MAN OF STEEL HAS HEAVY HAND

Ron over at Larvatus Prodeo has investigated the matter thoroughly to work out what happened to the now gone knock-off of the Prime Minister's website: Richard Neville, the site's owner, "has fallen foul of the heavy hand of our government". No doubt this involved the SAS or, at least, the Australian Federal Police. There must have been body parts and blood everywhere. Nope. According to the linked SMH article nothing quite so dramatic happened:

Mr Neville's satirical "apology" speech ran on a mocked-up version of a spoof website that resembled Mr Howard's own, and after going live on Monday, received 10,500 visits within 24 hours.

Bruce Tonkin, the chief technology officer at Melbourne IT, said the site had been shut down in response to a request from the Prime Minister's office on basis that it looked too similar to its own site.

"If we receive a complaint from an intellectual property basis claiming that a website directly infringes the rights of another site we would check it, and if it is a direct copy we would suspend the site," he said.

The commenters at LP are, of course, all worked up. Really, who cares? Richard Neville only does crap. The PDF version is here if you haven't seen it yet.

What is it with lefties and knock-offs of other people's sites?