Stephen Conroy: Minister For Fascism 

What happened? On Fri 18-12-2009 ~ 14:00AEDT auDA issued a notice giving us 3 hours to provide evidence of our eligibility to hold stephenconroy.com.au and related domain names. We asked for reasonable time to prepare and make representations on our eligibility but auDA refused to grant this, insisting we reply within the 3 hour window.

We immediately made several further attempts at convincing them to give us reasonable time to obtain representation and reply which were ultimately ignored. The domain was placed in 'pending-delete' shortly after the 17:00AEDT deadline, taking the site offline. In the short intervening period we were able to move to stephen-conroy.com, where the site now remains.

What did we do? During the course of the weekend 19/20-12-2009 we obtained advice from several sources and had discussions with the extremely helpful guys at EFA, who agreed to provide their support. They also confirmed having received numerous other complaints from members of the public regarding auDA's action.

Shortly after the takedown we issued THIS press release to spread the word about what had happened. We immediately began a public campaign lobbying auDA for the return of our domain space. During the course of this we exchanged several public emails which can be seen HERE. We received widespread public support and coverage in the international tech media, for which we are extremely grateful.

Where are we at? One of the many things we did during our campaign was registering 'stephenconroy' as a business name. This would nullify any claims auDA had regarding not having a 'close and substantial' connection to the name. However, it was decided not to raise this as it had become obvious that auDA were unwilling to listen to any argument following the initial 3 hour response period we were granted. Given this it was very unlikely they would accept a 'change of eligibilit'y argument.

Following a prolonged and public appeal during which auDA publicly contradicted themselves regarding our eligibility they ultimately ignored all representations on our behalf. When the 14 day 'pending-delete' period expired on 04-01-2010 the domain registrations were deleted, and the domains were placed back in the public pool.

Once the domains returned to the public pool we were able to re-register them, this time using our registered business name to display a direct relationship to the name. Less than 18 hours after the new registrations took place we received an email from auDA requesting that we provide further eligibility information, again demanding a reply within 3 hours. It seems they didn't learn a great deal from the outrage sparked by their initial action.

We didn't immediately reply to this email and approximately 1 hour later received another, stating that they had noted our direct business name relation, and that the domains would be allowed to remain registered to us. Ultimately we recovered the stephenconroy.com.au domain, but will largely remain at stephen-conroy.com. There is, however a redirection in place from the .com.au domain for people who are unaware of the move.

06-01-2010: ARS Technica Aussie net filter satire site back after domain deletion

05-01-2010: iTWire auDA admits defeat - stephenconroy.com.au will stand

05-01-2010: Slashdot Australian Net Filter Protest Site Returns

05-01-2010: mUmBRELLA Anti-Stephen Conroy website back online

05-01-2010: IT News Stephenconroy.com.au resurfaces

05-01-2010: Domain Name Wire Australian Gripe Site Back Up After Domain Name Deleted

04-01-2010: iTWire Stephenconroy.com.au is back for good

22-12-2009: ABC Conroy parody site shut down suddenly

22-12-2009: iTWire StephenConroy.com.au vs auDA – the stoush continues

22-12-2009: EFA Electronic Frontiers Australia Surprised at auDA Decision to Remove StephenConroy.com.au

21-12-2009: LifeHacker Censorship: Don’t Stop Worrying Because Of Christmas

21-12-2009: Tech Dirt Australian Domain Authority Circumvents Standard Process To Shut Down Site Critical Of Australian Internet Filters

21-12-2009: Ecommerce Journal auDA blames Sapia Pty for its own censorship procedure abandoning

21-12-2009: DSL Reports Australian Filter Protest Site Yanked Offline

21-12-2009: PRWeb auDA Take Down Anti-Internet Filtering Website in Record Time

21-12-2009: P2PNet Conroy initiates first Australian censorship act

21-12-2009: The Register Oz anti-censorship site is censored

21-12-2009: The Inquirer Aussie government shows its censorship teeth

21-12-2009: Slashdot AU Authority Moves To Censor Net Filtering Protest Site

21-12-2009: ZDNet auDA: No govt request to kill Conroy site

21-12-2009: iTWire StephenConroy.com.au open letter to auDA

21-12-2009: Crikey! The swift takedown of stephenconroy.com.au

20-12-2009: Deography Australia - Your Internet is Already Being Filtered

19-12-2009: iTWire Fake Stephen Conroy web site comes and goes in just two days

19-12-2009: HFUA Stephen Conroy - Kicking critisism offline so you dont have to PROFANITY WARNING!

18-12-2009: Stop Internet Censorship auDA take down stephenconroy.com.au

18-12-2009: SMH Spoof Conroy website protests at internet filter plan