Anti H1B site removed after 1 month
By Bala Shah

US-based Indian origin Tech firm Apex Technology Group had initiated legal action against American blogs EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud. Apex Technology Group, which counts IBM, Microsoft, UBS and other blue chip companies as clients, wanted to protect its reputation after EndH1B published a post accusing it allegedly of mistreating Indians on H1B Visas.

Apex has flatly denied all allegations made against it. At this point in time none of the allegations have been proved in court.

What Apex wanted was to use its lawyers to get all articles criticizing it removed from EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud. But they landed up requesting the New Jersey based American Court to remove the 3 websites from the internet.  On Dec 23, 2009 the Judge, instead of asking for only anti Apex articles to be removed, banned the 3 websites. Banned as in ejected from the internet.

While Techgoss was the first Indian site to report this news, soon American national media picked up the story.  International sites like Slashdot, Computerworld, Techdirt, Arstechnica and others reported the story.  While many journalist and Americans did not agree with some of the anti Indian views expressed by EndH1B and ITGrunt, most felt that banning them was not only unjustified but it may have even been illegal under the American constitution.

On Dec 30, Techgoss had said that while we disagreed with the venom in some of the anti H1B and anti Indian blogs, the ground reality is that there is not much we can do about it. Apex has made a mistake by getting the websites banned. There is no way Apex can win this battle either in Court or in the hearts and minds of most Americans.

It is technically impossible to ban such sites on the internet.  And sure enough, the banned American site endH1B changed its name to endh1b2 and moved its hosting to Canada. ITGrunt became Techinsurgent.com.

On Jan 4, 2010, Techgoss had published “Apex may have won a legal battle.  But as you can see the war may have been lost.  Indian tech companies like Infosys and TCS have also been criticized but they have avoided head on confrontation to avoid a public relations nightmare. Most Americans believe in free speech and dislike any form of censorship.”

And on Jan 7 (India time), the powerful EFF publicly criticized the judgment banning the sites.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in USA is the leading civil rights organization to protect its citizens when their freedoms in the networked world come under attack. Founded in 1990, the highly regarded EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights. EFF is a donor-funded nonprofit and like Greenpeace values its independence.

One of the ways big business, governments, powerful individuals and vested interests prevent free speech is by threatening legal action. Often, a phone call followed by a legal letter is enough. Sometimes, powerful and rich organizations/individuals drag people to court who lack resources to fight legal battles.  The EFF often steps in to protect such people.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published its views under the title ‘Order to Shut Down Websites Critical of Apex Technology Group is Dangerous and Wrong’.

Soon after the EFF published its views, a number of American newspapers, magazines and websites criticized the Judgment banning the anti H1B websites.

Last week, there was a major development in this case.  While the US Judge had banned EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud on Dec 23, 2009 and within days ITGrunt and EndH1B were taken offline; Guestworkerfraud continued to remain on the internet.

No longer. On Jan 26, 2010 (India time),  Networking Solutions shut down the site and put a ‘legal lock’ on the Guestworkerfraud account. Vdare is reporting that the person who started Guestworkerfraud was not given any notice via email or a phone call of the impending lockout. Godaddy has locked down ITGrunt.com and refused to hand it over to its rightful owner.  

Apex may have won a legal battle, but it has antagonized a large section of American tech workers and media.  ITGrunt has even appealed to America’s most powerful hacking group 4chan for help.  This is not going to end well for either party.