UPDATE: The website is back online after technical issues were resolved.
Getting lots of notices from people via email, so figured I’d post this.
Here’s what I know:
1. Jo recently moved the entire website to a new provider to save costs.
2. There have been some technical issues with the performance of her site on the new ISP.
3. Yesterday, direct links to postings stopped working, but the main page at
http://joannenova.com.au worked OK
4. The last email I had from her last night said she was looking into the problem.
5. Since her direct email is also part of the suspended account, I don’t know yet if I can communicate with her. Emails don’t appear to be bouncing. Whether she can access email or not is another question.
6. As of this writing is about midnight in Perth, so she may not even be aware of the outage.
7. joannenova.com.au Is Hosted by SoftLayer, Inc.
- Hosting: SoftLayer, Inc. host the domain joannenova.com.au
- IP Address: 75.126.209.56
- Name Servers: ns1.easybudgetwebsites.com.au, ns2.easybudgetwebsites.com.au
Read more about hosting at www.whoishostingthis.com
I suspect technical issues over censorship, so I advise everyone not to jump to conclusions.
UPDATE: I’ve sent a query to the legal department of SoftLayer, Inc. to see if there was a legal issue of any kind. – Anthony
I’ve now heard from them:
The problem is not here with our hosting services. If it was, the website would not resolve to anything other than perhaps a “parking” page. We do not have any feature on our system that would cause the words “account suspended” to be displayed.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Brenk Johnson
UPDATE2: I’ve heard from Jo Nova via email, it is a technical issue, not a legal takedown. It seems to be related to some cache issue with logfiles that went out of control requiring the shutdown of the specific hosting server.
Oops, all those rt; should be gt;. Oh well, readable enough. I can’t tell my left from my less – lt; is for less than, not left angle bracket.
Is there a mirror?- no doubt you can get old jonova on the wayback machine but that take ages.
I got an email from Jo last night. She was pretty unhappy “MattB I’ve realised you are right and I’ve been hoodwinked by what turn out to be raving lunatic denialists. My new website “IheartIPCC” should be up on Wednesday. xx Jo”
Or…. maybe not.
“Freedom of speech
Australians are free, within the bounds of the law, to say or write what we think privately or publicly, about the government, or about any topic. We do not censor the media and may criticise the government without fear of arrest. Free speech comes from facts, not rumours, and the intention must be constructive, not to do harm. There are laws to protect a person’s good name and integrity against false information. There are laws against saying or writing things to incite hatred against others because of their culture, ethnicity or background. Freedom of speech is not an excuse to harm others. ”
http://www.immi.gov.au/living-in-australia/choose-australia/about-australia/five-freedoms.htm
We don’t have explicit freedom of speech here in Australia. So long as what we are writing can be proven in a court we are pretty well protected from censorship by anyone.
No need to start making tin foil hats. Just another server issue that isn’t that uncommon here in Australia.
On TV detector vans:
The original TV detector vans worked, and worked well.
They didn’t work by detecting local oscillator emissions as many people seem to believe, but the MUCH stronger line deflection circuitry emissions (several 10’s of watts as opposed to milli-watts) for the L.O..
The big antenna was a tuned circuit, at 10.125kHz for 405 line TV sets, and later at 15.625Khz for 625 line TV sets.
At this time, there were two TV channels, BBC and ITV. By comparing the phase of the received emission to local off-air line frequency sync pulses, it was possible to tell which channel people were watching.
These days, with small LCD displays there is no horizontal deflection circuitry and very low-power emissions are not reliably received beyond a few feet. So although the TV detector vans from the days of CRT TVs were quite capable of working from the street, modern ones almost certainly do not work
It seems to be back up now.
Nothing personal but all the hyperventilation about the Australian government possibly taking down Jo Nova’s website makes this entry look a bit crazy. This is a nation under the rule of law and, while every nation has done things that are cause for shame, Australia would not dare to do anything to inhibit free speech … without an Act of Parliament giving the government the right. It’s that simple.
UPDATE2: I’ve heard from Jo Nova via email, it is a technical issue, not a legal takedown. It seems to be related to some cache issue with logfiles that went out of control requiring the shutdown of the specific hosting server.
So it would appear that Brend Johnson did not know what he was talking about when he informed Anthony:
” We do not have any feature on our system that would cause the words “account suspended” to be displayed.”
The only other possibility would be that Jo had installed a cgi script that was displaying that page. Most ISPs do have automatic resource monitoring in place, especially on mutual hosting services specifically for situations like this to prevent one badly configured site from taking out all the co-hosted sites on the same server.
Brent should think a little bit harder before replying but this is par for the course in my experience. It takes at least three enquiries to get someone on the other end who actually knows how a computer works.
Sonny says:
June 18, 2012 at 5:40 pm
@graphite “nitwits on both sides”.
The Finklestein report make ALP’s intention to censor media explicit based on any content deemed to be not “fair or balanced” and picks out climate as an issue.
In light of this blatant attempt at restricting free speech I think it would be a nitwit who wouldn’t at least consider the possibility that the site had been blocked intentionally. We were simply postulating alternatives and the grim reality that such censorship could well supplement our governments arsenal of climate propaganda.
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Really? You really believe that the Australian Government would shut down a website it didn’t like? A climate change website?
Which branch, and on whose orders?
Fair dinkum. Take a Bex and lie down.
Thanks to the three gents who posted on HOW the detector vans worked, I knew they worked because I went out with them on several occasions and saw them working, but it was never explained just how…
Jo and I have put an explaination of the site issues: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/on-those-recent-site-troubles/
Sonny says:
June 18, 2012 at 5:40 pm
@graphite “nitwits on both sides”.
The Finklestein report make ALP’s intention to censor media explicit based on any content deemed to be not “fair or balanced” and picks out climate as an issue.
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Exactly. A report has been published which Parliament will presumably consider. A law or laws will be proposed and perhaps enacted. If a law is enacted, THEN and only then might we see some bureaucratic fascist take down a website.
That doesn’t mean the government isn’t predisposed to persecute certain groups (eg, Australian Communist Party v The Commonwealth (1951) 83 CLR 1 (the “Communist Party case”)), but in most cases there is a trail to follow which allows the courts to provide some oversight to ensure that the government decision maker is acting under some authority.
In all honesty, that is how it has worked in Australia and hasn’t much mattered who was in power at the time. All of the major parties have a reasonably healthy respect for the rule of law.
tango says onJune 18, 2012 at 4:41 pm:
PM Gillard is jeting around the world telling Gov’t world wide how to run there finance .little do they know she is destroying Australia with the carbon tax $23 a ton starting 7/1/2012
We in BC are paying $30 per ton of CO2 equivalent. The two lowest income tax brackets get carbon tax refund. Highest bracket (i.e., indiv. or families) with income > $100, 000 recieve no carbon tax refund.
All industry and commerce pay carbon taxes and get no refunds.
Conclusion: The carbon tax is wealth redistribution scheme. It will not cause a reduction in CO2 emissions since efficient use of energy in most industry and commerce has been maxed out due to oil embargoes of the early 70’s. This was the world wide wake up call on the importance of efficient use of energy.
The Koyto Protocol (1997) set emission reduction to 5% below the 1990 level. They Knew this was a technilogical impossibility. Now enter Don Al “Fat Al” Gore, Ken Lay et al with their schemes to get rich trading carbon credits.
They hired James “Jimmy the Enforcer” Hansen to put scientific muscle behind their schemes. Recall how Jimmy the Enforcer was payed off with $250,000 worth of Heinz beans!
James in Perth says:
Australia would not dare to do anything to inhibit free speech … without an Act of Parliament giving the government the right. It’s that simple.
And the EPA would not dare to do anything to inhibit Constitutional Rights, right?
When bureaucracy is involved, nothing is off the table.
account suspended sounds more technical then legal. They also need to recognize blogs like this one cant afford major downtime.
It’s working again …
TonyG says:
June 19, 2012 at 5:39 am
When bureaucracy is involved, nothing is off the table.
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Actually, in a stable democracy such as Australia, some things are off the table. The state interfering with freedom of speech is one.
In case you don’t know, the capital of Australia is Canberra, not Cairo. The Prime Minister is Julia Gillard, not Joseph Goebbels. In terms of being able to live your life the way you want to live it, do what you want to do, say what you want to say, Australia probably holds the #2 slot in the world.
Graphite says:
June 19, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Sometimes #2 isn’t good enough (neither is #1, wherever that is).
What’s your take on Thompson affair? In particular was it stupid of me to send money to thei legal fund? Was it stupid of their neighbors to support them? Why were they forced out of business but other AG businesses in town were not? Where do you live or what do you do that warrants hiding behind a pseudonym?
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/the-thompsons-fight-on-from-the-usa-a-business-ruined-by-green-tape-and-the-australian-carbon-tax/
In another case that I won’t hunt down and I forget the names anyway, in the wildfires a couple years ago, one farm in one region mostly survived. The owner was fined something like $100,000 for cutting down eucalyptus trees and other fire suppression practices, so it’s a bit unclear if he won anything.
I’m interested in what you thought about that too.
“In terms of being able to live your life the way you want to live it, do what you want to do, say what you want to say, Australia probably holds the #2 slot in the world.”
As long as you don’t piss off the wrong unaccountable bureaucrat. You’re missing the point, it seems. The GOVERNMENT supposedly can’t interfere, but the bureaucracy is not held accountable if IT does. Happens all the time in the US.
Ric Werme says:
June 20, 2012 at 5:26 am
. . . quite a bit, with questions (see above)
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I’m with Churchill when he says, from memory, that democracy is not a perfect form of government but is far ahead of anything else that’s been tried.
Given that imperfect world, cock-ups such as the Thompson case happen. I haven’t followed it too closely but my take is that they’ve been the victims of a mis-applied piece of legislation, some bureaucrat-with-a-mission pouncing on the Thompsons’ failure to cross every t and dot every i. I may be wrong, of course.
Where do I live? I live in Mangawhai, New Zealand. What do I do? I do bugger all. I don’t “hide” behind a pseudonym because of those two facts. Actually, I didn’t think I was hiding. I just thought I was using a pen name . . . a practice that’s been around since written languages began. If I tell you that my name is Gilbert Dymock, does that make you any wiser, any happier, any better informed? Quite frankly, reading your comments under the name of Ric Werme, rather than, say, Wormwood Scrubs, advantages me not a scrap.
Now, the bushfire thing. I lived in Victoria for seven years. It’s many haircuts ago now, but the drift to sylvan living was just beginning to take shape when I was there. The idea of cutting out just enough space among the eucalypts to put a house is plain daft. You might as well build in a minefield. As a generalisation, people who’ve spent their lives farming in the affected districts know how to act; ex-city people looking for a better life style don’t. If stupid laws put your life at risk, it’s better to ignore the stupid laws.
I think that’s covered everything.
TonyG says:
June 20, 2012 at 7:27 am
“In terms of being able to live your life the way you want to live it, do what you want to do, say what you want to say, Australia probably holds the #2 slot in the world.”
As long as you don’t piss off the wrong unaccountable bureaucrat. You’re missing the point, it seems. The GOVERNMENT supposedly can’t interfere, but the bureaucracy is not held accountable if IT does. Happens all the time in the US.
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I’m not missing the point at all. Bureaucrats may mis-apply legislation to further their own interests. But if the legislation doesn’t exist, and has no chance of existing, then the bureaucrats are stymied.
I am absolutely confident there is no legislation in Australia putting freedom of speech about climate change at risk. And what happens in the US is irrelevant in this case.
thats just a stock cpanel page, if you have to stop access to your own account to fix stuff that comes up.
moved 7 domains today, and made all 7 say that actualy.