June 2, 2006

Joe Volpe strongarms the Internet and erodes freedom of speech in Canada Yesterday, a Joe Volpe parody site went up called YouthForVolpe.ca which lampooned the Liberal leadership candidate's drug money (ahem pharmaceutical donations) from children of Apotex execs. When Volpe gave back the money yesterday (CTV News called it "Volpe's volte-face"), the website went down. At the time, I thought that the designers had thought that it was irrelevant or that it had served its purpose, so they pulled it. It turns out that this is not the case. Joe Volpe had the Canadian Internet Registration Authority sever the link from YouthForVolpe.ca to the server which hosted the website. Today, in Jane Taber's piece in the Globe and Mail: Mr. Volpe's campaign had the site shut down without knowing, it seems, who put it up: "Hi Everyone," wrote Brenden Johnstone, who is with the Volpe campaign, in an e-mail to other leadership campaigns. "There has been concern about how the issue of the Volpe donations was reflecting on the leadership race. "My Office has had the website suspended through CIRA [Canadian Internet Registration Authority] and CDNS [Canadian Domain Name Services] and it will be down as soon as 6 p.m. I think the issue with the website has been dealt with. . . ."      [ stephentaylor.ca ]     Brenden Johnstone is very wrong, of course.  The internet will route around the censorship, and he will have made it even more popular.  YouthForVolpe.COM or NET will probably show up, and they are back in business.     You can see what the YouthForVolpe.ca looked like here! 2:27:34 PM