NZ Herald 30 July 2012
A website opposed to a law change that would allow gay marriage has been removed from the internet, less than 12 hours after its launch. The website at protectmarriage.org.nzfeatured an online petition to Parliament and a tool to let people contact MPs to express their views. But by midday the site had crashed after a large-scale denial of service attack. The IP addresses associated with the attack were being actively blocked and by 2pm the website was up and running again. However, by 5pm the website domain had been completely removed. “Due to large scale Denial of Service attacks against this domain it has been decided to ensure the stability and security of our servers and network this account has been removed,” the web host said. It was not known where the attacks were coming from, Mr McCoskrie said. Mr McCoskrie was told it was a fairly major attack, which was aimed at the protectmarriage website but also took down quite a few of the host’s other websites. “You always hope you can have a robust debate about ideas, and show respect for each other but when you’re trying to take out each other’s website it kind of suggests that you’re not going to get a good debate, so that’s disappointing.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10823280
Anti gay marriage website shut down
Stuff.co.nz 30 July 2012
A website dedicated to opposing gay marriage has been removed from the internet the day it was launched after it was the target of one of the “largest unprecedented attacks” on a website in New Zealand. The “Protect Marriage” website, launched today by Family First, crashed in a matter of hours as a result of a “large-scale denial of service attack” according to the site’s webhost. It was back up and running at 1pm, but had been removed completely by the webhosting company later this afternoon, to “protect its own servers”.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/7378769/Anti-gay-marriage-website-shut-down
Site opposing gay marriage attacked
Otago Daily Times 30 July 2012
A Christchurch web host has removed a website opposing a law change that would allow gay marriage from its servers, following an attack on the site that also affected others hosted by the company. In a message displayed at protectmarriage.org.nz, 24/7 Hosting & Web Design said: “Due to large scale Denial of Service attacks against this domain it has been decided to ensure the stability and security of our servers and network this account has been removed.”
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/219329/site-opposing-gay-marriage-attacked
