CYFS Watch Kicked off WordPress Too


CYFS Watch has been deleted by the WordPress.com admins.

They have posted an explanation on Blogger (their original space). This is pasted below. I have not yet digested it fully myself, I just wanted to get a copy and read it in case it was taken down.

From first glance, it looks like WordPress was a much easier target for the government than Google.

Where has www.cyfswatchnz.wordpress.com gone?

CYFSWATCH NZ are currently in a none too subtle game of “whack-a-mole” with the Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry responsible for CYFS. It seems as if there are some very motivated Government individuals who are determined to remain unaccountable to the NZ public about their gross abuses of children and families in New Zealand.

We have posted this page here to advise our readers that:

1/ The entire blog content has been saved, and so can be re-published, anywhere, at any time.

2/ We are at this stage unsure of what transpired over at wordpress. We did not delete the blog. We have contacted wordpress and asked if they can advise us as to what did happen.

3/ If it wasn’t wordpress who deleted the site, then we have to surmise that an external party was responsible for the act.

4/ This message is posted on blogger for convenience. We do not intend re-launching the blog on Google.

Contact us at cyfswatch@hotmail.com if you have any more questions.

UPDATE:

March 1st, 2007 at 9:35 am

From: CYFSWATCH

CYFSWATCH emailed wordpress in order to ascertain what had happened to the CYFSWATCH blog. What follows is what we believe is a somewhat chilling and eerie reply: it looks as if someone in the NZ Government leaned very, very heavily on wordpress – we have asked for a more detailed explanation, as it does not appear that we breached any of the TOS.

The power and influence the NZ Government is exercising in the jurisdiction of other countries regarding the cyfswatch blog seems truly frightening – we are starting to feel as if we are residents of North Korea.

From wordpress:

Hi,I’m sorry but we were advised that we had to remove the blog.

There was no room to move on that.

We do believe in free speech but in this case we had no options. Sorry….-Mark

Now, compare the above response with our previous correspondence with Mark at wordpress:

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

The guideline we are using for confidentiality is the question “is this information already available within the public domain?” eg electoral roles, public websites, phone books, directories, etc that a reasonable person could access with reasonable ease. If we ascertain that the information is not in the public domain, or could not be sourced in the public domain, then we would not publish said information to the blog.

Does this apprpoach keep us within the TOS of WordPress?

If you guys do receive any complaints about information on CYFSWATCH, would you be able to let us know, so that we can respond responsibly to the complaint, and amend / delete information as required to by the TOS?

Our site has a lot of media attention in New Zealand, and we want to be seen to be doing the right thing. We were originally hosted by Google, however our site was closed down by Google as they thought we had posted an illegal comment – the NZ police came out in the public media 2 hours after we were shut down and said that no illegality had occurred – so we guess that Google just ended up looking stupid, because they then said in the media that we were welcome to re-post our blog on Google!

We chose WordPress instead.

Please advise.

CYFSWATCH

From: “Mark @ WordPress.com” support@wordpress.com
Reply-To: support@wordpress.com
To: cyfswatch@hotmail.com
Subject: [WordPress #PSN-167138]:

Enquiry regards blog management and terms of service>Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:00:51 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for the note.

Confidentiality and Copyright are the two areas you need to be most careful about.

If you can be sure that your email address in the blog is correct too in case we need to contact you that would be good.

Mark

Thanks Mark.

CYFSWATCH

>From: “Mark @ WordPress.com” support@wordpress.com
Reply-To: support@wordpress.com
To: cyfswatch@hotmail.com
Subject: [WordPress #PSN-167138]:
Enquiry regards blog management and terms of service

Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:24:40 +0000

Hi,>

“The guideline we are using for confidentiality is the question “is this information already available within the public domain?” eg electoral roles, public websites, phone books, directories, etc that a reasonable person could access with reasonable ease.”

That is okay.

If you can link to the source in the post that would be even better.

Otherwise they say you broke it, we ask you, you tell us, we tell them and that can take time.

But speech is free, opinion is free and we take the view that blogs are there to speak 🙂

Mark
So CYFSWATCH asks – who put the acid on wordpress?

—————–

Updated: I’ve removed stuff not directly pertaining to the main issue here.

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