(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Raising questions about its international reputation, Canada used strong-arm tactics last month to shut down two government-critical parody websites that posed as authentic Environment Canada sites, an action that inadvertently took down 4,500 unrelated sites in the process.
On the eve of a controversial showing at the Copenhagen climate conference in December, at which Canada’s climate change policy would be awarded the “Colossal Fossil” award (www.fossil-of-the-day.org) by the Climate Action Network International, a group of activists from ActionAid (www.actionaid.org) and The Yes Men (www.theyesmen.org) distributed press releases that appeared to be from the Canadian government, revealing a bold new initiative to curb emissions and spearhead a “Climate Debt Mechanism” for the developing world. Accompanying them were links to phony websites made to look like “environment-canada.ca” and “ec-gc.ca.”
“Enviro-canada.ca” and “ec-gc.ca” presented hypothetical policies meant to highlight Canada’s weak emissions reduction targets, and plans to keep its highly polluting oil and gas industry afloat at the expense of the environment. Government officials quickly denounced the releases as “childish pranks.”
In an email to the sites’ German Internet service provider, Serverloft (www.serverloft.com), Environment Canada’s Mike Landreville requested that the comapny “make every effort to prevent any further attempts concerning other environment-related domains (enviro, ec-gc, etc.) originating from [their] servers.” Without a warrant or a phone call, Serverloft turned off a whole block of IP addresses, knocking more than 4,500 unrelated sites offline, according to reports.
“We are sorry to see that the Canadian government will not ‘take certain actions’ that could help stave off catastrophic climate change,” said The Yes Men’s Mike Bonanno. “And we are also sorry to see that they don’t care so much for free speech.”
Some would argue that the activists, in an effort to draw attention to their cause, have gone too far by making forged documents and sites that have been convincing enough to fool many news reporters into believing they are legitimate. In either case, it was in the best interests of the government to seek to have these sites taken offline and it may have overstepped its bounds by asking another country’s ISP to take down the sites.
As some have pointed out, Canada should probably have gone through the Canadian Internet Registration Authority’s Dispute Resolution Policy (www.cira.ca/cdrp) and have the domain suspended. They, instead, sent Serverloft a weighty request via email.
Michael Carr, chief financial officer of Canadian web hosting provider Softcom (www.softcom.com), said in an email to The WHIR that Serverloft was put in a difficult position, and should have exercised more caution.
“As a web and application hosting provider we are sympathetic of the position faced by Serverloft, but very displeased with the outcome,” Carr said. “First, it is highly unusual for any hosting providers to acquiesce to the subjective demands of a non-binding request made by a foreign government, especially one that is democratic and has limited ability to take punitive action. Most hosting companies carefully and thoroughly evaluate all requests before taking action, particularly on matters such as Free Speech. Second, once it was decided to take corrective action, the hoster had a responsibility to limit that action to only the specific customers in question. Even if they were justified, they neglected to remedy the situation in a reasonable and responsible way. Trust and good faith are two very important factors customers rely on when choosing any hosting provider. I guess it was a bad day for Serverloft on both counts.”
The WHIR sent several requests for comment to Serverloft, but has yet to hear back. We’ll update the story with more information, should Serverloft provide a comment.
While it’s easy to criticize Serverloft’s actions after the fact, the value in discussing this case is determining what line a service provider should draw when determining when and where to take action.
I welcome this discussion in the comments section below.
