LATEST PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Berlin, October 22, 2000
Vote-auction.com back online
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.
[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.
press and media contact: | pr@vote-auction.com
Your enquiries will either be answered by [V]ote-auction.com's hans bernhard, ubermorgen.com's lizvlx or by one of our staff.