The US is really ramping up its war on intellectual property infringement, a war which I’m sure will be just as successful, cheap and supported by the people as the wars on drugs and terrorism. The US has started seizing the domain names of various websites through ICANN – not because owners of these sites were convicted of anything, but merely because complaints have been filed against them. Anyone want to take a guess how long it will be before the US government blocks WikiLeaks? Update: The blocks function outside of the US too. In other words, the US is forcing its views upon the rest of the world once again.
The current seizures of domains did not even use the proposed bill which recently passed the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The seizures come from the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and cover about 70 websites relating to potential copyright infringement and counterfeit goods, among which is Torrent-Finder.com, a mere torrent search engine which does not host or even link to torrents; it displays content hosted elsewhere through embedded iframes.
“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!†the owner of Torrent-Finder explained TorrentFreak, “I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN.”
This is equivalent to having your house seized for pointing out to someone you can buy weed in the college district. The craziness goes even further – ordinary search engines are really effective at finding unauthorised copyrighted content as well. You can use Google to find the latest Parenthood episode in 720p, and Bing, too, is pretty good at it. Why aren’t we seeing notices for these domains as well?
Body scanners, sexual assault patdowns, censorship laws, seizure of property without even a notice (let alone a court order or conviction), even without doing or having done anything illegal. Welcome to the police state. It won’t be long now until the US government – and other government will surely follow – will start blocking websites that do not fall within the government’s favour. I’m sure WikiLeaks is being put on censorship lists as we speak.
And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
A war is brewing. If you think body scanners, sexual assault patdowns, censorship laws, and the seizure of property without even a notice are the end, you’re sadly mistaken.
It’s only the beginning.
ICANN’s just fine, it’s doing a good job. There’s no need to divide up ownership of ICANN for international representation since ICANN is trustworthy already. The American government wouldn’t abuse their position over ICANN. …
ICANN maintaining control was and still is the lesser of multiple evils. Adding input from more governments would just lead to greater abuses via committee.
Ideal world we remove the politicians from the process entirely and create a nationally agnostic system, but that’ll never be allowed to happen.
Dictatorships maintaining control was and still is the lesser of multiple evils. Adding input from more people would just lead to greater abuses via democracy.
Ideal world we remove the politicians from the process entirely and create anarchy, but that’ll never be allowed to happen.
I don’t know, the UK is pretty messed up right now with the protests of college tuition, anarchist protesters show up at every world political event. Everyone’s ignoring the fact that in developed countries most people in their 20’s will never get good jobs and are already “the working poor” due to outsourcing and automation. As time goes on, the situation will only get worse and what a lot of science fiction writers foretold of a 2 class society of the people that own the machines versus everyone else has already happened. (factories are fully automated, your local stores uses an algorithm to decide when and how many products to order, etc…)
In Australia we have a massive skills shortage. Anyone with useful skills can earn a very high income. Even unskilled workers at mine sites can earn above $80,000/year
I doubt this supposed “skills shortage” actually exists, at least in Mackay. I know plenty of people from all walks of life, every trade you can name, every skill and profession, many with complete apprenticeships, degrees, and TAFE diplomas in their respective fields, all out of work, all on the dole in Community Rent Scheme housing because the Department of Housing is useless at best. They can’t seem to get jobs anywhere because this worthless swamp of a city only requires unskilled labourers for the mines, and retail slaves who have to put up with their shit – I’m frankly lucky to have my minimum-wage no-commission retail job with Optus. Sucks that I can’t afford rent on any house within an hour’s drive of the city, though, not to mention food.
I’m hardly unskilled, myself, either. A year’s experience in a computer store and internet cafe, repairing, building, selling machines, with a little bit of network administration on the side. Think any computer store will look twice at my resume though?
Edited 2010-11-28 08:17 UTC
One of my mates left his accountancy job to three years ago to drive trucks in a mine. He now earns over $120k/year.
Why would any computer store give you an interview? You have very little experience and presumably no formal qualifications. There are a huge number of people with greater skills and far more experience.
Still a problem that no one wants to take a chance hiring people without experience. Where I am there are plenty of programming jobs for people with at least 2 years experience, but hardly any for people just out of school. If you didn’t get an internship or one of the entry level jobs, you’re going to have to work for free for 2 years while you do some low wage job.
Nationally agnostic you say ? You mean funded by big private interests like the RIAA and the MPAA, right ?
Why not let, I don’t know, Andorra or Monaco handle it? They barely have any interests that I know of.
Or Switzerland?
Why not the European Commission or Parliament why you’re at it ?
They do have some interests, but they’ve proven to be on the right side many times in the past.
Plus, they’re much bigger and less corrupt than Monaco or Switzerland alone, and therefore can withstand attacks from corporate interests more easily.
Edited 2010-11-27 21:24 UTC
ICANN almost certainly had nothing to do with this. ICANN creates/modifies top-level domains. It does not remove second-level domains.
It’s quite strange that they exercise this power on websites hosting or linking to pirated material instead of focusing on websites that supposedly compromise “national security”.
I mean, you would think that if WikiLeaks is so dangerous, it would be the first website to be shut down.
I don’t which to believe:
A – the US government has been lying about having such a big problem with WikiLeaks
B – their completely warped sense of values means policing copyright is more important than protecting themselves
/shrug
Th backlash will be bigger if they block WikiLeaks. They’re just busy framing it right now. Of course, the smear campaign against its founder continues.
Do you mean that we are now living in a “V for Vendetta” environment ??
TSA, censorship, where are the rights ?
I really do respect you Thom, despite your love of unicorns of the pink fluffy variaty. But Julian Assange, while noble for his role in creating wikileaks is a douche-bag in real life. Unfortunately, begin a giant douche-bag isn’t a crime yet. But, don’t pretend that his douche-ness is part of a vast conspiracy by a government that’s unable to do even the simplest jobs correctly.
The truth is the leaks aren’t that bad. You have a few idiots that spend all of their time engrossed in the details of the secrecy of war, suddenly losing control of that minutia. They freak out, but the guys with the bigger picture understand how non-valuable that info is to the enemy. Its just mostly embarrassing that it contradicts what the official government line was in the past. People hate it when you catch them in a lie.
How exactly is Assange, a person I am sure you don’t know at a personal level, a “douche?”
Assange is a total douche. His own personal freedom of speech is more important than protecting lives of civilians who are working for the US in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t have a problem with him releasing information pertaining to soldiers committing war crimes but to endanger civilian lives just because you can makes him just as bad as those he exposes.
I thought the smear campaign went further than casting aspersions on his credibility. Aren’t they trying to peg rape or child molestation on him? Hardly requires being a douche to do either of those things, though of course they aren’t mutually exclusive. Whether or not he actually is guilty of some crime, I have no knowledge or opinion, but it does seem awfully convenient that he’s been charged with something other than violating national security. Call someone a child molester and people start whispering “maybe he is”, and, whether or not he’s ever convicted or even tried, that corrupts their view of everything he’s involved in. Probably wouldn’t be hard to pay off a family to claim their kid was a victim. If I were in a high position of power, and needed someone removed without political uproar, I’d probably do that.
I’m not calling him a hero of democracy and freedom, or anything like that, but the US Government obviously sees him as an important embarrassment.
Edited 2010-11-28 08:26 UTC
You are terribly wrong. They are focusing on websites that disturb the US government. They are targeting Wikileaks. US govt reportedly asked Germany, UK, Australia and other countries to open criminal investigations and to persecute Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
More than that, they are targeting Wikileaks with financial warfare. The company responsible for collecting Wikileaks donations was forced to terminate their account after US and Australia placed Wikileaks on black lists.
Meanwhile, army intelligence analist, Bradley Manning, was imprisoned for leaking a video of a us military helicopter killing a group of innocent iraqis in Bagdad.
None of which is actually particularly out-of-band for the treatment of individuals who are believed to have distributed classified documents, or an organization that re-distributes illegally obtained classified documents. I worked for about 22 months for a company that had a classified lab and handled classified data, and I can tell you, the U.S. government takes security classification seriously, and the penalties for distributing classified data are pretty hefty. Penalties pretty much begin at probation and dismissal, and end at being tried for treason (which, I believe, could potentially carry the death penalty). What you’re reporting is exactly the treatment that I would’ve expected if I’d walked out of the lab with classified information – even if I didn’t distribute it, in point of fact.
One day, I copied a chunk of source-tree onto a disk and took it out of the lab, at my boss’s request. When I reviewed it to make sure there was no classified data included, I missed one file (out of, I think, 500 or so) that had classified constants in it. I was in serious jeopardy of loosing my job. And I never distributed that disk: it sat on my boss’s desk over night, and he physically shredded it in the morning, when he discovered the slip. (I didn’t loose my job, just FYI. My boss, the person who requested the files, took the hit.)
This has nothing to do with WikiLeaks and net censorship; this is how the U.S. Govornment has always reacted to people who distribute classified documents. And they’ve always taken pains to make sure that people with clearances know what happens if you distribute classified data and get caught.
Edited 2010-11-30 22:31 UTC
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/congressman-calls-f…
There goes wiki leaks!
When I heard this reported in the non-tech news (the News Hour), it was treated like any run-of-the-mill property seizure, as a component of an effort to take down what where described as counterfeiting operations. I think this is more in the area of the government not properly understanding technology, and applying pre-internet laws and practice to the internet, more than it’s a sign of the coming net-censorship apocalypse.
Which is why not WikiLeaks. This isn’t a new problem, a sign that the U.S. government wants to take over and thought-police the internet (or, rather, that it might be about to succeed at it). This is an old problem, that of courts and government agencies trying to use laws and practices that pre-date the internet to regulate the internet, in complete ignorance of the ways that the web sites and the internet are different from physical storefronts and properties in a city.
Which certainly is a problem, but it’s a different problem than the looming destruction of worldwide free speech, and has different solutions.
(Posting this comment to different article)
Edited 2010-11-27 11:37 UTC
We cold use V right now.
Yes, but who is John Galt?
Also note that they use Google analytics and Piwik to track visitors on torrent-finder.com
Hooray for NoScript and Tor!
Hate to burst your privacy bubble, but Tor is no guarantee to stay anonymous. Just saying. 😉
Edited 2010-11-27 19:30 UTC
Hurrah for prepaid mobile internet.
also ghostery 🙂
I love it how some reporters, when doing a story about anything, only see evil in whatever happened or what the subject of the story did, no matter now benign the action really might have been.
For example, I might have a dog that is running amok in the neighborhood, biting people, digging up their flowerbeds, terrorizing little old ladies, generally creating havoc.
So, seeing the damage my dog is causing, I build a fence around my yard and tie my dog to a chain so it cannot get out any more. One of these types of reporters would do a story about how evil I am by putting up the fence, calling the fence anti-social, accuse me of being cruel to my dog by keeping it inside a walled garden instead of letting it roam free, how I might expect other people to start building fences around their yards, anything but stating any benefit the fence might have for the general community outside.
Sometimes actions have good results, like this barring of pirated material and illegally obtained documents, but it’s just really hard to get some reporters to report on them when they only want to see and report evil.
The problem isn’t what they’re doing, but how they’re doing it.
I’m against piracy. If you don’t like the majors than don’t buy their crap. It is called sabotage and it is the best way to show your scorn for them.
The real problem is that government agencies without any constitutional authority to arrest, seize, imprison, are doing just that. Remember that the people who founded the USA made it because the UK tirants applied laws as they liked, imprisoned people because they liked, killed “enemies” because they liked.
Democracy means that the first right of each citizen is the right to self defense. How can you defend against some entity that doesn’t accept replies?
If a judge condemns you, you can appeal. Who can I ask you to have your domain removed from the blacklist?
Who will ask you to be saved by a platoon of soldiers that is going to kill you because some obscure government official ( protected under the disguise of national security agencies ) has ordered them to kill you?
If you felt like tying up and fencing off that analogy, I wouldn’t hold it against you.
No its not like that at all.
Its more like your dog is digging holes in YOUR yard and tunnelling underground to my yard and biting the postman and newspaper boy in YOUR yard. I report this and include pictures to prove this.
You then take my camera so I can’t report the facts. You continue to state My dog doesn’t do anything, show me the evidence.
Censorship of the worst kind, take away the ability to report the truth.
There is no reason why black holes for the IP addresses of those sites cannot be introduced.
Yes it was a simple fact it was a matter of time before the domains got taken down.
Worst is reallocation of IP. So there is a IP conflit so either way you cannot win.
Let me abuse my free speech and be voted down while it lasts..
…(censored)……politicians……(censored)….
courts…….artists will be happy….(censored)…..patent and copyright reform…(censored)…
Edited 2010-11-27 12:55 UTC
Thom,
I really appreciate the work you do here and you dig up a lot of interesting stories. That being said, would you mind toning down your personal views and gripes in the article summaries? It seems to me that recently many of the stories you’ve posted include sarcasm and/or attacks against the readers here.
In the past I’ve come to OSnews for the professional and, comparatively neutral position. Of late I think there has been more of a slant and I’d really like to see the site focus on unbiased reporting.
So would you mind cutting out some of the comments about terrorism, Apple fanboys, unicorns, etc? I’m happy to read your personal thoughts on your blog, but I think OSnews would be better off reporting just the facts.
Thanks for your consideration.
Yes, I would mind. OSNews is not an RSS feed – we’re a place for expressing opinions to foster discussion. You can express dissent to said opinions in the comments, and, as we’ve done lots of times before, you can write dissenting articles as well, which we’ll publish without hesitation.
Well you might want to reconsider the V for Vendetta quote, if nothing else. I’m certainly not going to be passing along any links to articles I’m embarrassed to admit that I have read.
Wait, so you disagree with a quote Thom used on his site, therefore you tell him to remove the quote, so that you won’t feel so embarrassed to share the link.
And in an article about censorship no less. Classic.
No.
I believe my exact words were:
At a minimum. You should have also inferred that I was suggesting that perhaps Thom should feel a little embarrassed to be quoting a comic book/Wakowski bros. film when commenting on serious political issues and should perhaps realise that he risks people not being able to take him seriously, in doing so. Grand eloquent speeches are bad enough when they’re not anachronisms, let alone when they’re from cheesy action films.
Are you really this ridiculously hysterical about everything, or are you just an insufferable demagogue?
‘Try parting your hair on the left’
‘STOP CENSORING ME!’
Nope, don’t see it. I’m guessing the latter w/ perhaps a hint of brown nosing.
Heh, brown nosing? Who is reaching now? If you look back on my past posts, you’ll see that if anything Thom and I butt heads quite often. And besides, not only would I not brown nose (it’s against my nature) but I don’t work for OSNews nor do I wish to, and I’ve declined an offer to write for them recently so what would even be the point?
But none of that matters anyway. If you take such issue with Thom’s writing style, why address it to me, a third party with no direct involvement apart from calling you out for a flameworthy post? If you truly did care about the editor’s quality of writing you’d address him directly and not here, else you’d go to CNN.com or another mainstream news site for your “serious news”. No, I suspect I know your continued motive, and given your moderated status I’m inclined to believe others see it too.
Oh, and then there’s this gem:
Interesting; it’s a tired old trolling method to get under a person’s skin by insulting them twice in one sentence, with irrelevant pseudo-observations no less.
Nice try though! If this were fark.com I’d give you a 4/10 for effort.
Well if these comments are reflective of your general tone and content, I can only thank you.
…are you completely daft? Who was my original comment in reply to? Please, tell me. Oh wait, you already did:
Your own words. I ‘told’ Thom. My next reply was addressed to you, since you so obviously needed some clarification and I obviously wasn’t going to stand for being so thoroughly misrepresented.
Oh Christ, here it comes: the troll allegation. Even were I a troll, this is the internet in the year 2010; we’re long since past crying ‘troll’ being an instant argument winner (or salvager, as the case may be) and you wouldn’t need to point it out to people and attempt to institute a bias, were I a troll. Never mind that I could just as easily label your… critique ‘tone trolling’, if not outright trolling over equating making a suggestion with censorship.
While I’d take an internet popularity contest with a grain of salt, I’d be more inclined to attribute that to my being argumentative and crass. People (at least on this site) find me unpleasant. Big surprise there.
It’s also a tired old method of addressing something childish, if not completely bat-shit crazy: you accused me of attempted censorship over something incredibly innocuous. Your original reply really was ridiculously disproportionate and hysterical and I think you know that as well as I do, lest you wouldn’t resort to doggedly strawmanning me and playing the troll card.
Irrelevant? Irrelevant how? ‘Pseudo-observations?’ How are they distinct from observations proper – or at all distinct from your own ‘pseudo-observations’ regarding me? Vague, undemonstrated, undefined, non-exclusive much? You’re really just throwing everything at me in the hope that something’ll stick; quantity over quality and all that. You’re really not doing a terribly good job of establishing the high ground, here. These are gutter tactics.
Let’s see if you’re serious and not just trolling. Let’s take this off the board as it doesn’t really belong here anyway, and continue via email. Mine is in my profile, I’ll let you start. Continuing like this here would only show your true motives, so please prove me wrong.
Not sure I follow this logic. Actually, I’m sure I don’t.
And you’ve more or less given me the last word here so it’s your turn; I’ve already stated everything I’ve wished to state, based upon what you’ve given me so far. Assuming my email isn’t visible on this site, you can contact me at etnlicarus ‘at the google mail dot com’. It’s my junk inbox so feel free to sign me up to whatever gay porn sites you can find.
Yes Thom, please don’t tone down your personal views and gripes. I always enjoy reading your outrageous opinions. I can never quite tell if you really mean it or if you are just trying to gently wind up us readers. But that is half the fun of this site.
You say you’re open to opposing views, yet you continue to mock and complain about the opposing views in the comments. Politics are getting dragged into technical discussions unnecessarily. Come on, Thom, the site is OSnews, not OSflamebait.
Come on, Thom, the site is OSnews, not OSflamebait.
It has ALWAYS been OSflamebait. And that’s actually one of the reasons I frequent the site so often.
I haven’t been here long, but it does seem like it’s gotten worse over time, to the point that the quality of news is adversely effected. My biggest problems are that Thom mixes factual reporting (well, quotation of other sources.
with his own opinions, and his opinions aren’t always (in my own judgement, are seldom) well-informed.
Which wouldn’t be as big a problem if it was just in the comment sections, but it frequently gets into the article write-ups.
Edit: Thom, here’s a suggestion. Don’t editorialize in the articles themselves, just post in response to the articles with whatever your personal opinion is. Or, for that matter, maybe you could create an OSNews opinion page, or something like that?
Edited 2010-11-30 22:42 UTC
Part of the fun of having an opinion is mocking the opposing opinions. I don’t mock people for the opinions they hold, I just mock their position. They may feel mocked by extension, but that’s part of the risk of having an opinion: the chance someone might disagree and find it ludicrous or even reprehensible.
Mock away, if you wish. I normally apply this logic to my… general dislike… of religion. People have the right to believe what they want to believe, but I won’t be forced to respect something I find entirely ridiculous, nor will I force them to respect the idea there is no God. I have a few religious friends, and out of respect for them, not their faith, I still shut up and bow my head while they say grace.
Anyway, the point is, I had an onion tied to my belt – which was the STYLE at the time…
Edited 2010-11-28 08:36 UTC
I agree. The political comments really turn me away from this site. It’s one thing for someone to submit a story, and then post their personal views in the Comments section – but when their views are part of the “story”, then that takes away from a good bit of integrity from the site. And, the thing is, if it really came down to getting into a debate that has emotional ramifications with a site admin – who do you think would win? The admin can very easily just ban your account without hesitation during an emotional debate. So, this wouldn’t be a level playing field at all.
But, if Thom wants to use this site to spew his personal views and opinions, then so be it. I just feel that it’s really juvenile for him to do so.
You know, back in the 20th century we had these things, these papers, full of news…I believe we called them newspapers. And in these newspapers there was a page for special articles called Editorials, where the editors were able to take a current event and give their…what’s the word…”opinion” on said event.
All snark aside, I had no idea the editorial died with the downfall of the physical newspaper. Geez, people, lighten up! Don’t read it if you don’t like it. I don’t read half of what Thom posts because I consider it irrelevant or just not worth my time, but this paragraph is pretty much the only time you’ll hear me express that because it really isn’t worth getting my panties in a bunch over. If I like it, I read it, and maybe comment in the threads on it. If I don’t like it or don’t find it relevant to my interests, I skip it and go on to the next article or the next website. It’s a fairly simple concept really.
This time Thom is right. Which does not necessarily mean that he is wrong every other time.
If you do not like a newspaper, you’ve got the easiest of options: do not read it. If you do not like an article, yo’ve got the easiest of options: stop reading it. Use induction now.
Pedro.
It’s difficult to write neutered articles.
Only one thing I wish Thom would do is to give some mention as to the opposing sides argument.
But then again that’s why the commenting section is here.
An “Opposing” argument:
The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The
primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one. — Josef Goebbels
As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
— Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies
I can only say that I absolutely concur. Hard work appreciated, and of course there must be a place for Thom’s opinion, too. But sometimes the comments aren’t even related to the article (like the “to annoy unicorn haters” side blow just recently).
Edited 2010-11-28 10:16 UTC
totally slanted. the embedded link was a better article than the original post. just click through.
Well, thank God I am not an editor on Osnews, because it would have been much worse from your point of view.
Thom’s articles and stories are as professional as they can be. I’ve never seen Thom as biased or presenting only one side of the story, and I followed this site for almost five years.
Perhaps you don’t like the new articles and news? What you expect? Even if the site’s name is “Osnews”, the operating system thing is tighter and tighter. I regard osnews.com as a news site concerning tech news and not only. Think of osnews as a “slashdot”-like site, but of course, our readers are smarter than theirs.
If you don’t like discussions about rights, about freedom, please continue to read your government’s papers, the Holy Bible, The Talmud and leave the Internet alone.
I assume you’re not necessarily familiar with the meaning of the word “professional” when it comes to journalism. If it were professional, there would be no bias in any of the articles, and both sides of the argument would be given.
Troll.
Taking over websites without a court order – and even outside USA? WTF!?
We need an alternative to ICANN, preferably done in true F/LOSS spirit.
EDIT: Alternative DNS root servers would be nice now.
Edited 2010-11-27 13:55 UTC
Taking over websites without a court order – and even outside USA? WTF!?
First thing a domain register does not need a court order to remove a domain entry or override it. Never has required it infact.
This is no different to the rules of safe harbor that google uses to protect self. You are not guilty of adding the crime if you are informed of your service being used for illegal actions and you block it.
.com .net .org .edu .mil .info and .us are all USA controlled domains. So if you have a registration on them what is illegal in the USA grounds for having the domain taken.
Now since ICANN is also in the USA it could be used to apply USA will to other countries. Either clean up your countries domain or we delist your complete country.
The same rules of safe harbour could be used to create IP black holes for sites wanted blocked. They don’t have to stop at the DNS level. DNS level is nothing more than a warning shot.
The names removed were second-level domains. Neither ICANN nor the root servers have any role in second-level domains in the TLDs involved.
Irrelevant.
Point is that U.S.A. has betrayed whatever trust we had left, so it’s time to break free.
It is relevant if you care about accuracy in who you are blaming for the actions or finding remedies for those actions.
There are 295 top-level domains, of which a couple dozen are managed by entities that are subject to US law. If you want to break free, get a name in one (or more) of the 200+ other top-level domains. Oh, and use a registrar that isn’t subject to US law. Of course, you’ll be subject to other countries laws (e.g., .LY’s recent actions)…
This isn’t rocket science.
Not only that, but even if you “break free” we will still hunt you down and launch a Tomahawk missile up your ass.
The US government isn’t forcing views on anyone. The hosts of the websites, and by extension the websites themselves, are within the US and therefore within the legal jurisdiction of the US. It isn’t a “block” its a seizure. The sites don’t show up outside the US anymore because the website’s United State’s (and only) host location no longer exists. If said sites had a host outside the US, we would probably piss and moan about it (ok… maybe not “us”; more the ones who are being stolen from) but the US legal system would not have the authority to do anything about it. As an example, a previous poster asked about why Wikileaks has not been seized. Wikileaks is hosted by PeRiQuito AB out of Stockholm. The US Justice Department has no authority in Sweden, obviously. They can’t seize it.
As another exmple, in the article, the website that was shut down was specifically referred to as being hosted by GoDaddy. Go Daddy is a US based company. Completely within the jurisdiction of the Justice Department.
You’re mistaken.
The host (i.e., the servers and the company/people they belong to) have not been seized. The domain has been seized – as in, the US told ICANN: block that domain name. While it may be legal in the US to seize domain names without so much as a complaint (let alone a court order), such actions certainly are not legal in Europe.
This would be like Germany dumping boatloads of toxic waste in the Rhine, polluting The Netherlands downstream. I can assure you that The Netherlands would then have an international legal leg to stand on to confront Germany – even if such dumping is legal in Germany.
Edited 2010-11-27 14:07 UTC
First I’d like to point out that if you look at the website graphic, a seizure warrant was issued by the courts and they are not required to tell you before seizing your stuff. In a practical sense it prevents things like drug dealers flushing their stash prior to thepolice showing up. Anyway, you are right, but the domain, for that one example anyway, is still held by GoDaddy within the US. If they shut down a website completely unrelated to the US at all then I’ll change my tune. Frankly, a more accurate anology would be that the Justice Department stopped the flow of downstream toxic waste; not starting it. People are pissed because they got cut off from stolen goods? Color me devastated.
1) It might be illegal in the US to download illegally uploaded content, but it’s not illegal in many European countries.
2) Many of these sites do not do anything that should be even remotely illegal, just as much as informing someone you can buy weed in the college district (bloody obvious) should not be illegal.
3) Most importantly, I see that you take the “guilty until proven otherwise”-approach to justice.
Good luck with that.
Edited 2010-11-27 14:42 UTC
Thom, I’ve noticed in this and ore comments that you know a lot less about the law than you like to pretend. Your position has been made indefensible by several facts listed by some posters, and now you want to throw out charges of guilty until proven otherwise? Do you know what a seizure warrant implies? Do you know how it’s obtained? Do you know what reasonable cause means?
I’m reminded of another thread where you screamed about censorship in the US but clearly didn’t know that obscenity has never been considered protected speech. (Or perhaos you knew and you pretended not to, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.)
I agree with another poster that your comments can make a story more lively, but at least try to inform yourself before making them. Otherwise you do no one any favors.
Which facts?
Uhm, it’s still censorship. In China, criticizing the government too harshly is not protected speech either – does that mean the Chinese government does not employ censorship?
Edited 2010-11-27 15:17 UTC
Thom, the statement I’m referring to was, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that a government institution issuing fines for profanities on broadcasting networks is a direct violation of this First Amendment.”
http://www.osnews.com/story/23739/FCC_Illustrates_Its_Inability_to_…
Depending on the circumstances, profanities can be interpreted as “obscenity”; therefore, they aren’t always protected under the first amendment.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx?id=18508
Notice that the FCC’s regulation of profanities was a consequence of a judgment by the US Supreme Court, in keeping with a very long history of how to interpret the First Amendment. Your comments were at best misinformed.
Again, the point isn’t whether I agree with you in the circumstances that inflamed you; the point is that you were making grand legal pronouncements without knowing what you were talking about. That may be highly self-gratifying and it may get you a lot of high-fives from the small crowd who agree with you, but it’s not responsible journalism, and most people who have thought about this will roll their eyes.
So, again: go look up what a “seizure warrant” is; go look up what “probable cause” means. Only then can we have an intelligent conversation about “guilty until proven otherwise”.
It IS a violation of the First Amendment, since the First Amendment ITSELF says NOTHING about profanities or whatsoever. In other words, if profanities are NOT considered protected speech, this decision was made IN SPITE of the First Amendment, NOT because of it. As such, it is STILL a violation of the First Amendment – it’s just that lawmakers and courts sanctioned it as okay.
I have a rule in my house that states you’re not allowed to smoke inside, period. However, since some of my friends do smoke, I make an exception when it’s bad weather outside – just stand by the garden door in my living room while it’s opened. This is still a violation of my no smoking rule – yet it is sanctioned as okay.
Even a million search warrants and ten million probable causes does not make anyone guilty. Unless a judge (or in the case of the US, the rather – to me – curious and outdated ‘jury’) decides otherwise, no amount of policemen or warrants or hearsay will ever make you guilty of anything.
I’ve served on several juries, including one in which an drug runner was released (not acquitted – he pled guilty) because several jury members felt that any but the minimum punishment was too harsh for the crime. If I were accused, I would personally prefer that ordinary citizens (whose experiences were more likely to be akin to mine) determine my guilt and punishment, rather than an aloof professional judge.
Maybe that’s a cultural thing, though. Americans (and especially Texans) seem to have more faith in the individual than Europeans, AFAICT.
Thom, you’re a smart guy. How do you fail to notice the inconsistencies in your reasoning? You appeal to judges when convenient to your argument (“Unless a judge…”) right after you don’t allow someone else to do the same (“it’s just that …courts sanctioned it as okay”).
Take my advice: hang it up before you embarrass yourself any further. Your passion has gotten in the way of your sense.
You’re comparing two entirely different things. Whether someone is guilty or not in the legal sense is for judges/juries to decide. In the strictest sense, nobody is guilty until they say so. You may still disagree with their rulings on a personal level, but legally speaking, they decide who is guilty.
Whether or not something violates the First Amendment or not is something else entirely. The Fist Amendment is quite clear in what it does cover – namely, everything and all.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
This means that if the US government censors certain words, this is a direct violation of the First Amendment – since it abridges the freedom of speech. This is a non-negotiable fact; if I say you’re not allowed to smoke in my house, yet I still allow you to do so under certain conditions, that allowance is a violation of the no smoking rule.
The fact of the matter, however, is that the Supreme Court simply allows this violation to exist because they believe it serves a greater good. However, it’s just their interpretation at that point in time – for all we know, a few years from now, a Supreme Court consisting of different members will decide otherwise.
If you look at the text of the First Amendment as-is, the US government censoring certain words is a direct violation of the First Amendment – no matter if the Supreme Court allows that violation to exist or not.
Are you talking about the FCC censoring “vulgar” language? I do think it straddles a gray area of ‘freedom of speech’. It isn’t against the law to say those words. You just cannot say those words ON AIR. You can express the same idea without those words. I think that’s the gray area. I don’t really like it and I think its childish for us as a nation to hold on to this “ban” of dirty words on over tha air tv and radio. I just don’t think anyone in the US really thinks banning dirty words on a few channels is somehow limiting them from a full spectrum of ideas and news. There are plenty of other places to go (pay tv, pay radio, the internet) to get all the vulgarity you need in a day.
Thom, a “violation” depends on a lot of things, but at the very least it depends on the meaning of the law as understood by it’s authors and by those who voted for it, not what a subsequent reader would think. Really, if the interpretation of a law were as straightforwared as you assert the interpretation of the first amendment should be, then there would be no need for judges, and “guilty until proven otherwise” would be legitimate, especially in a case where copyright is being violated: one could see immediately whether the material was copyrighted. Most amusingly, you are now asserting that lawmakers and courts are “guilty until proven otherwise” of violating the First Amendment.
The first amendment was never believed to allow all speech, such as yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire. If you think that is defensible under the First Amendment, then you have very different approach to the interpretation of the law than the people who write them (and most people I know). After all, the same people who wrote and approved that law also wrote and approved the nation’s first laws on copyright, which themselves abridge freedom of speech — that is, if “speech ” is to be interpreted as broadly as you assert. Personally, I do not believe those men were as obtuse as you imply.
I am also reminded how often Thom writes passionately about violations of X software licenses/agreements of use, specifically open source software licenses, and how those that don’t follow those rules are great villains.
However when it comes to violations of other licenses, such as copyright violations are just and the consequences that follow are injust.
Apologies for any confusion in my explanation but I find a double standard in these two arguments. I wonder if one should respect open source licenses, shouldn’t one also respect closed source licenses and the consequences that follow when they are violated?
Disclaimer: I don’t know of any cease and desists regarding open source violations. So there seems to be a double standard when enforcing different licenses/agreements of use.
so what. The authorities in this case aren’t going after people “download(ing) illegally uploaded content” are they? (as though you could separate downloading and uploading when dealing with torrents anyway).
To quote you again: “illegally uploaded content”. welp. I don’t feel bad for people being deprived of this content even if it is legal for them to download it. By your own admission it shouldn’t have been uploaded in the first place.
A lot of the law needs to change, but you missed the boat with that bit
I completely agree with you. It’s amazing how people here will defend to the death their alleged inalienable right to STEAL. Now, of course, you have the Black Helicopter Gang saying, “Oh…now WikiLeaks is next…” and other nonsense, completely ignoring the fact that copyright infringement is not the same as free speech issues. If they were, WikiLeaks and jihadist websites would have been blocked already.
So…why throw up these canards about WikiLeaks, free speech, etc…? How else can they rationalize their thievery.
Edited 2010-11-27 15:13 UTC
In criminal law, “theft” is defined as “the dishonest taking of property belonging to another person with the intention of depriving the owner permanently of its possession” (free dictionary) and “the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it” (Webster’s).
This just doesn’t sound like what’s happening here; Big Media is not being deprived of any personal property a’tall. IANAL, but I believe you meant to criticize “copyright infringement”, which is a very different thing.
Copyright (in the USA) is a privilege granted to an author by constitutional authority for a limited time for the explicit purpose of promoting science and the useful arts. Property rights, by contrast, are considered God-given and inalienable and cannot be legally removed except by due process under the law; they never expire (for example).
Copyright infringement is still wrong, of course, but it isn’t theft, no matter how many times Big Media repeats the big lie. And yes, the difference matters – if copyrighted material is “property” and violating copyright is “theft”, then control of the material can only be removed after due process – which is, of course, the goal of Big Media. Tried watching “Steamboat Willie” lately? 😉
Frankenfuss is using the term “steal”, colloquially. Steal means more than your legal definition of “theft” as it is used in common language. For example, the term “stealing cable” has been widely accepted to mean the act of getting cable TV signals for free without authorization.
Anyway, when people get hung up over the word “steal” when it comes to piracy, I at times will use the word “cheat” instead. Pirates of IP are cheating the creators out of rightful payment, just like one who sneaks into a movie theater to watch a movie for free is cheating the movie theater out of rightful payment.
So I will alter Frankenfuss’s original post, thusly:
It’s amazing how people here will defend to the death their alleged inalienable right to CHEAT others.
People don’t like to be cheated any more than they like to be stolen from. And cheating can be worse than stealing; it depends on the nature of the cheating.
Possibly, but he did put the word in all caps and then reinforce that use with synonyms. And language is important, particularly in this case where “STEAL” and “thievery” have very different connotations than “copyright infringement”.
Nor are Big Media’s estimates of lost revenue from copyright infringement even vaguely credible.
So I stand firmly by my post. It’s “copyright infringement”, not “thievery” or “cheating” or the even more amusing “piracy”. Arrrr.
And where did this term originate? I’m guessing it was coined by cable companies or reporters, not by ordinary man who I am certain will call it something like ‘getting cable for free’. And again in this case it’s not stealing, it’s accessing something which you have not paid to access.
As for people copying stuff they have no right of copying. I don’t know, but I think we as a people reap what we sow. There’s a celebration of utter greed in this world, and the corruption in our governments show us that those who are supposed to lead us by example live by the ‘grab what you can when you can’ principle.
People see their taxes go to saving banks which have lost their money through massive gamblings again in the name of greed. Why would this coming generation feel any reason to ‘do the right thing’? I sure as hell can’t blame them for copying what they can and use their money on things they can’t copy when everyone at the top is grabbing all they can without shame.
What goes around comes around.
Well, you got the first part right… as a people, we reap what we sow. We are a corrupt and greedy society, and so we elect corrupt and greedy politicians. That stuff starts from the bottom up, not from the top down. The corrupt politicians of the future are the same ones right now who are leeching off of their neighbor’s cable and/or broadband internet connection. It’s not like people are turned to the dark side as soon as they get elected…
As I said above, if we all choose to be crooked like those who are in power, those of us who eventually make it to the top will be the same way; it’s like families who have 4-5 generations that end up on welfare. So if we want to see REAL change, the cycle has to stop somewhere, and it can begin with us …
“People are pissed because they got cut off from stolen goods? Color me devastated.”
There is no such thing as “stolen goods” when it comes to a digital realm, there are “copied goods”
Let’s leave newspeak where it belongs; in Orwell’s 1984
Do you have any evidence of ICANN’s involvement? I’m honestly curious. The only thing I’ve seen is GoDaddy blaming ICANN, specifically the torrentfreak.com article states:
‘“I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN,†he explained.’
The way ICANN works and its role in coordinating generic top-level domains, it would be beyond surprising if they were to have any role in the takedown of the domains. It is far more likely that either GoDaddy removed the names or VeriSign did (since all the names appear to be in COM/NET).
That is a good point. Is there anyway to verify this?
>>> The US Justice Department has no authority in Sweden, obviously. They can’t seize it.
LOL. Where have you been? Iraq, Afghanistan, Central America, Far East, they are doing it all the time. Wake up.
Notice how the whole list are .net and .com websites. I guess they didn’t want to start directly doing international precedent.
Also, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
Again go threw the list of Alternative DNS root. Notice how many are USA based. All registers have to obey the country they are based in.
All routing also has to obey the country they are physically in.
All under the rules of Safe Harbor. Sorry to say the law is the law. You cannot knowingly support a criminal in there crimes. Most countries have this in there laws.
Sorry free speech does not cover copyright infringement. Running your own DNS servers will not help long term when you remember the routing has to obey the same rules.
.net .com are fair warning. Simplest and the fastest todo. Expect to see more domains outside .net .com effected over the next year.
Remember we are running low on IPV4 address space. So reallocating IP’s will be beneficial for buying more time.
With DNSSEC now starting to get deployed, I doubt alternative DNS roots will matter much anymore.
I’ve been thinking, maybe it doesn’t matter all that much anymore. All you have to do is find a country-code TLD which is not based in the US.
Like .de, .nl, uk., .se or .fr and so on.
Maybe even a non-country-code which isn’t based in the us: .eu
The US will not disable the whole TLD just for a few domains and while the US can try to put pressure on the people handling the other TLD, the US doesn’t have anything to say about what the TLD does.
I won’t go into the debate whenever those websites are criminal or not, since there haven’t even been a court ruling issued for them. Moreover, the laws are not the same in every countries, so here we have America enforcing their “laws” to everyone. In that case I prefer China, at least they only enforce their laws to their own country.
What I merely wanted to point at, it that it’s possible to have other root DNS. If ICANN is no longer neutral, then countries will have to have their own root DNS, so that they can selectively choose which domains they want filtered or not. They can also protect their own TLD from being overridden by the ICANN (in their country). That’s what will happen in the end I fear.
And what happens when (say) China decides to create a .COM in “their” root?
But it IS illegal to upload illegal content within the US. Whether it is legal to download in Netherlands is irrelevant; they have already broken US law by uploading and/or hosting it in the first place. The legallity of an act in another country does not cancel out the illegality of the act conducted here. I could care less if you download illegal content in the Netherlands; if its from a US site though, that site is going to get hammered for it.
As far as whether they are guilty or not… the court will decide. I believe in allowing law enforcement to do their job, which includes prevention and investigation of potentially illegal activities. They thought the website was doing illegal things, a court agreed with the evidence and signed the warrant, and the website was seized. Now its a judicial matter and both sides can argue their case. Maybe they will win, maybe they won’t. With the particular site in question, maybe a conspiracy charge? I don’t know. None of us have access to the particular case files. You are right in that telling someone something that is more or less common knowledge and not making any overt actions beyond that isn’t illegal, but, in your example, people coming to you specifically becuase you know “the guy” to buy weed from and can take them to him is facilitating a criminal act, and that IS illegal.
Some sites were closed off WITHOUT even a notice or a court order. How would you like it if the police seized all your belongings, without notice, without a court order?
Apparently, you are a-okay with such actions. I suggest you move to China or North Korea, you’ll feel right at home there.
There was a court order. They received a warrant from a district court and proceeded with executing that order.
Folks, when people steal other peoples stuff, it needs to be dealt with, or we have anarchy. How would you like to spend your whole life working on your talents, finally be able to produce stuff that people want and then not be able to charge for it. That’s wrong, and what the torrent nerds are doing is wrong.
I’m happy to see some enforcement of the law, and am happy to see it being done the right way.
Now with that said, what does concern me are the vast number of agencies and the searches and seizures that occur without probable cause and without a warrant (TSA airport screening). This is very troublesome. It is as if the idea of a Representative Republic exists in name only. This TSA has no accountability to the law and the 4th amendment. This is a problem and a serious one. And this kind of power needs to be checked and challenged.
We need the law and the enforcement of the law. We cannot have anarchy, but we also cannot have a dictatorship either.
But, the owner did not receive a notice of the warrant, which, as far as I understand it, is necessary.
Copyright infringement is not stealing. It’s copyright infringement. If it were indeed stealing, we would not be seeing such ridiculous damages.
“There’s much to be said for this view of “dealing with” piracy—which is why we have long argued that the judgments handed down in P2P lawsuits against twenty-something music fans have been ludicrous. $1.92 million? $675,000? No one walking out of a Walmart with a stack of Richard Marx discs under his arm would be subject to such penalties.”
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/obama-administratio…
Nope. Notice is not required at all before the seizure to protect evidence, and they are only required to make reasonable attempts to give notice during the seizure and afterwars.
Considering I found that the actual owner of torrent-finder is currently in Egypt, it makes giving notice difficult.
Oh… and the big red picture on the website with the badges all over it saying “This website had been seized by ICE in accordance with signed federal warrant pursuant to US Code blah blah blah”?
Yes. That would be a notification.
Also here is a few other articles I found.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html?_r=2&re…
http://rapfix.mtv.com/2010/11/26/onsmash-rapgodfathers-websites-sei…
Edited 2010-11-27 16:16 UTC
But yet you have this on your site:
© 1997-2010 OSNews LLC. All Rights Reserved. OSNews and the OSNews logo are trademarks of OSNews.
Source Code © 2007-2010, Adam Scheinberg, except where noted
Why would you ever need that on your site if you believe that copyright infringement is not stealing?
Sigh…
No, copyrights are about COPIES hence the term copyright. Say you use some photo or graphic that has been copyrighted in your website, are you actually stealing the photo? NO, it still exists but you have used it without the authors permission.
If it were stealing then the author would no longer have the graphic for his own use.
Logic fail. Why does he need the copyright on the website? He is OK with copyright infringement. It is OK by him then that I can copy his whole website and just put it a different domain. So please Thom if you truly believe it’s not stealing, take the copyright off your website.
I agree with you about the TSA. They have one… caveat, if you will… that allows them to circumvent what would normally be a clear cut privacy violations case. No airport within the US is obligated to use the TSA. You are, in essence, giving implied consent to be searched by utilizing an airport that choses to use TSA for security. There is nothing in the law that says that airports, which are not government owned, have to use TSA. In fact, some congressmen are calling for airports to drop TSA completely and go with private security… and some airports are considering it.
No, but the TSA sets the procedures. So even if the airports switch to private contractors, the TSA tells them what machines to use, and what pat-down methods to use.
I disagree. Everyone has a prima facie right to travel where and as they see fit, which should only ever be interrupted in extraordinary circumstances. If I have a right to do something, and you order me that I won’t be allowed to exercise that right unless I do what you want first, that is extortion. Even if I comply with your demands, it doesn’t make it consent, because the demand was what violated my rights. It isn’t consent in any legal or moral sense anymore than it is consent if I hand over my wallet to a thug, because he promised as long as I gave it over quietly he wouldn’t pull the trigger. I can weigh the costs and decide handing it over is better than dying, but my “consent” with the thief’s demand does not magically exonerate him of any moral or legal guilt.
If there were free competition in airport security processes, I might agree with you, but there is not. All “public” airports and airlines are heavily controlled by the US Federal government, and as I mentioned above, the TSA dictates the security methods whether or not the airport chooses to use TSA employees for screeners. There is no escaping it, and there is no choice. You either “consent” to the thugs’ demands or you are denied your right to fly.
Some airports do not make use of the services of the TSA, but they do have to abide by similair rules.
If you are interrested in reading up on the subject, you should really look at this blog-post:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/tsa_backscatter.html
Also it doesn’t mean the TSA-officers are happy about it all themselfs:
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2010/11/18/tsa-enhance…
Summary: these procedures do not work, they don’t not make you safer.
Simple example any terrorist can just blow up the people when they are queued waiting to go through these procedures.
I would recommend reading, or possibly re-reading, the definition of anarchy:
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secA1.html#seca11
I would also like to point out that Copyright Infingement != Theft! See:
http://www.osnews.com/thread?451308
…if you own a domain name and use it for spamming, phishing/financial fraud, hosting malicious software, sales of counterfeit pharma, or other actively-malicious/criminal activity, then you have nothing to fear from ICANN.
But run a bittorrent search on the same domain? Now THAT’s over the line.
Have you not noticed the reduction in spam. 12 months ago ICANN started degregistation of sites knowing containing malicious software and doing phishing.
Also the network to network routers have been doing IP blocking against some sites as well. Problem now is a lot of spam comes from botnets.
I am sorry to say bittorrent sites hosing illegal software are used by bot masters to ship there software as altered closed source software. There always will be 1 or 2 non guilty caught in a clean sweep.
This is just the next step in the anti-spam process.
All the illegal usage of bittorrent could not go on for ever.
Honestly, no, I hadn’t noticed any decrease in spam. If anything, I’ve seen increase in some types of spam – E.g. spam targeting EMail-to-SMS gateways & manual spamming of contact forms (to get around CAPTCHAs).
That’s certainly good to hear, any online sources with details (I couldn’t find any mentions with some quick googling)?
Yes. Domains play more of a “support” role in the spam world these days (hosting the sites linked to by spam).
If the underlying goal of these seizures is to combat spam, then it seems a needlessly round-about way of doing it (as opposed to, say, fixing CAN-SPAM). But judging from the list of seized domain names, the main targets seem to be knock-off/counterfeit consumer goods.
Regarding the original article: Going to those sites, you see a warrent was issued in the seizure of those domains.
Here are the laws cited, stating that the US has broad powers to seize property being used in crimes; specifically, anti-counterfeiting laws:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00000981—-000-.ht…
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002323—-000-.ht…
I’m not quite sure how Chapter 18, section 2323 applies to this case, yet, but I’m sure that if someone can find the warrent in question, it’d list why.
Now, the point I wanted to reply to:
Actually… not one of the domains taken down were torrent sites. They were all purveyors of counterfeit physical goods, such as “louis-vuitton-outlet-store.com,” “newstylerolex.com,” and “boxsetseries.com.” Searching for their names on Ripoff Report results in some interesting complaints.
I’ll agree that these actions seem to be unlawful… but it’s hardly a case of electronic crimes being targeted disproportionately.
Edited 2010-11-28 05:05 UTC
I can only edit that post for 20 minutes. Someday, OSNews will fix that bug.
Anyhow… I don’t have time to do a full scan, but it looks like all these domains were all counterfeiting operations being run by the same company. I’d have to do a lot more investigative work to be sure that all of them were the one company…
Edited 2010-11-28 05:27 UTC
Ok, since I’m getting the impression you are not from the US, and I think there is a bit of a mistranslation or misunderstanding. They got a court order. Before any assets were seized a federal judge seated in a district court looked at the argument made by attorney filing the case and signed a warrant authorizing ICE to seize those assets in pursuit of a criminal investigation. I don’t know how much more of a court order you can possibly get.
Where is the official list of banned websites?
Is banning the domains the only action they do or is it part of an investigation? If Torrent-finder.com adds tnerrot-rednif.org will that get blocked?
Who tips off about the names?
For how long the domains are blocked?
Will the domain names be blocked after they expire and a new owner with new content comes in?
~There are more questions that arise here!
Give me a few minutes I’ll try to find the article again, but from an interview with an ICE agent i found concerning the seizures is that it was done as part of evidence collection in an investigation that is still ongoing. Domain names aren’t all that are getting taken. The article referenced torrent-finder, but the main context of the article was about a rap website that had everything taken into custody. I mean a full blown raid… servers, files, back-up drives, everything
Update: The blocks function outside of the US too. In other words, the US is forcing its views upon the rest of the world once again.
uh, no.
USA based websites with domains registered with USA based registrars pointing to websites running on USA hosted servers. This is completely within the US jurisdictions and legal rights. They did not touch sites hosted outside of USA legal jurisdictions.
But, no, people will slant everything (I’m guilty of it too) one way or the other to suit their views.
oh, and uless they explicitly change laws, then just because they don’t “host” copyright materials, they are still participating in the “crime” by pointing you to the files. This is a HUUUGE debate at the moment and will be interesting to see how it ends up.
<rant>
People bitching about thom’ opinions need to look over the site history. It has ALWAYS had opinions. Just go look at Eugenias (did I spell that right?) posts in the past. It isn’t something new. What IS new is the amount of politics being thrown in. But if you don’t like it, you don’t have to look at the site.
How very American of me, ‘eh? I don’t want to automatically stifle someones dissent
And for you non-americans; please stop judging the populace through the politicians. It is really getting old.
Edited 2010-11-27 16:46 UTC
Americans rock. And I’m being serious. Too bad your politicians appear to be even lousier than ours :/.
Yeah, I agree
Most countries appear to need a complete overhaul of their systems, the USA needs it *that* much more.
Indeed…
It saddens me when these discussion topics yield comments such as “just tell America to fuck off”…
Good luck with that theory. Unfortunately, just about every government out there is corrupt to some extent, and it’s only a matter of time before the money wins out over common sense and individuals rights.
I, and many people I know, are often times just as much against what is reported here as the rest of you, and yet we’re not telling ourselves to fuck off… Many Americans are just as appalled at the shenanigans being pulled by their government as the rest of the world is. Finding a way to change it properly is the challenging part.
The american people should get rid of their government the same way they got rid of the british…
Didn’t the only good president of U.S.A. write the following?: “And what country can preserve its liberties, if the rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms”
See below why this isn’t quite as common in many other countries.
It would probably help if you had a politial spectrum that was a little broader than right-wing to more right-wing.
You have elections and yet you vote in grade ‘A’ morons like Michele Bachmann who consider homosexuality: “We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders” – excuse me you unsightly harridan, I don’t suffer from a ‘disorder’ given that I don’t talk to my invisible friend each night.
So whilst the economy is nose diving into a toilet you have morons like her focused on what consenting adults do behind closed doors. If you don’t want to be judged based on your politicians then stop voting in morons to run your country – get some people who have some basic grasp of what is important and is the concern of the government and what isn’t the concern of the government such as what consenting adults do behind closed doors. I really can’t believe that in a first world country you have over half the population taking Genesis literally or voting based on the candidates position on the three G’s (God, Guns and Gays).
Edited 2010-11-28 08:34 UTC
You are upset because you know what you are doing is wrong.
And you are the reason why America is in the sorry state that it is in – the scary part people like Jefro vote and have children
Because ther’re never hate crimes in New Zealand. New Zealanders are highly sophisticated, and have never struggled with homophobia (or, for that matter, racism).
Where did I state that – reading things into my post that I never implied.
Jefro is a symptom of a nation who can’t get their head around the notion that limited government means not only the government out of the marketplace but also out of the lives of individuals. The idea of being a social conservative and yet libertarian on the economy is a contradiction in terms. You either believe freedom across the board or you’re a big government statist – take your pick but don’t try to call yourself pro-freedom when you’re little more than a socially conservative socialist.
Maybe you should pick up “Capitalism and Freedom” and turn to the chapter dealing with political, economic and social freedom rather than listening to right wing nuts like Anne Coulter or Sean Hannity for your daily dosage of drongoism.
Edited 2010-12-01 03:39 UTC
Once again you are blanketing me in with “all Americans”. Not every American voted for her. I didn’t. Especially since I can’t, since she is in MN and I’m quite aways off from there
And if I cared to look at your politicians, I’m sure I could find plenty of bigoted, backwards thinking assholes in New Zealand, Kaiwai. But that wouldn’t make me think every person in NZ is a douche bag, now would it?
Oh, I also like how you pull out questionable statistics like the “63% of Americans take the bible literally!!!111” from a questionable poll done in 2005. Get your head out of your ass.
She is an example of a bigger problem – American’s voting in fucking morons whose only policies are orientated around the three G’s. I switch onto US politics and I see morons after morons being paraded and voted in by the unwashed masses – not because they have a coherent policy when it comes to tax reform, reducing government bloat or improving economic performance but questions relating to stupid shit that are non-issues in most first world countries.
Mate, you guys are still having debates about shit we stopped caring about 40 years ago. Abortion – I’ve been following elections since I was 12/13 and I did not see a single election being fought on one sides position on abortions over another. Fast forward to when civil unions were passed – again, the following election the election wasn’t fought on whether civil unions were good or bad – the question was on economic management, lower taxes, social welfare reforms and making the public health care system more efficient.
Sorry, we might have some morons here but the parties must be doing a pretty damn good job keeping them away from the camera’s, towing the party line and the party leadership focused on the big picture rather than shit that has flowed under the bridge 40 years ago!
No, it was Genesis not the bible – how about reading peoples posts FULLY before you make a idiot of yourself. Again, when an election of a president all hinges on whether he believes in God and whether God created the earth in 7 days you know your country should be getting picked up on the short bus for the special kids along with Saudi Arabia and Iran.
You have an absolutely amazing amount of hatred.
And I like how you defend your Bible claim by saying its just Genesis they take literally. Semantics, my friend.
Anyways, I’m not responding anymore since it’s pointless and you will have a come back to anything I say, no matter what it is.
Remember the adage about arguing on the internet…
Why is it hatred – I’m merely pointing out the obvious be it in an undiplomatic way.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/feb/16/20040216-113955-206…
With such idiocy I bet Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo are turning in their graves as ‘joe six pack’ takes a book of narratives as a true historical account to the present day.
The adage is only true if you think you’re going to change anything – in my case this is an outlet for frustration and anger and nothing to do with wanting to change the world. We as a species are royally screwed so one might as well sit back, enjoy a cup of coffee and watch the world drive off a cliff.
Thanks for providing me and my colleagues with a damn good laugh at the end of a tedious Monday.
Isn’t New Zealand the armpit of Australia?
Who the hell cares what a Bogan like yourself thinks, anyway. The USA should just bomb the hell out of your stupid-ass sheep-pooping country and turn it into a parking lot for the Aussies.
Sure but other countries have a political spectrum that spans from left to right and the morons on each side cancel out. You on the other hand, you only have a spectrum from right-wing to more right-wing. Not good for the political balance.
On the other hand, you are a nation founded by religious nutballs
Hi Thom,
I would like to suggest a correction to your article. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act actually has not passed yet. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 18, but it still needs to be voted on by both the Senate and the House, and of course will also need to sustain a presidential veto before it becomes law.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3804
The fact that this is still an ongoing legislation makes the ICE’s actions even more tyrannical – they’re enforcing a law that hasn’t even been through bicameralism and presentment. In addition to this being an inexcusable act of censorship, it is also a serious separation of powers issue.
-Greg
ICE’s been doing this for a while now – before the COICA bill was even created.
tvshack.net, ninjavideo.net, and a host of other domains went “dark” back at the end of June. The stupid part is that most of these sites provide no infringing material, only easier access to the locations where it is hosted.
The irony is that seizing the domains is such a pathetic attempt at combating this problem. tvshack.cc was back within 24 hours of the seizure. It makes ICE look like a bunch of idiots.
For this exact purpose http://dns.telecomix.org was set up a few months back.
Censorship for the protection of large USA Entities and Governmental Philosophy…
What ever…
Sad State of Affairs
I just may have to move. If I wait too long, they might close the borders. I’m starting to think we don’t learn much from history.
First grabs to show they mean things for real, then popup companies and domains all the rage to counter the ‘police’ of the net. Then middle layer steps to try and counter the counter movement. THen finally the only way to get online with a domain will be to show you are a ‘business’ that has been taxed to be such and then pay heavily for this ‘legitimate’ business playfield the governmint claims they have created and such have a right to be paid for this regulation. Bottomline, the man is up your ass in and out daily like a ganster shakedown. Welcome to the new world economy. Its not a wonder the world is not rolling over in its collective grave on this, the US police step in and help with the new world order where it can, gratius.
Talk about over-reacting. I’m sorry everything cant be an unregulated, uncontrolled free-for-all that half of these posters wish it to be.
I’m not quite sure where you’d move to that doesn’t have similar laws or are moving in this direction. Or even if you do find a place, I’m sure it has other laws that limit your “freedoms” even more. How many countries actually legally protect your freedom of speech? not many.
You will have reason to panic when they start doing nation wide word filtering and blocking on the entire set of tubes running in and out.
This isn’t China, I highly doubt it’ll ever get like China, so stop being so damn over the top.
True. But I can name one: Denmark. And thanks to certain cartoons the protection of free speech has increased (in Denmark).
Our politicians are fucked up, but not as much as the demopublicans in the U.S.
Wait, what?Are you saying that I cant sell counterfeit goods on the internet without risk of being shut down? This is an outrage!
True, you’e turning into your old arch-nemesis USSR more than China.
It looks like scam sites anyway guys, I don’t see much of a problem with it unless it was some big shot websites like Facebook, OSNews; or, just some small business selling used DVDs.
“The US has started seizing the domain names of various websites through ICANN”
ICANN is responsible for a subset of top-level domains (specifically, the generic and some sponsored TLDs), not for the names inside those domains. It looks like all the second-level domains that were shut down were in .COM and .NET, both run by VeriSign. It could be the Feds went to VeriSign and said “remove these domains” and they did so. Only VeriSign has the ability to modify the contents of the .COM and .NET zones. It is a bit surprising VeriSign acted without a court order, but presumably their corporate lawyers saw following US government requests to be (understandably) in the corporate best interest.
Or, it could be that the Feds went to GoDaddy and GoDaddy initiated the removal. In this case, VeriSign most likely wouldn’t have known anything about it since add/modify/delete requests are fully automated.
In either case, it is very unlikely ICANN was even aware of the action and even if they were, they’d have no role one way or another to stop it.
Why GoDaddy blamed ICANN is a bit of a question, however it could be because .COM/.NET are the most desirable TLDs and GoDaddy didn’t want to risk their relationship with VeriSign. It’s always easy to hate on ICANN.
Well, let’s hope you’re right on this one.
Myself, I think that what we’ll see in the short term is everyone bowing down to the new overlords, many without even knowing. Maybe a few minor riots here and there, but at most hundreds of people. Nothing serious.
My guess is that the vast majority of the population will do absolutely nothing. Because they don’t care. After all, those websites are for piracy and counterfeiting, right ? And airport security is a protection again evil terrorists from hell, right ?
V for Vendetta… Good choice of movie, indeed. But that will come later.
Written as it is, that sentence is misleading. Anyone who doesn’t investigate further will believe that there is a new censorship law in the US, when that isn’t true at all.
The “recently passed censorship law” that the story references isn’t a law. As even the link explains, COICA is a bill that passed a committee in the senate. This is a far cry from being a law.
This is one example why it makes sense for Europe/Asia to strive for technological independence from the US. That means it may be a good idea to be able to survive & thrive without Apple, Microsoft, Google.
If RMS was not american, this would be an angle he would be speaking about a lot more ;-).
An EU-sanctioned root server might be a good idea.
Then again, an EU-sanctioned root server might be the worst idea in the history of the internet.
Root servers, which serve TLDs, are irrelevant to these takedowns which occurred in COM and NET.
And besides, there are already 2 root servers in Europe (K run by RIPE and I run by Netnod/Autonomica).
Yeah in the meantime I would trade my children for a greencard to the USA so as half of the world.
Sure they being diks with other nations since they exist but money talks. Go work in central europe if you want some lawless censorless dipshit land. Nowadays you can do anything with money, soon you can go to other planets too.
When people start to leave this planet and move to the newly terraformed Mars, could they please take the RIAA, the MPAA, Sony Music, and some other big corporations with them ?
You know, just in case they happened to inadvertently open an inter-dimensional portal to Hell…
Edited 2010-11-28 11:17 UTC
This is the United Domains of America! We hold the ASCII!
Edited 2010-11-27 22:12 UTC
I guess catching terrorists and sealing our borders take a back seat to counterfeiters and file-sharers, as those latter two are such an imminent threat to our national security. Damn…I’ll be glad when we citizens really get to sign these guys’ time sheets.
In the meantime, I guess those arch-criminals must use some non-US TLDs.
Edited 2010-11-27 22:40 UTC
You are defending a bunch of crooks and thieves. What will you defend next, pedophiles?
“and posted a notice saying that the domain name has been seized by ICE through court-ordered warrants. The notice also states penalties for willful copyright infringement and trafficking in counterfeit goods.”
Of course I will. I mean, fcuking children is totally in the same boat as copyright infringement.
Oh and “/sarcasm”, just to be safe.
FREE PERSPECTIVE! GET IT HERE!
Aaahh… the infamous “Think of the children”-card…
I recommend that we compile a list of all government web sites and find ones that allow comments. An example that may work would be the TSA’s blog at:
http://blog.tsa.gov
Perhaps if everyone joins forces and uses government web sites as a way to share mp3’s, movies, etc. we could get the government web sites shut down?
Comment on their sites and leave links to all the latest piracy sites… muhahahah!
Once the people wake up, if they do before the black hoods come on and executions happen in dark alley’s, the Government will have much to answer to, we have a tradition of destroying oppressors, domestic or foreign makes no difference to us.
Why haven’t they seized the ebay.com domain? Probably 95+% of luxury goods sold there are counterfeit.
I’m sick of seeing US government messing with people’s rights and freedom. And they are messing with people’s rights and freedom worldwide, not just in US.
They attacked Iraq because of some alleged WMDs hidden deep in Saddam’s ass, and now the have found some hidden WMDs hidden deep in the web.
I’m sick of US government and their pretended wars on drugs, terrorism, child pornography, I’m sick on US pretending to defend democracy, freedom and intellectual property.
In fact, all they do is defending the interests of large corporations and the interests of some ethnic and religious groups who tend to own every big business in US. I not going to name the race and religion of this groups because I don’t want to be accused of racism, but everybody knows who really owns and rules America.
As for US messing with people’s websites, why not try to cease using .com and .net extensions and host the site in Europe?
I’d really like to see US government trying to close some .eu sites hosted in Europe. And because they can’t, the next logical step will be to follow China and implement the next Great Firewall.
I don’t agree with the current state of copyright law but digitial copies still violate copyright law in the US. These were “court ordered” seizures. Most of the sites sold counterfeit goods. A few traded in copyrighted wares. So far there really is no solid evidence to back up the claim that the government closed down any of these sites without court involvement. We need to take a wait and see approach until all the details shake out. The owners of the seized sites will have their day in court. I have little doubt about that. Despite what some are saying the US hasn’t devolved into a totalitarian government.
The only reason those sites move off of US soil is to try to hide from the law that protects artists and developers from being denied their rightful royalty.
Calling this big brother is laughable. We all know darn well that the point of these sites is to circumvent paying for this stuff, be it songs or software.
No other reason to go there, except to flie share humongous files, which is something so few of us need to do for free.
I really don’t care that they fix this mess, I still can’t believe that it got so out of control in the first place.
They are doing you a favor, since the “loading program” is really a big fat trojan full of nasty crap to take over your comp.
And no I am not a shill for big business. I am someone who pays for what I use, and feel that if you do not, you are a liar.
Just my point of view, flame the crap out of me, I really don’t care about the opinion of thieves.
Oh, you mean that 3-4% authors and developpers gets on each sold item, right ?
People should stop pretending that those laws protect authors. They protect editors and distributors, before anything else. A law protecting authors would first give them at least 20% on each sale, given their vital role in the media industry.
This does not mean that I defend piracy. But I do think that there’s much more than customers at the bottom of the scale to blame, here.
Edited 2010-11-29 09:02 UTC
I’m talking on behalf of EU citizens who grew tired of all american bullshits. We were allies and so on, but that alliance has began to stink.
If US citizens are happy with their elected government, if they are happy with their military killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians across the globe, if they are happy with their government torturing thousands of civilians in secret or not so secret military bases, if they are proud and happy of their PATRIOT act who allows their government to spy on them without a judge notice (US spying of EU citizens is ok since the beginning of the Echelon program), if they are happy to be scanned, tagged, brainwashed, what’s the problem.
I don’t think we should help America kill innocent people and I don’t think we should permit EU to become like US. We STILL have rights and freedom here. Let’s keep them.
“Salem” phenomena comes to mind…
After all, people is the same.
Right, today they push buttons…
Does that makes a difference?!?
… Any difference?!?
Under a thin layer of gold paint…
Quit your bitching and whining . . . if you don’t like it you can either move far away from here or use the legal process to change it! ! !
Anyone that thinks there is a better place to live should immediately pack-up and move there!
We would be better off here without them!
This is the greatest nation on the planet “not perfect” but the greatest. Make a positive change “POSITIVE” not like “OBAMA CHANGE”!!!
If all you whiners would actually get up off your rear and do something . . . POSITIVE! you could make a difference!
Really? By what measure?
http://domainincite.com/icann-had-no-role-in-seizing-torrent-domain…
What ever happened to due process? I’d like to see someone challenge this in court. Unless the court goes the way of RICO these seizures could not stand such a challenge.
The products of the mind of an artist, writer, or musician, etc. should be respected as their property. The problem currently is that with newer technologies like the Internet, it’s easier for those products to be copied and distributed without the owner’s permissions… or even their knowledge.
If I buy an album and loan it to you and you make copy for yourself, I see no harm in that. However, if I upload the same album to my server in mp3 format and a thousand of my online friends downloads it for their own personal use… well, that’s theft of the artist’s product and possibly his/her financial welfare.
The same can be said for movies, books, or any type of intellectual properties. If someone creates something and chooses to share it with the world, that’s very COOL. However, those who choose to share in a limited way, while still retaining their rights to their properties, should be respected also.
As far as the U.S. Gov’s response to this situation… well, I can’t quite agree with the BIG HAMMER method of enforcement they’re attempting to use. I think some diplomacy and some worldwide laws regarding copyright and intellectual property theft would be more constructive, albeit unrealistic to expect at this time.