On October 30, 2000, BonsaiKitten.com was a focal "Cruel Site of the Day" on the website Cruel.com. When this attracted complaints, Cruel.com removed its links to BonsaiKitten.com. Afterwards, however, when links to the BonsaiKitten.com website then spread across the world, many concerned animal lovers sent complaints to the Animal Welfare Institute and the Humane Society of the United States. Animal welfare groups made statements saying that Bonsai Kittens were not real. The URL drew criticism, which caused the initial host, MIT, to remove it.
Since 2000, groups such as the Animal Welfare Institute and The Humane Society of the United States have received hundreds of complaints. Animal welfare groups declared the site as fake but stated they did believe it was potentially harmful. Other animal rights groups have stated that the site creates an atmosphere of cruelty to animals. There is no evidence to date that the site is anything more than satire. Numerous authorities have advised people to stop sending complaint forms via email.
BonsaiKitten.com is mirrored by many sites today, for example ding.net/bonsaikitten. The nature of the site is such that BonsaiKitten.com was put forward as real, with many animal rights activists still taking issue with the context of the website. Reportedly, petitions for removal of the BonsaiKitten.com web address are more widespread in countries where English is spoken as a second language, and therefore, people may only see the content of the website's photos, which, in its most up-to-date format, consists of several photographs of a kitten inside of a jar.
The controversy started soon after the creation of the BonsaiKitten.com website. It has continued since and has been a mutually accepted target of numerous spam email pleas. These pleas rely on the audiences, often not knowing English, to spread them. Consequently, these petitions are often spread via the Internet in non-English-speaking countries. Blues News also provided a link, which was shortly thereafter removed from the site, as complaints against the website's existence and its content began to surface.
The webpage being featured on the cruel.com website was significantly controversial and it was quickly removed. Initial humane society statements decrying the website as "encouraging abuse" caused local investigation, along with an FBI announcement that it was to investigate the hoax. The prosecution of the site by the FBI was welcomed by animal activists, but decried by web authorities. The FBI backed up its investigating of Bonsai Kitten by using a law passed by Bill Clinton in 1999. The attacking of the BonsaiKitten.com website had the effect of displacing the website, which found a new ISP two more times, before being permanently hosted on Rotten.com servers. Because the website is still kept on some mirrors, it continues to receive complaints from animal activists.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment