Canadian Government Shuts Down Yet Another Yes Men Parody... Takes Down 4,500 Innocent Sites
from the collateral-prank-damage dept
Famous politico-pranksters The Yes Men have a long history of putting forth convincing parody websites that get those they parody to rush around to get the websites offline. Back in 2007, there was the fake ExxonMobil site that got pulled. Earlier this year it was the fake Chamber of Commerce site that the real Chamber issued a DMCA takedown over. The latest prank is based up in Canada, with the Yes Men setting up some parody sites of Canadian government organizations, promising massive greenhouse emissions reductions. This greatly upset the Canadian government who ordered the websites' service provider to pull them down. However, as Michael Geist points out, in the rush to pull down the sites, the ISP also took down 4,500 other websites. Seems like quite a bit of unnecessary collateral damage. Of course, this is exactly what the Yes Men want. For every takedown, they get another burst of publicity.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Pranks are pranks... but...
They are getting all that they deserve for not having a little self control. They made the government look bad on the world stage, and now they are paying the price.
In China, they would be dead already.
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Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
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Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
Remember the tainted baby formula deal? At least 2 of those guys were executed, and many others given death sentences "suspended" that will likely end up as life in prison without parole - EVER.
So the Yes Men are lucky they pulled their crap off against a soft hearted government, rather than against one that is less lenient in dealing with such stupidity.
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Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
It is not freedom when any sort of non-violent political statement is suppressed with violence. If the moment anyone disagrees what they are expected to think they are executed, it is _tyranny_.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
This "political statement" was to speak in the Canadian's government's name, to issue press release(s) as the canadian government, and to operate a website with the intent to mislead the media and potentially to create political tensions inside Canada and on the world stage.
They can't content themselves with a protest.
As for China, go spend some time there before you comment, your opinions would be very different. Heck, come join me next month, we can eat noodles for breakfast and go get the best foot massages on the planet.
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Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
At the same time, as long as they are prepared to accept any legal consequences for their actions should they get caught, I can't say I'm strongly opposed to their methods... protest is a basic part of democracy, and what they do is really just a creative form of protest.
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Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
Indeed. I'm not sure they have a real parody defense on these things.
My issue is with the taking down of 4,500 other sites.
Also, the takedown of even the Yes Men sites just gives the campaign another round of desired publicity.
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Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
Oh yeah, Mike, Techdirt is broken. It appears that unregistered users can use the name of a registered user, thus creating confusion. You might want to ask your offshore programmers to have a look at it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
As for your account whining, that's what registration solves. The only confused one is, as usual, you.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
I registed (hence the profile thing next to my name) and someone else is still posting with the same name. That is an issue.
As for the story, the ISP dropped their IP block entirely. That means that there is no route for any of their stuff. End issue. The ISP did what they needed to do to make sure the two sites were not up on their service, and didn't want to play whack a mole about it. Drop the entire block, end of problem.
The Yes Men can take their IP block somewhere else, and provided someone else wants to provide them routing (doubtful at this point), they will be back up.
Perhaps you might want to try reading the stories and the comments?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
And please, explain why 4498 sites that had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE YES MEN should be taken down.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
Please read my answer above. The ISP didn't take down 4500 sites. The dropped a block of IPs, those sites happened to be on them. Not their problem.
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Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
I also understand the annoyance The Anti-Mike feels at having their profile name copied by others, which must certainly count as a form of copyright infringement. He went to all the trouble of registering it first and so it belongs to him. It must be highly irritating when people steal the oh so witty name he likely worked very hard to come up with. To make matters worse, the average poster here clearly isn't intelligent enough to tell the difference between a comment made by the real Anti-Mike (who has a "profile" link next to the name) and some anonymous coward pretending to be Anti-Mike (who doesn't).
/s
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Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
You need to understand a little about how the internet works, and you are good to go.
The ISP stopped providing routing for certain IP blocks used by the Yes Men. They didn't delete sites, they didn't melt their servers, they didn't destroy anything. They chose to stop providing service to them. Most hosts, when facing a troublesome client that could bring the host grief will usually choose not to provided services to those sites anymore.
Sites like godhatesfags.com spent years going from host to host, as most hosts don't want to take the heat that comes from hosting controversial material. The hosts aren't usually concerned about the content, as much as they are concerned about the amount of time and effort to provide connectivity to this sort of thing. If they have to spend them answering the phone or dealing with legal actions, what ever they are getting paid isn't worth it.
But you knew that already, right?
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Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
If they are doing something illegal (which might be impersonating a government official), why not block them at their webhost. Because it isn't like a webhost doesn't know what websites it's hosting. And with a court order it would be easy for them to take an entire website offline, or delete it completely.
Instead, they chose to stop providing routing for a block of IP addresses that contains 4500 websites that have no connection to the Yes Men. I'm guessing they had to field calls from pissed off website owners about how their website was blocked for no reason.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
They stopped offering service to the yes men. if the yes men resold their services to others, that becomes their problem, not the ISPs problem. If you got caught up in the mess, don't be mad at the upstream ISP, be mad at the yes men for causing such a problem.
It isn't anyone else fault.
I don't suspect this ISP fielded many calls at all, as these were not their 4500 individual customers.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
And I hope you realise how pertinent your problem is to this particular article: someone is obviously parodying you by impersonating you. If you had your way, then we should just shoot that person dead.
But in these parts of the world, life thankfully isn't that cheap. How about Mike prevents ALL users from using the Anti-Mike name? That includes you -- which is acceptable given what you were saying above, right?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
Knock yourself out.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pranks are pranks... but...
So you have an issue with Morons in a Hurry?
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And the thousands of other unrelated sites ?
Are they getting what they deserve?
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no i am sparticus
no really
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