FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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 Vote-auction.com back online

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 Berlin, October 22, 2000

 Below you find the latest press release by Vote-auction.com
 [formerly voteauction.com]. We have included any information
 on the latest developments of the site and the people and
 users behind it.

 You can also find this press release at 
 http://www.vote-auction.com/pr.htm

 For any further information feel free to contact
 pr@vote-auction.com or in urgent cases call +49-175-2066954.

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 [V] Voteauction.com is dead, long live Vote-auction.com

 The "Leader of the Election Industry", vote-auction.com
 has regained access to the web via its new domain

 http://www.vote-auction.com
 
 During the past week, diverse rumours and hear-say has
 been passed concerning the website which explores the
 high-risk consumer markets of the American election
 industry.
 
 The site's original domain had been ordered shut down
 by a local American court in the U.S. state of Illinois
 earlier this week. But whilst the American authorities
 took their time and tax payers' money to legally pursue
 almost everybody related to the existence of the website,
 the owners of the site worked on a re-design and strategy
 paper for version 2.0 of the project.

 [V] Sue 'em 'til they drop... 
 
 The legal authorities of Chicago, Illinois, made every
 effort to get the site out of service during the last
 2 weeks. Amongst the original creator of the project,
 James Baumgartner, and the owner of the domain, Hans
 Bernhard, they also found it in the public's interest
 to sue:
 
 . domainbank.com: Domainbank inc., is the registry where
   the original domain "voteauction.com" is registered.
   It is defendant in named Chicago legal case. 
   
 . silverserver.at: Both SILVER SERVER's president as
   well as of one of the top technical staff are also named
   defendants in the Chicago legal case. SILVER SERVER is
   vote-auction.com's internet access provider. 

 [V] (Il)legal Battle?

 It remains open for discussion how it should be possible
 that a dns (domain name service) or an access provider
 could ever be responsible for contents accessible via
 domains they are providing routing services for.
 Vote-auction.com sees this as illegal practice in total
 violation of standards set by ICANN.

 We can only interpret domainbank's and SILVER SERVER's
 name on the list of defendants as a indirect means of
 repression to force vote-auction.com to go offline.

 Concerning domainbank inc., this strategy seemed to
 work out for Chicago prosecutors: Because of domain-
 bank being involved in the legal case, the provider
 "politely asked" vote-auction.com to provide them
 with a USD 100,000.00 bond for potential legal costs.
 Vote-auction.com decided not to comply. Instead, we
 asked them to transfer our "voteauction.com" domain
 to another provider. This order was not fulfilled by
 domainbank, as they had at that time already made
 a "deal" with Chicago authorites "not to move the
 domain anywhere", as we were told by one of domain-
 banks executives.
 
 Concerning "defendant" SILVER SERVER, we can provide
 you with a clear statement from their president:
 
 "SILVER SERVER clearly and fully supports vote-auction.com.
  SILVER SERVER president, o.o., is proud to be the billing
  contact for vote-auction.com. actually we received very
  interesting offers by investors to launch vote-auction.com
  in russia and japan."

 [V] Users give full support - despite potential respression

 Lots of users of Vote-auction.com have described their
 support in various emails. This is another reason why
 we decided not to wait to get back online until local U.S.
 legal authorities understand that Vote-auction.com 
 works for and NOT against democracy. We will keep on
 protecting any data which has been submitted to us by
 trusting users.
 
 Chicago courts have a somewhat different approach to 
 user rights. The court has ordered all data of users
 registered with the site to be disclosed to the
 authorities. This would then enable prosecutors in
 Chicago to sue users of vote-auction.com individually
 for "voter fraud".

 [V] Where to go from here

 Vote-auction.com is ready to deliver even more services
 to the vital elections markets. We will keep on 
 focusing on the American elections until mid-November
 this year. In the meantime we will also finish our
 redesign and software upgrade in order to get ready
 for upcoming elections worldwide.

 For the Vote-auction.com team:
 
 lizvlx (pr@vote-auction.com)

 PLEASE NOTE: if you want to access Vote-auction.com via
  web or mail, please be sure to use the correct domain:

  pr@vote-auction.com
  http://www.vote-auction.com
 
 We will not be able to receive messages sent to the
 old address. Thank you.