Monday, June 30, 2008 -- 7:50 p.m. -- at my desk

**UPDATE 7/1 5:28 p.m. -- The site wasn't blocked by anyone, it appears. According to the ruinediphone.com blog, "The fact that I’ve changed the DNS of the domain name is probably the true reason. The DNS need to propagate in all the servers around the world. It could take as long as 48 hours for this task to be done." So there we go. Things are back up and running, so people of Canada, sign away!**

I'm getting word from Canadians from Newfoundland to British Columbia that the ruinediphone.com site that has been protesting Rogers high iPhone 3G prices has been taken offline.

I can confirm that trying to access it here in the States results in a 403 Forbidden error.

Now while it could very well be that it was taken offline because of traffic, one has to wonder if that's all there is to it.

I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but you just never know.

I've sent a note to the person behind the site and when I hear something back I'll happily let you know.

Meanwhile, the person from Rogers that I contacted earlier, the same person the CBC contacted and heard nothing back from, has ignored my e-mail.

Very impressive customer service. I'm really hoping the ruinediphone site is down because of traffic. I'm very anti people telling me what I can say and can't say. Must be the journalist in me or something.

Let me know what you think in the comments ... and let me know how things are looking in Canada ... we got anyone protesting on the 401 or anything like that?

Thanks for calling.

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Guess they don't have a Bill of Rights? It wouldn't surprise me if Rogers has something to do with the sight being down. Maybe you could get someone from the Trib to investigate and report!!

SCOTT'S REPLY: Ha! Well, sadly, Canada is a little bit outside of our coverage area, so you'll have to settle for me! :-D

Thanks for taking up the cause, the newspapers in Canada are either asleep about this or perhaps they too live in Mr. Rogers neighbourhood. I think it is absolutely outrageous that a company can have the right to shut down a site to stifle protest. Sure there exists a possibility that the server crashed, but you would think it would be up again by now and you would not likely see "Forbidden" when you try to access the site.

This is appalling and I hope the media in Canada wakes up and serves the people like they say they do.

Thanks for your article - How can they be allowed to stop free speech?

SCOTT'S REPLY: Well, in fairness, I've seen Apple shut down specific forum questions on its support site when they were casting the company in a negative light. So it's certainly not something that's unique to Rogers ... however, with what is going on right now and the outcry from consumers, having a hand in shutting down such a site would not be wise in my humble opinion. And sure ... could be overload. You never know. But the 403 Forbidden is a telling sign that it's something else ... we may never actually know unless someone comes out with a statement or if the person behind the site was given some sort of notification indicating why the site was taken down.

The interesting thing is that I am able to access the page without a problem from a remote machine in the states but I cannot access it from my machine in Toronto. Very odd unless the owner of the site is mocking around with DNS settings.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Very strange, because here in Chicago, as of this very second, I cannot access the page.

Scott, I understand Apple shut down one of its own forum sites, but the site in question here was not under Rogers control, they simply blocked people from accessing someone else's site - as they saw fit. I can’t believe it’s even legal. It’s still inaccessible at 1:00 in the morning - this can’t be traffic.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Oh I know ... I wasn't trying to compare the two ... I was just citing an example of someone shutting down a site or a portion of a site. If Rogers actually shut down the site, I would imagine there has to be more of a reason than they didn't like it. There would have to be.

Although I get a forbidden error (I'm in Alberta, Canada) I have been able to access the site via proxy server.

Just thought I'd let you know.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Thank you for letting me know, Carlton. Looks like all is well again at the site.

Site is still down in Ottawa. More and more people are finding out about ruinediphone,com, which is great! Thanks for the coverage.

SCOTT's REPLY: Happy to point folks in the right direction when it comes to fair pricing -- Canada or anywhere.

Maybe it's forbidden because they reached their goal and they sent there petition

SCOTT's REPLY: Nope, because the new goal according to the site is 25,000 and they aren't there yet.

You can see why this happened at http://www.ruinediphone.com/blog/

SCOTT's REPLY: NICE catch, Chris. Thank you!

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