Oscar fever shuts city server
Oscar feedback shuts city server
Calgary Herald
Saturday, March 29, 2003
Page: B3
Section: City & Region
Byline: Nick Lewis
Minutes after Michael Moore accepted the best
documentary Oscar for his film Bowling For Columbine, his
Web site was inundated with e-mails from angry
viewers.
When close to 20 million people logged on to
www.michaelmoore.com last Sunday night, the Calgary-based
server that hosts the site had to shut down because of
the deluge of traffic.
"We live in fictitious times," a charged-up Moore said
to a televised audience of 33 million. "We live in a time
where we have fictitious election results that elect a
fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man
who's sending us to war for fictitious reasons,
whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts.
"We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr.
Bush. Shame on you," Moore shouted, as applause
and boos mixed in the air and the orchestra began to
play the filmmaker off the stage.
Brad Ralph, creative director of Evolvs Media Inc.,
the technology company in Inglewood that hosts the site,
said it didn't take long after that for people to log
on to www.michaelmoore.com and voice their opposition to
that statement.
"It actually brought our system to a screaming halt
that evening," Ralph said. "We had to bring our IT guys in to
move Michael Moore's site onto another server and
load-balance it, because one wasn't enough."
To "host" a site is to rent out virtual space for
someone to use.
The overwhelming majority of the e-mails sent to Moore
and to Evolvs have been negative, Ralph said. Before
the Oscar speech, the site received about a million
hits per day, but the flood continues at an estimated 18
million hits a day. That's more than the White House
receives.
"We're actually talking to MGM right now to have them
buy a couple more servers," he says. "Because the DVD
for Bowling For Columbine is due for release on April
22 and they expect the traffic to stay like this at least for a
month after the DVD comes out.
"There's been a lot of hate mail, a lot of
Canada-bashing."
In fact, Ralph says Evolvs has already lost eight of
its clients as a result of the Moore speech, all of whom were
disgusted that the company would have anything to do
with the "anti-American." An online petition is currently
floating around the Internet asking people to boycott
Evolvs and other companies affiliated with Moore.
Ironically, the Web design company that created
www.michaelmoore.com is also from Canada -- Montreal's
Plank Design.
"It's very interesting to me that Michael Moore hosts
his site in Canada, that he has Canadian companies
managing and building his sites," Ralph said. "That
tells you quite a bit.
. . . He obviously has a lot of faith in the way we do
things. I think he's confident of the fact we're not going to
buckle under pressure the way an American company
would."
Some of Evolvs' other clients include A-Channel,
Olympic outfitters Moving Products, and MTV Canada. Evolvs
has been hosting www.michaelmoore.com for a little
more than a year.
"The e-mails we received range anywhere from short and
to the point, to extensive," Ralph said
"I'm appalled that you have a Web site with Michael
Moore," one reads. "This man is an anti-American idiot
who should be sent to Iraq. . . to Saddam (Hussein). I
am cancelling my subscription and my Web hosting
contract with your company."
Many e-mails call for a boycott of Evolvs.
Another reads, "You guys should be ashamed for what
you do for Michael Moore . . . Best of luck in your failure
as human beings."
Ralph says Evolvs isn't too worried about losing some
of its clients.
Moore responded to the flood of e-mails sent to him by
defending his Oscar comments on his Web site.
"To me, the inappropriate thing would have been to say
nothing at all or to thank my agent, my lawyer and the
designer who dressed me -- Sears Roebuck," he wrote.
Moore has been riding a crest of popularity. His book
Stupid White Men currently sits at the top of the
bestseller list, having been on the list for 53 weeks.
It was the largest-selling non-fiction book of 2002.
As well, Bowling For Columbine has made close to $20
million US since its release in October, more than
doubling the all-time box office record for a
documentary.
Ralph says he hopes the increased interest in Moore
and his work will benefit Evolvs. "I think despite the short
pain in the (expletive) its been, it's going to be a
positive thing for us," he says with a laugh.
