Typing is not activism, but sometimes it’s not a bad substitute. Do you have a company that is giving you the sh*ts? Here’s an idea, buy their domain name and build them a website.

If the domain is already registered, just be creative and alter it slightly, e.g. – instead of company.com, try companysucks.com or companysucksballs.com.

I recommend choosing a TLD (top level domain) of a country that is out of reach from your own country’s meddling authorities. For example, .me domains are quite popular, being the TLD for Montenegro. Montenegro broke away from Yugoslavia in 2006 and declared independence.

The possibility of the US Dept of Homeland Security seizing a .me domain is very slim. Chinese domains have also become popular with Americans in search of freedom from oppressive government interference. Another benefit is that the domain you favour is more likely to be available e.g. – company.me when company.com was unavailable.

A .me domain can be registered for between USD$10 - $20. I can recommend OVH; they created a domain name for me very speedily and had it pointing to my nominated name server just as speedily. OVH is a French registrar; again like the TLD itself, it’s an advantage to have your registrar in a foreign country.

This is pretty much the only expense for your dissidence. For this kind of project a single page will usually suffice and there are plenty of free hosts that can be used. I can recommend batcave.net for a free hosting account; they have been very helpful for me. The batcave is based in Germany.

My precautions may seem overly paranoid but I have witnessed in my country, the government and corporations intimidating hosting companies to pull accounts. I have also seen the gov through .au Domain Administration Ltd, delete domains, just like DHS and ICE are doing. Actually, an interesting point, when domains are seized by authorities, they are not really deleted, they just have the name servers (DNS) redirected and if you happen to know the IP number of the seized site, you may still be able to access it.

I have used a real example in this post, a page I set up hosted in Germany, using a Montenegro domain which was registered in France, and thus my Australian government will unlikely interfere at the whim of the targeted company, even if they were inclined to do so. And this all cost me the grand total of AUD$13.50.

This is the site - http://www.devonclothing.me

The school my daughter attends, a public school in Adelaide South Australia, as directed by my government, has informed parents that all school uniform items must be purchased from one particular company which they have contracted. Any student not wearing this company’s clothing, we are told will be sent home.

Much of this said company’s clothing items, which we have obtained so far, are generally poor quality foreign imports which we are forced to purchase, at expensive prices. Given the company’s supply source (Vietnam), and their selling price, it appears they are applying a mark up of around 1000%.