‘You flew here, we grew here’ : D’oh!

Yeah so the board game Cronulla 2230 — designed by an ‘anonymous’ supporter of the Australia First Party and its (largely now defunct) junior burger equivalent, the Patriotic Youth League — has been pulled (‘Cronulla game site gets zapped’, Asher Moses, The Age, October 17, 2006). This is not entirely unexpected, as the game’s host, Angelfire (Lycos), like most if not all other webhosting services, has ‘Terms of Service’, which — again, like most if not all other webhosting services — contains provisions regarding the company’s willingness to host material which is believed to contravene the law or which is believed to be ‘offensive’ [1].

Also not unexpectedly, ‘Cronulla 2230’ has popped up again: this time, on Martin Fletcher‘s blog, ‘Downunder Newslinks’.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that an Internet company has voluntarily withdrawn hosting services from racist and fascist groups and individuals. Redwatch Poland — a site maintained by members of Blood & Honour Poland and its allies in the Polish and international neo-Nazi milieu, and consisting of the names, addresses, photographs and other personal details of their political enemies — has twice had hosting services withdrawn from it; first by DreamHost, then by another, US-based, company. Currently, Redwatch UK (‘Redwatch’, Nick Lowles, Searchlight, November 2003) is the subject of legal enquiry by segments of the British Government, as well as a popular campaign by labour movement activists in the UK. Redwatch NZ, a project of a handful of neo-Nazis in New Zealand/Aotearoa — most prominently, Nic Miller — is hosted by Blogger; convicted race hate criminal — and former member of Jack van Tongeren‘s Australian Nationalists Movement — Ben Weerheym, also enjoys Blogger’s hosting of his blog, ‘A Voice of Dissent’, which also incorporates a ‘hit-list’ of political enemies (including yours truly).

As for the game itself, and media reportage of same:

Iemma moves to ban ‘riot game’ (ABC, October 17); ‘Cronulla game falls between legal cracks’ (The Age, October 17); ‘Cronulla riots ‘no game” (SBS, October 17); ‘Coonan to alert regulator over ‘Cronulla Monopoly” (ABC, October 17); ‘Govt examines a ban on Cronulla Monopoly’ (ninemsn.com, October 17); ‘Australian race-riot board game may be banned’ (Reuters, October 17); ‘Racist Australian game raises concerns’ (Aljazeera, October 17); ‘Canberra seeks to ban Cronulla riot game’ (The Australian, October 17); ‘Aust race riot game may be banned’ (TVNZ, October 17)…

More commentary later!

[1] Among a number of forms of Prohibited Conduct are included the following:

You agree that you will not use Lycos Network Products and Services to:

1. Upload, post, email, otherwise transmit, or post links to any Content, or select any member or user name or email address, that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, libelous, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, sexually, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.
2. Upload, post, email, otherwise transmit, or post links to any Content that promotes illegal activity, including without limitation the provision of instructions for illegal activity.
3. Upload, post, email, otherwise transmit, or post links to any Content that exploits the images of children under 18 years of age, or that discloses personally identifying information belonging to children under 18 years of age.

‘The law’ is typically the law under which the company itself is operating; in the case of Angelfire/Lycos, US law.