Stephen Taylor has an almost unbelievable story of censorship and abuse of power in Canada, where Joe Volpe, candidate for leadership of the Liberal party (and eventual candidate for Prime Minister), apparently called his cronies at the Canadian Registrar Authority and had them delete the domain name of a parody web site: Joe Volpe strongarms the Internet and erodes freedom of speech in Canada.

The Globe and Mail reports:

Mr. Volpe’s campaign had the site shut down without knowing, it seems, who put it up: “Hi Everyone,” wrote Brenden Johnstone, who is with the Volpe campaign, in an e-mail to other leadership campaigns. “There has been concern about how the issue of the Volpe donations was reflecting on the leadership race.”

“My Office has had the website suspended through CIRA [Canadian Internet Registration Authority] and CDNS [Canadian Domain Name Services] and it will be down as soon as 6 p.m. I think the issue with the website has been dealt with… .”

UPDATE at 6/2/06 12:27:07 pm:

A reader emails to say he contacted the Canadian Domain Name Service, and the site’s domain was deleted because false information was used on the registration. (But they certainly acted quickly.)

UPDATE at 6/2/06 3:40:45 pm:

See Stephen Taylor’s updates for more info.