At my company, we use EasyDNS to do our external DNS hosting (building a real, high availability DNS server infrastructure is outside of the scope of our financial resources, so we have them do it for us), and I’ve always been very happy with their service.

Today, I got a very interesting email from them. I’m including it in its entirety here:

easyDNS Support [support@easydns.com]

Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 1:54 AM

To: Matt Simmons

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This notice is being sent to all active domain holders on the system.

In this email:

1. The WikiLeaks Situation

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1. The WikiLeaks Situation

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It is not very often we send out an all-member email blast, so when we do, it’s usually pretty important.

First and foremost, everything is ok. Please read the information that follows carefully but understand that we would never do anything that we thought put our members at risk.

The Basic Background:

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On Friday, Dec 6th, easyDNS was mistakenly identified in various online channels as the DNS provider who revoked DNS Services for the controversial website Wikileaks, and a large internet backlash ensued against us.

In fact, the Wikileaks DNS provider was a free DNS provider in New Hampshire called “EveryDNS.net”. At some point this was mistakenly reported as “easyDNS”, and it gathered momentum from there. The problem was compounded on Saturday, Dec 7th when the New York Times picked up the story, also incorrectly identifying us as the party who “unplugged” Wikileaks. The U.K based Guardian did the same thing again on Tuesday, December 7th.

A timeline of events has been posted here:

http://easyurl.net/5119e

And our original rebuttal to the misinformation was posted here:

http://easyurl.net/a3191

easyDNS Added To WikiLeaks.ch DNS

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On Sunday, Dec 5th, we were approached by a group acting on behalf of Wikileaks and asked to provide DNS for their fallback domain WikiLeaks.ch.

We agreed to this on several conditions.

http://easyurl.net/fbbff

We did not take this decision lightly, and whichever side of the fence you fall regarding what Wikileaks is doing, after being falsley accused of unplugging Wikileaks and taking an enormous amount of backlash for doing so, we felt we did not have much choice in the matter but to forge ahead and take on this challenge.

http://easyurl.net/507d8

We actually consider this part of the situation to be well in hand.

Tonight the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail ran a story about this bizarre sequence of events and we expect it to run in the print edition (possibly as the cover story) on Thursday, Dec 10.

That story is here: http://easyurl.net/gandm

However, and this is large part of the motivation for this email, the Globe story concluded with the following quotation, which we feel sends the wrong message, as I mispoke when I said the following:

“Our lawyers have basically told us that if they want to shut us down they’ll show up with an injunction and we’ll have to follow it and then try and have it overturned later,”

This may connote that we think we, as a company, may be shut down. We do NOT think this is going to happen at all.

What I meant to convey in the quote is:

“If they want US (easyDNS) to shut THEM (WikiLeaks) down, they’ll show up with an injunction, and we’ll have to follow it, etc etc”.

And if that happened, we would be terminating service to wikileaks alone.

Further information about this clarification is here:

http://easyurl.net/gm2

We wanted to let you know as an easyDNS member, that we are taking every measure to ensure that this situation does not disrupt the continuity of your domain services at all.

In conclusion, we believe we have taken the course of action that fits who we are as a company.

If you’ve been dealing with us for any amount of time then hopefully you know what kind of company that is. I also hope you agree that, regardless of your opinion of Wikileaks itself, we are playing the hand we’ve been dealt in accordance with who we are as a company.

In short, we think this is the right thing to do, and that is why we’re doing it.

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If you are not already subscribed to our blog feed in your favorite RSS reader, I suggest doing so via http://blog.easydns.org, or making a habit of checking the blog for updates.

We also put out info as it happens on Twitter, http://twitter.com/easydns

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As always, if anyone has any questions or concerns regarding any of these issues, feel free to email me or call me voice.

Thank you,

Mark Jeftovic, <markjr@easydns.com>

President & CEO, easyDNS Technologies Inc.

ph. +1.416.535.8672 ext 225

http://www.easydns.com/