Fergie's Tech Blog

Reporters Without Borders Condemns 'Ali G' Censorship

Actually, this highlights a very important issue -- why ccTLDs are delegated to private organizations and not to government entities.

However, given the commotion that Cohen caused back near my home-town last January, it's not surprising.

Via Reporters sans Frontières.

Reporters Without Borders condemned censorship by the Kazakh government, which has removed the right to use the .kz suffix (equivalent to .uk) from two websites it finds troublesome, including that of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, or "Borat".

The worldwide press freedom organisation said it was concerned by the politicisation of the administration of domain names and has written to Franck Fowlie, ombudsman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN,) that registers domain names, asking him to intervene.

Borat.kz carries sketches by Sacha Baron Cohen, who portrays a sexist and racist Kazakh journalist on the US cable channel HBO. The Kazakh web business body that manages the .kz ˆ said the site had been shut because borat.kz was hosted outside Kazakhstan and false administrators‚ names had been given when it was registered.

The government decided last month to deny .kz to sites hosted abroad, an unjustified step that tightens political control over Kazakh online publications.

posted by Fergie @ 12/14/2005 05:48:00 PM