A site setup to mock the pro-internet censorship Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has been shut down within hours of its registration.
It didn't take long for the conspiracy theorists to descend, but flat-out denials quickly dissipated the idea that government interference had blocked a recent attempt to register the domain name stephenconroy.com.au by newly registered company Sapia Pty Ltd.
The registered domain name was flagged by peak body auDA (Australian Domain Name Administrator), which allegedly gave Sapia three hours to explain why it needed the domain name; Sapia's response was deemed inadequate and the domain remains unregistered.
Through an alternative site, www.stephen-conroy.com, however, Sapia wasted no time lashing out at auDA. The firm's page – emblazoned with links to information on the ban, underneath the caption 'Stephen Conroy: Minister for Fascism' – alleges political motivations in blocking the registration, which was lodged to give Sapia a platform for attacking Conroy's plans to force ISPs to filter all Australian Internet access and block refused-classification materials.
Deflecting criticism, auDA said all domain name applicants had a burden to prove they had rights to any registered domain – a throwback to the early days of the .com.au domain, which was initially only opened to registered companies with names or trademarks similar to those they wanted to register.
Eligibility could normally be established through a simple auDA investigation, CEO Chris Disspain told ZDNet, but requests for supporting information are not uncommon – even though Disspain conceded that the organisation would normally only act against the name of a famous person if that person complained.
auDA has said Sapia has 14 days to prove its rights to the domain name, but has kept the domain inactive until such evidence can be provided. In response to that claim, Sapia noted that the auDA office will be closed from today through January 11, and that the 'pending delete' status on the domain would expire while the office was closed.
"How do you expect to run an investigation in to our eligibility while your office is closed?" Sapia wrote in its open letter to Disspain.
Ironically, the stoush with auDA has raised Sapia's profile, with a page of media coverage noting headlines from news sources around the world. "Oz anti-censorship site is censored", The Register wrote, while Tech Dirt's story alleges that auDA "circumvented standard process" to shut down the site.
Cyber-advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Australia jumped onto the story, with spokesperson Geordie Guy writing that the organisation was "surprised at the level of energy with which auDA has pursued this particular matter... At a time when criticism of the Minister around the government's proposed mandatory filtering scheme is so prolific, it's easy for Australians to be cynical about such assertive action from the domain authority."
Criticism of political figures has a long and colourful past in Australia's Internet history, with a number of fake Twitter accounts actively used for satirical purposes and broadly discussed satire such as the fake johnhowardpm.org site set up – and allegedly censored by Yahoo! – in the leadup to the 2007 election.
Stephen Conroy was, indirectly, the subject of his own scandal earlier this year when Telstra employee Leslie Nassar was found to have been the author of a satirical Twitter feed, @stephenconroy, for months. Nassar's postings drew a large audience online until his employer clamped down on him, unleashing a series of events that culminated in Nassar's departure from the telecommunications giant.