I know that this is a music blog and that you don't come here to update yourself on my political opinions, but please bear with me here. Since early on Friday morning, it has been impossible to reach the WikiLeaks website by typing wikileaks.org into a web browser because everyDNS, which would redirect queries for the string "wikileaks.org" to that machine address, removed its support for Wikileaks, claiming that it had broken its terms of service by being the target of a huge hacker attack. Without a DNS record, it is only possible to reach WikiLeaks by typing in the string of numbers which, for most web users, is too unmemorable to make it feasible. This type of censorship seemingly carried out at the behest of Democratic governments is a frightening attack on the freedom of information and by extension the freedoms of each and every one of us. As a small response to this, as of today it will be possible to reach the Wikileaks website via a link at the top of this blog page. We will endeavour to keep this 'live' in the event of any further changes. We also strongly exhort any fellow blogger/website administrator to follow our example.
We have done this as a simple gesture of support for WikiLeaks and to signal our opposition to arbitrary censorship of the web by governments and corporations. The free distribution of data, and resistance to top-down evaluation of the merit of that data, is what the web excels at. It is more important now than ever before that individuals are allowed to publish and consume information as they see fit, within the bounds of the law. The world wide web, must be allowed to operate neutrally and independently of governments and corporations, including domain name registrars, ISPs, data carriers and other and infrastructure providers. Everyone who uses the web benefits from such independence, and should promote and support it wherever possible.
Griff
Gordon adds:
As Crass fans it would be downright disrespectful to their legacy if we didn't take some kind of stand against this Orwellian nonsense.
I fully support Griff's decision to make access to Wikileaks available from our site, and it may be worth pointing out that Wikileaks own Facebook page is still active(for the moment anyway) so you can always check it out there.
As Crass would say: "QUESTION EVERYTHING....FREE YOURSELF....BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!!"
Say NO to Digital McCarthyism!!
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