Gabon to suspend new Megaupload site
Found on Phys.Org on Wednesday, 07 November 2012
"I have instructed my departments... to immediately suspend the site www.me.ga," announced Communication Minister Blaise Louembe, saying he wanted to "protect intellectual property rights" and "fight cyber crime effectively".
The minister said an investigation by his staff had found the site was set up to redirect traffic to another site hosted in France that would provide access to shared files.
Now you might think that Louembe made a very independant and political decision, even though nothing that has happened with that domain so far has proven that it's used for anything illegal. So it's a preemptive strike and you might call it a typical mistake made by a politician. However, if you take a closer look at who managed the .ga TLD you will see that Gabon Telecom is in charge of that. The majority of Gabon Telecom is owned by Maroc Telecom which is owned by no other than Vivendi, a "a French multinational mass media and telecommunication company", which "has activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet, and video games". Now Louembe's accouncement doesn't look so independant anymore, and surely it's not a simple mistake either.