Stephen sez, “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.”
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. . . .”
(Thanks, Stephen and everyone else who suggested this link!)
Update:
David sez, “An entry on David Akin’s blog indicates that CIRA did no such thing. CIRA actually has a press release regarding the issue:
Bernard Turcotte, CIRA’s President and CEO states “We have no record of any contact between CIRA and Mr. Volpe or his staff. Furthermore, CIRA does not deal with website content. This is and continues to be a guiding principle underlying our operations.”
Update 2: Pete sez, “Policy Watch made a pdf of the Youth for Volpe website before it went down.”
Update 3:Gavin sez, “Michael Geist is a CIRA board member and has reaffirmed that CIRA did
not suspend the domain at the behest of Volpe. So it seems that if the domain was censored, it was done so by the
registrar, not CIRA.”
“The takedown occurred at the request of the registrar because
the registrant failed to meet Canadian Presence Requirements”