that once an imperfect bill goes into law it is almost never fixed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like a little more confirmation before I believe the Canadian Government issued a take down notice. At best, its an employee of the Government. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere that an elected official had any part in this.
Also, the ISP is in Germany. If an employee from some department in some other company sent me a take down notice, I doubt I'd jump. If this is being reported accurately (and I have some doubts), I'd have more questions for the ISP than I would for the Canadian Government. For
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Yes Men's entire raisin d'etre is publicity. It would make sense for them to specifically choose ISPs that are willing to roll over easily.
It would make even more sense for them to just release a hoax announcement claiming that the ISP shut down their parody websites, even though the websites are actually still [enviro-canada.ca] online [ec-gc.ca].
In related news... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Rocket Propelled Grenades aren't too effective vs people... make alot of mess
Now a good sized boxset of DnD or WoW collectors edition carefully aimed will take the shoplifter out without too much collateral damage so assume you mean the later use of RPG ;)
And this is why you select your host properly (Score:2)
Yet another reason I can tell my clients to use us for hosting. Being their developers, we only host our own projects.
Re:HOAX (likely) (Score:2)
If it were a stunt, I doubt they would identify as The Yes Men while pulling it.
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Defamation of Character? (Score:2)
My first thought on reading the summary was that Serverloft was a bunch of tools. As I read more and realized the press release was probably a hoax, it made me think. I know the US and Canada have different laws, and IANAL, but if this were the US, I would tend to think Serverloft would have a decent case of libel against them. They can claim "parody" all they want, but if I had merely skimmed the surface, and not read deeper, Severloft woulda been stuck with a negative connotation for me all because these a holes want to screw around. How many of Serverloft's customers read that press release and immediately went and checked if their sites were up? How many are currently looking for a new provider right now? I am all for free speech. If I say "Company A sucks" then fine. Too bad for them. (In the US, of course, I'm sure some company's attorney would want to sue you over voicing that opinion.) But to say they killed 4500 customers in a knee jerk reaction when they didn't? That is not the same thing at all. That can have actual damages. And if I were Serverloft, I'd be consulting someone about it.