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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- After an embarrassing showing at the Copenhagen climate conference in which it was presented the "Colossal Fossil" award (www.fossil-of-the-day.org), Canada used strong-armed tactics to shut down two parody websites criticizing its environmental policy -- and taking down 4,500 other websites in the process.
A group of activists from from ActionAid (www.actionaid.org) and The Yes Men (www.theyesmen.org) distributed press releases in December 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 -- a stark contrast to its 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."
Environment Canada's Mike Landreville said in an email obtained by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the two websites, "enviro-canada.ca" and "ec-gc.ca", which are deliberately similar to the sites "environment-canada.ca" and "ec-gc.ca", mislead the public into thinking the government will be taking different environmental goals than those officially sanctioned.
In an email to the German Internet Service Provider Serverloft (www.serverloft.com), Landreville requested that it "make every effort to prevent any further attempts concerning other environment-related domains (enviro, ec-gc, etc.) originating from [their] servers." In response, without a warrant nor 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."
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