This image was lost some time after publication.

As we predicted, the Borat affair has now officially escalated into a "sexy time explosion" of international debate over freedom of online speech. France-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders have come out against the Kazakh government for having shut down the Borat.kz website, claiming it is an abuse of their internet administrator powers:

Reporters Without Borders condemned censorship by the Kazakh government, which has removed the right to use the .kz suffix (equivalent to .uk) from two websites it finds troublesome, including that of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, or "Borat".


The worldwide press freedom organisation said it was concerned by the politicisation of the administration of domain names and has written to Franck Fowlie, ombudsman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN,) that registers domain names, asking him to intervene.

Make no mistake, Kazakhistan: Until you restore Borat's website, you risk an angry, free-speech-loving USA pulling out of the Kazakh Making-Goodwill Games (lone event: men's naked wrestling while playing ping pong and shooting dogs from the balcony) in protest.