(Australia) Government orders spoof site shut

[Eugene]

(Sydney Morning Herald)

Government orders spoof site shut

By Louisa Hearn
March 17, 2006 - 11:02AM

A spoof John Howard website that featured a soul searching "apology" speech for the Iraq war
has been shut down under orders from the Australian Government.

Richard Neville, an Australian futurist and social commentator was "mystified" to discover his
satirical website johnhowardpm.org had been blocked on Tuesday with no explanation from either
his web hosting company, Yahoo or the domain name registrar, Melbourne IT.

He said that after two days of silence, a customer service representative from Melbourne IT
today informed him by telephone that the site had "been closed on the advice from the Australian
Government".

Mr Neville's satirical "apology" speech ran on a mocked-up version of a spoof website that resembled
Mr Howard's own, and after going live on Monday, received 10,500 visits within 24 hours.

<snip>

Full article: http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/government-shuts-howard-spoof-site/2006/03/17/1142098638843.html

A mirrored copy of the spoof speech can be found here. (pdf)
(credit Slashdot.org for the find)

[MadMaddie]

1. Freedom of Speech Democracies are spreading around the

world!!:sarcasm:

the * cabal will do this to sites like DU eventually!!

[AX10]

2. "Freedom's on the march!"

:eyes:

[Untermonkey]

3. Does this mean we're gonna invade Australia?

We must liberate them from their oppressive dictatorship that is crushing their freedoms!

[jilln]

4. I suspected Australia wasn't very free when they evicted Scott Parkin...

http://www.scottparkin.org/

at the request of the US government, for using his free speech.