This morning I received official word from the nation of Canada that airbag.ca has been suspended and is pending immediate removal from the World Wide Web.
As you read this, diplomats are in route to Ottawa to negotiate a peaceful resolution to this situation. God bless those men and women who are willing to sacrifice their lunch break for this website.
Should diplomacy fail, this website will no longer be found at the current address.
Hold no ill-will towards our fellow brethren in the North. They are good people and are entitled to their laws and the enforcement thereof.
Today I ask for your help in spreading word of an address change. If you will, please add a link to Airbag (or change the current one) with the new address, airbagindustries.com, to your website, blog, miniblog, RSS feed. Or paint it on the side of your car, that works too. By doing so it may be possible to squash future rumors of my demise and put an end to 'page not found' errors.
It has been my pleasure to entertain you over these many years and I look forward to many more. Thank you for the support many of you have already shown.
Normal word service will resume shortly.
UPDATE — I think I finally have everything fixed and working with the new domain. I wasn't prepared to have to move so quickly and thus kept discovering places where a domain change was required.
Comments are back. Broken images are fixed. Movabletype templates are back in order. And all maple products in the house have been thrown away.
Just kidding on that last part.
Thank you to all who are helping spread the word. I really appreciate it.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
I posted a link in my blogmarks - and will change the link in my blogroll as soon as you update the address used to ping blo.gs.
Your feed links still point to airbag.ca. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Will do. You may want to change the link your XML Feeds as well.
That's it. I'm no longer drinking Canadian Club and water. It Freedom Club and water from here on.
'Tis done.
That is sad... as I am sure you are aware, you have more than enough Canadian readers that would be willing to help you out (myself, for one...). I'm sure you've had the offers, but if you need anything, let me or one of us other Canucks know...
How come you've used a .ca address up until now?
The gears of bureaucracy sure spun quickly on that one. Too bad they appear have come to a grinding halt when it comes to getting one of their own citizens (my father) his birth certificate so he can obtain a passport (2.5+ months and counting).
But I am glad they caught the dangerous Greg Storey so that he will no longer terrorize the fair Canadian citizenry with good design and writing, rubbing their noses in his ill-gotten TLD.
Swimp, I wanted to keep the address simple — one word.
I am planning to tatoo this on the foreheads of my children. Luckly for them they don't exist yet.
That's the final straw. Attack Canada!!!!!!!
Couldn't you get a Canadian friend to register the domain for you? Or is this something you've already tried. Are .ca domains reserved for Canadian businesses?
updated and posted a note about it.
Those dang Canadians and their dang friendliness and their dang imported beer and their dang low crime rates. I'll change the link on my site, Greg. No problem.
Updated here too.
At some point people (e.g., Zeldman) are going to recognize that the .ca domainspace is not government-run and the Canadian "government" had nothing to do with this.
I suppose Typographi.ca is next.
Joe, you're not correct. Or if the Canadian Internet Registration Authority isn't related to the government you are correct, but someone seems to be enforcing this. Typographi.ca is gone already — the Canucks are on the warpath.
That's just the way the .ca domain has been run, as far as I understand. For the longest time, you could only register a .ca if you ran a business or organization that had offices in more than one province - if not, you could only register the provincial version of your domain (e.g. www.mydomain.on.ca). It's only been recently that they've allows any Canadian to register the TLD.
I'm not quite sure I understand what the motivation is behind the rules, but I'm guessing it's to retain control of .ca domains for Canadians and Canadian organizations and businesses. Such is life.
Glad you're back up, Greg.
The .ca registration works like this... you are only able to have the .ca domain name if you are a Canadian citizen or Canadian company or entity. (aka. Honda of Canada).
That does suck for you as you lost the domain name... but how would you like it for some foreigner took a .us domain name and started talking shit about the U.S? You'd be pissed....
That is the reason for the crack down... Personally, I'm surprised at this as the Canadian gov't is usually slow moving.
That said... I'd register the name for you as this is a great site.
Man... been following this and I have to say it sucks. In the immortal South Park words, "BLAME CANADA"!
I have updated the link on my site, and will spread leaflets by aerial drops in our neighborhood. Hope that helps.
-- Todd
CIRA is non-governmental, period. I support the residency or presence requirements. Sorry, kids.
Yah, they seem like the Network Solutions of Canada, and this seems like just an effort to grab domains back so they can re-sell them. I say, invade! PS: Sorry Calgary, Tampa Bay! Tampa Bay!
You probably want to tell Google to reindex your site also.
Google does not like me, of this I am convinced.
In the last year they have blocked this site from showing in the top results for the word Airbag* and refused my application for Google Ads twice.
So while I would like to think the little elves at Google are kind and benevolent, I can only picture evil flying monkeys.
* Since mid-2002 this site was the top search result for the word 'Airbag'. Then it dropped completely off the map. Only links to individual content are listed, not the root.
Tom, CIRA doesn't actually sell domains, and it's a non-profit organization. I can kind of see where they're coming from (sorry!), because there's been a lot of concern about maintaining Canadian identity, both in and out of the government. A lot of our content is imported from the U.S.
There's an organization called the CRTC (it actually is run by the federal government) which has a rule that radio and television stations broadcasting in Canada have to have at least 35% Canadian content, or they lose their license. This isn't a move on the part of CIRA so much to regulate Canadian content; it's a move to protect Canadian identity and ownership.
Still, I liked seeing that .ca in my bookmarks.
Desktop images are still broken.
Did my part in announcing the move to a new home ;-)
Vegard — desktop images are fixed.
Totally off topic, but Tom, Tampa Bay is basically a Canadian team.
Those maple-leaf-loving bastards
Not sure if it's related, but it looks like Typographica is not working either.
Yeah, Typographica was hit on the same day. I've been working with Stephen to get the site at a new address until his Canadian domain is (hopefully) turned back on.
Aww, I would have hoped that this could have been resolved. Maybe I can buy it for you? ;) (I would.)
Hope for the best.
But if we invade, we'll have to fight policemen on horses, stay in igloos, drink crappy beer, and learn another language. And all of this for what?
Not worth it, if you ask me. Let's nuke 'em.
Ah man Nate, that was mean. I lived in Alaska long enough to be surrogate Canadian so watch it, you're on thin 'ice'.
I will admit the igloo picture was funny.
Alright, I'm sorry you lost your domain name and all, but I went and clicked on your "owning a .ca is not a crime" links and, well...
nobody is addressing the real burning issue here:
What will become of asianangels.ca??
Come on, people, this is serious!
search for 'airbag'
#1 on Yahoo!.com
#1 on MSN.com
#1 on Lycos.com
#1 on AltaVista.com
#5 on Search.com
just had to test a few out...and you're right...Google hates you...LOL
Greg. this is a put on right? airbag.ca is still yrs. But if you still want to use it and host it, i will help out, by registering it for you. no expense to you. cheers
giovanni
PS News alert. many countries don't allow non-citizens to register domans names. try registering airbag.de, airbag.fr etc...you will not be able to proceed unles you prove residency in the country. And in some case they require the equivalent of a SIN number. In yr case you provided a canadian address and it should have ended there...but it seems they are cracking down... so your option now is to become a draft-dodger, move up here and make airbag.ca your primary address. you hoser, like do it , eh!.
You sure this isn't just a clever ploy to up your PageRank?
I'd rather have another article in the Wall Street Journal than my sites domain name to get attention.
And no, airbag.ca is not mine, thus the nature of this whole incident.
Consider yourself re-linked! and blogmarked for anyone that uses my blog mark feed. ;)
I hope that you can find someone in CA to register the domain for you. It would be a good idea.
Are you going to register airbag.com , leaving airbagindustries.com available for the aformentioned entirely different purpose?
Menc, I think that airbag.com is already registered. Hence the use of airbag.ca most probably.
I would love nothing more than to get my hands on airbag.com. Hell I would even pay for it, but some lame search portal company owns it and has yet to return any of my email.
Yeh Greg, and calling them a "lame" company on your website is soooo going to convince them to give it to you cheap! ;)
I am sorry that this happened, I think that Dave S has made some valid points about the way they have been dealing with this.
Stupid companies with no knowledge of the real intarweb!!
We've just mentioned your new address on our blog!
The fact that you registered airbag.ca because you wanted a single word name for a domain name points to a bigger problem with .com and .net domain names.
It is next to impossible to find a good .com domain if you are starting a new business because every dictionary word is taken. A vast percentage of these domains are not up and running, but hoarded for use much further down the line, or for sale at exorbitant prices.
ICANN needs to look at the problem of domain hoarding and reselling. The ideal would be a "use it or lose it" policy, but I can't imagine how that would be implemented or enforced.
I believe CIRA's approach has been to favor businesses over weblogs, cooporates and/or collaborative projects, especially those in the arts. Typographica had/has a perfectly valid Canadian owner with the correct paperwork on file with CIRA but was taken down anyway without any explanation. I think that unless one is a actual money-making, brick-and-mortar business with a physical location within the geographic boundaries of Canada, one risks losing ones .ca domain.
Don't know if anyone has pointed this out yet, but your desktop wallpapers still say airbag.ca on them.