Will 'Beyond the Pale' die?

Norwegian labour strike threatens the online community

This is a rush message. More details will follow tomorrow.

There is a big possibility that the Norwegian telephone company will be hit by a major labour strike this Thursday. The company delivers all Internet access here through their company Telenor Online. As they cannot agree on economical terms, the union has announced a strike affecting all internet connections.

How can this affect Beyond the Pale?

Well BtP is (thank God) hosted on a Swedish webserver at the nice guys at Swedish connection. But as one of the webmasters (Jens) lives in Norway, the Norwegian workers claim that also this website should be closed. This applies to all websites maintained by Norwegian webmasters.

BtP has asked for permission to stay open, arguing that we are mainly an international effort and should not be affected by internal Norwegian problems. We argue that:

– Procol Harum is NOT a Norwegian band
– only one of the webmasters is Norwegian: Roland can maintain the website during the strike.
– Most of the visitors are NOT from Norway. In fact BtP has been visited by people from 66 countries.
– And finally, BtP is hosted on a Swedish server (although webmaster Jens has a copy on his local C:\ drive)

The problem is, the strike leaders seem not to believe our claims.

So we need your help. If we can raise enough international support for the above statements within 24 hours, we might get the permission to stay online. Otherwise it will be logout for several weeks.

So please help by mailing the telephone strike leaders (Telenor Risk Av Nye Aaret Sør) at travnaas@online.no in support of our claims.

Please note. Norwegian visitors should NOT mail, as it might only weaken the case.

Jens and Roland
Webmasters at 'Beyond the Pale'