Korir has resurfaced, this time at http://africanpress.tripod.com/. KSB has communicated with him on phone and he sounded very remorseful. He was however adamant that the sole reason why his site was pulled down by wordpress was because he violated terms prohibiting advertising at wordpress. He said that he doesn’t support Obama and maintained that the “Michelle tapes”, largely believed by netters not to exist, will soon be produced.
He moved to Tripod after trying to set up another API at wordpress (http://africanpressonline.wordpress.com/) which was also closed down by wordpress immediately. Mr. Korir appreciated the work KSB is doing and said that he has a lot of respect for KSB. He also thanked me for advice when he was setting up API. He said that netters should not celebrate that he was gone as he was working on his new website which, he said, will be difficult to close down.
KSB reminded him that the question of attribution, liabel, defamation and other rules applied to all web hosting services and that any site can be pulled down by a host if terms are violated. These are basic web hosting rules.
Mr. Korir promised that this time around, he will try to be more careful with what he publishes because he has already learnt his lessons with API at WordPress. He called for joint work with KSB.
Some bloggers at wordpress seem to believe that it is the responsibility of WordPress to sift through articles then approve them. This is not true. Censorship and accountability of what is published at any blog or website is the responsibility of the blogger or site admin, not word press which has no resources to follow millions of articles and media stuff posted daily by subscribers. WordPress only begins to act if there is a report after which they evaluate the level of violation. A maximum of three warnings are normally given and if the blogger continues with violations, a blog could be closed down.
Mr. Korir also said that the Rainbow foundation which he set up in 1996 and which has been getting state funds has nothing to do with American Rainbow Foundation. He said that the problem has been that he started the “Norwegian chapter” of the foundation which was confused by the main Rainbow organization which thought that Korir was involved in impersonation.
With his struggle to start afresh, it will be interesting to see how Korir proceeds because his reputation may have suffered serious damage as a result of several hoaxes which, he admitted, were meant to drive traffic to his site, probably to attract clicks for illegal adverts he posted at the blog site.
Okoth Osewe
About the Author
Osewe, you know and I know that Bwana Korir is joking by retorting that he is trying to launch an API site that will be closing proff!?..who is he trying to kid?..if he was verbatim in his scriblings, he could not have faced the AXE!!!! Being an experienced scribe, Osewe you know what it entails to counter libel, unless you syndicate, then shutting one down follows with concrete litagations. Having said that..kudos!!to you Osewe for having played by the rules!!!,na uendele hivyo hivyo…twende kazi ya Purity.
KSB:
Thanks Private eye. The Ngatia response to Purity’s theatrics is on the way. It will be part of Purity’s breakfast tomorrow. As for Korir, let him learn his own lessons. We have the Internet to promote freedom of expression but it comes with responsibility.
Thank you for the telephone conversation mr Osewe.
I am glad you did as promised – to write this follow up story stating tha after wordpress shut us down we had resurfaced. The same people however, who had lied to wordpress about us and had us shut down followed us to Tripod.com and lied there too and had us shut down yesterday.
But the truth has come out and we just got back our http://africanpress.wordpress.com, our Old an now popular site. We are grateful to wordpress for having studied the case and decided to take a favourable decision in the name of truth because many people had lied about our intentions especially concerning Rainbow which they had claimed was not a genuine Charity. After we understood that was used as part of evidence to close us down, we produced documents from the norwegian government register to show that my organization is real.
So we are back in busines. I will, however be getting a permanent WWW address so that we do not encounter problems in future.
http://africanpress.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/apis-ressurection-from-the-dead-thanking-wordpress-for-having-played-major-role-in-our-ressurection-after-3-days-a-miracle-just-as-jesus-was-ressurected-also-after-3-days/
May I have material in order to write about the Raila book?
Chief Editor Korir, African Press International – API
Korir has been shut down once again. The africanpress.tripod.com site has been removed for Terms of Service violations. I think Korir should find another con trick since nobody wants to host him ever again.