The Internet Governance Forum will start on Monday morning but already the debate has started – and it is surrounding freedom of speech online.

There are several reports that the Greek authorities arrested a man for linking – not writing, but linking – to blog posts that had satirised a businessman (possibly a TV evangelist). The businessman complained to the police and the police picked up the adminstrator of blog aggregation site blogme.gr – and charged him.

Update: The man arrested was Antonis Tsipropoulos and the target of the satire was Dimosthenis Liakopoulos – a controversial Greek tele-evangelist. The satire site that mocks Mr Liakopoulos can be found at funel.blogspot.com, but since it is hosted in the US, neither the Greek authorities nor even Mr Liakopoulos can get at it.
What Mr Tsipropoulos has been charged with, god only knows. But this is a spectactular own goal by the Greek authorites on the eve of the IGF. Particularly since making a crime of linking to someone else’s content is pure, and legally foolhardy, censorship.

It’s all over the Greek blogosphere, but I can’t understand the majority of it. Except for the fact that there appears to be movement building to protest outside the conference hotel as a statement against the arrest.

Yesterday, Amnesty International started a campaign to draw attention to those blogger across the world that have been imprisoned because of information they have posted online.

There is something seriously wrong with 123-Reg – previously the best domain purchasing company in the UK.

Today, I have moved my JaysonBlair.com domain and hosting deal from them for the simple reason that… the website had completely disappeared! The hosting deal must have come to an end and yet somewhere, somehow it fell through the cracks and 123-Reg failed to tell me. I was so gobsmacked I have shifted everything over to GoDaddy.

This isn’t the only time I’ve had trouble with 123-Reg recently either – and I can see from looking on the Net that I’m not alone.

123-Reg’s support – ever since Pipex took them over, and then again recently while Pipex is going through some strange changes – has gone from bad to absolutely pointless.

I had to kill my blog with them and shift hosting because they were so completely useless and unhelpful. I hit a bandwidth limit, but rather than be informed, they just killed it. I was happy to pay for more bandwidth – which I did – but it didn’t work and they basically said they didn’t care. So I moved my hosting.

I also shifted the hosting for my Sexdotcom.info site, because they were so unhelpful and so restrictive with their hosting deals. And I don’t think I’ll bother renewing my hosting deals for my other sites when they come for renewal either (assuming of course that 123-Reg bothers to tell me).

It’s not just me and it’s not just hosting either. There is an extraordinary post on the influential UK mailing list at Deleting.co.uk entitled “R.I.P 123, is this the end for 123-reg?” The complaint was very worrying: “I registered a domain several hours ago with 123-reg.co.uk, the money was taken, yet the domain is still not registered. Anyone can go and register it.”

And again on the My Two Cents blog, Shari says, no, shouts “BOYCOTT 123-REG.CO.UK!” She has also shifted over to GoDaddy because: “My password needed to be reset since early June so I could renew a domain for my husband! And what happens?? 3 MONTHS LATER and the LOSS of my husbands domain to finally get it reset!!! Talk about BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE! I emailed them several times a day since June and FINALLY 2 weeks ago they reset my password… but 2 MONTHS TOO LATE!”

Something has gone very, very wrong at 123-Reg and it is directly impinging on its core technical functions. What a way to squander a reputation. I’m simply not going to stay with a company that I can’t trust to look after my domains or hosting deals.