One of the main motivating factors in the founding of the Crankshaft Coalition was the recent takedown of an online community for Australian hotrodders.

Like all good Australian hotrodding forum takedown stories, this one involves an interesting mix of last-minute webmastering, international cyber-diplomacy, and kangaroo courts.

What exactly happened? Here's a very basic summary:

• Australian hot rod enthusiasts are represented by a national governing body known as the Australian Street Rod Federation, or the "ASRF". Many Australians are members of this organization, and pay fees to the ASRF for national government and media representation of their hobby interests.
  
• On Australia's largest hotrodding forum, hot rod enthusiasts were discussing some recent action by the Australian Street Rod Federation. This open exchange of information included some general discussion of the ASRF, suggestions for new policies for hot rod enthusiasts, and constructive criticism.
  
• The head of the ASRF, after reading the forum discussion, was not pleased. The administrator of the Australian forum was threatened with a $750,000 lawsuit.
  
• In Australia (unlike in America), the current online legal climate dictates that the administrator of an online community bears responsibility for all comments posted by its members.
  
• Lacking the means to support a sustained legal battle, the Australian forum, including its entire wealth of unique automotive knowledge, was taken down. It was the online equivalent of a book-burning.
  
• News of this first reached us via a post on the Hotrodders Bulletin Board. When we found out what had happened, we offered to transfer the entire database of Australian automotive tech knowledge to a specialty free speech server in America, with an American administrator. Thus, the forum would remain uniquely Australian, but it would fall under the protection of American law.
  
• The new Australian hotrodding site was established at Ozrodders.com. As soon as word spread around the Australian hotrodding community, the new forum was flooded with posts. The Australian knowledge was once again accessible for all hot rod enthusiasts, and the community was back online.

For more information on this, please see the following pages:

a message from the Aussies
forum thread detailing the impending takedown of the Australian forum
forum thread welcoming back members after the community was placed back online
forum thread with some basic details on the formation of Ozrodders.com