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The ongoing battle between Sacha "Borat" Cohen and Kazakhstan continues to heat up. Round One: the Kazakh government catches Cohen's act on MTV Europe Awards, and puts out a tersely worded statement along the lines of, "Stop saying we enjoy rape and have given horses the vote." Round Two: Cohen responds in character on Borat's website, encouraging the government to "sue this Jew," and provides examples of recent Kazakh social advancements ("...homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats and age of consent has been raised to 8 years old.") Round Three raises the stakes to nothing short of a battle for free internet speech, as the Kazakhs shut down the Borat website:

"We've done this so he can't badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name," Nurlan Isin, President of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies, told Reuters on Tuesday. "He can go and do whatever he wants at other domains."


Isin said the borat.kz site had broken new rules governing all .kz domains and had registered false names for its administrators.

All First Amendment rules are off when your homepage enters the uncharted and uncertain waters of a .kz or .ru. At this very moment, grainy video stills have been trickling in capturing what appears to be Borat's whimpering website, hooded and bound on the floor of a windowless Kazakh prison cell, as their most "influential" interrogator fires up his trusty testisatchel prod and politely asks if the URL is now ready to talk.