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Stephen Conroy is Australia's Communications Minister and, in that role, has been instrumental in pushing for ISP-level traffic filters that will block access to illegal content by his nation's citizens. Conroy has pushed for that plan despite resistance from ISPs, problems during testing, and worrisome vagueness about the limits on what will be filtered. Not surprisingly, his actions have inspired a bit of push-back, from a "Fake Steve Conroy" Twitter feed to the parody site stephen-conroy.com. Over the holiday break, that latter site saw Australian domain registrars pull its Australian version's DNS entry stephenconroy.com.au, essentially silencing the protest. But the site is back, and appears to be here to stay, thanks to some quick thinking by its backers.The site is not likely to be popular with its target, as the header image shows what appears to be a hybrid Conroy-Colbert, and refers to him as the "Minister for Fascism." The first entry on the site is a YouTube video showing a Downfall parody that describes recent events. Those events started when the site's backers found out that Conroy had neglected to register domains based on his own name, allowing them to sweep in and grab them in order to host their protests against his filtering plans.Unfortunately, according to information posted on the site, the Australian domain administrator, .auDA, determined that this name was ineligible for registration by the parties involved, since they had no business relationship with anyone or thing by that name. (auDA claims it did this without any ministerial pressure.) Despite attempts to get the group to reverse its decision, the registration was terminated.However, the team behind the site was well prepared by the time this happened. They've apparently registered stephenconroy as a business in Victoria, and simply waited for stephen-conroy.com to reappear in the pool of available domains; once it did, they grabbed it again.auDA was quick to start the termination proceedings a second time, but, given the evidence of a proper business relationship with the relevant name, has terminated the termination. stephenconroy.com.au appears to be here to stay.
