US Government Censors 70 Websites
osnews.com
osnews.com
* I checked one of the sites they blocked at random, and they're using Google Analytics to track views. GA can be used to track a hell of a lot of things, as I'm sure every reader of this site knows, including location of views. They're also using Pikwik analytics. <speculation>Pikwik is OSS, so they could have modified the code to do some thing GA doesn't.</speculation>
* Torrent-Finder.com had about 1.7million page views a day[0], so I suppose it seemed like a good target. However, many of the other sites blocked don't even register. In fact, they all seem like those extremely shady sites that very few people would ever actually visit. Torrent-Finder.com seems to have been the only properly popular site on the list (onsmash.com has rather high pageviews also, ~610,000 pv/d) <speculation>My question is why the hell did they hit torrent-finder.com when virtually every other site on the list probably couldn't have kicked up a media storm?</speculation>
* Every site is now hosted in Charlotte, North Carolina. DHS ICE seem to have some sort of facility there, but I've not been able to find much info on it at all. <speculation>Torrent-finder.com seems to have been hosted in Egypt beforehand. Does this affect the legality at all?</speculation>
* The two (as far I as i saw) most popular sites, onsmash.com and torrent-finder.com, had their traffic peaks during the second half of 2009[1]. Furthermore, the majority of traffic for Torrent-Finder.com was well outside the USA - eastern Europe, mostly[2].
* The sites that have been seized seem to mostly have been sites to buy knockoffs of designer clothing/accessories/what have you. Not as many seemed to be file-sharing websites.
[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=torrent-finder.com [1] http://www.google.com/trends?q=torrent-finder.com%2C+onsmash... [2] http://www.google.com/trends?q=torrent-finder.com&ctab=0...
<hyperbole><opinion>To me, it seems the only real answer is to use alternate DNS roots. This one's been compromised.</opinion></hyperbole>
Yes, the government is broken in this regard, but I would contend that your DNS is broken, too, and here's why. Your DNS provides your computer with directions to the next point of interest. Right now, it's pointing you to where you don't want to go because it's been told to, or the government has illegally seized the final location, etc. In this way, the DNS server is ~broken~. Not in its ability to look up map values, but in its ability to provide the correct ones.
If your GPS only told you where govn't controlled gas stations are, and you wanted to use Non-Govn't-Standard, you'd change GPSes, finding the current one unsatisfactory, or perhaps broken. (where broken in this context means "not doing what you want").
But I don't agree that this is a case of forcing anything on the world, com/org/net are US domain extensions, so I guess they have the right to control those. We're free to not use US domain names.
On the other hand, with ACTA the USA will force its view on the world.
This is an unintentionally funny sentence, because the US essentially created banana republics. See United Fruits Company.
But the banana republics are going forward, while the US seems to be going the other way. Just look at the poor/rich divide, for example.
If you want to do something that you don't want US authorities having control over, then move it to a jurisdiction that does not care what the US says (and good luck finding such a place, unless it was Iran or DPRK).
The US may have a heck of a lot of swing when it comes to overall global policy, but that doesn't mean foreign entities just, like, obey their court orders - that would be absurd.
I tried running whois's on some of the banned names to see what registrars were cooperating, if it was all (for example) GoDaddy, but any pertinent info has been stripped out from the entries.
Anyone know how I can get the original registration info?
http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-seizes-bittorrent-sea...
Sites like these are the scum of the internet, run by the scum of the earth. I'm not familiar with every site personally, but I have little doubt that they were all involved in flagrant copyright infringement.
And looking at torrent-finder.info, I have no doubt that 99.99% of the people going to that site were going there for the purpose of stealing stuff, not finding linux distros. The cheeky incredulity with which fans of these sites say "it's not their fault that everyone that uses their site is using it to traffic stolen goods!" is laughably transparent.
The western world is moving away from manufacturing physical goods, and these idiots using file sharing are making damn sure that nobody produces content either. What's going to be left? Finance?
There's a totally legitimate slippery slope argument to made for not blocking websites, and this story does smell bad in terms of legal due process, but I have a really hard time feeling sorry for the degenerates who ran theses sites.
We've had widespread unauthorized sharing of audio for over 10 years now. Is less new music being produced today? Or is more?
We've had widespread unauthorized sharing of video and movies for nearly as long. Are fewer TV series being created, fewer channels being launched, fewer movies made today? Or more?
There may be issues that arise if most people receive their entertainment via no-fee digital copying -- but underproduction of content does not, from the evidence so far, seem to be one of them.
good riddance... Sites like these are the scum of the internet, run by the scum of the earth.
First they came for the domains of the scum of the earth, and I said 'good riddance', because I'm not scum.
Then...
Put aside for a moment the allegations or apparent uses of these domains. Is it a good idea to enable punitive seizure of property without any legal hearing?
And either way, it's not our place to break the law because we're convinced we know better than the people we're stealing from. If musicians decide to give away their music and make money from concerts, fine, but for the most part they haven't, at least not yet.
And yes, I agree that this incident is problematic, but I think that they've probably done the right thing for the wrong reasons. The law is slowly evolving to meet these 21st century problems, but things take time. I personally don't see a huge difference between a website selling counterfeit goods and a physical store selling counterfeit goods, and I wouldn't have much of a problem with a store being shut down the moment it was caught openly selling counterfeit goods rather than after the trial.
I'm sure I'm missing a lot of details here, and I'm not at all well-versed on this stuff, but I think people tend to be way to quick to defend individual scumbags who are openly and knowingly distributing stolen and counterfeit goods whenever the internet is involved.
If per-copy fees were the only way to get necessary creative production, as you seem to suggest, that would be one thing. But your theory doesn't yet seem to be playing out. Rising piracy has loosely correlated, over the past decade-plus, with even more creation of the pirated types of content.
So the siege and retribution mentality -- "never mind due process, line the scum up against the wall and let 'em have it!" -- doesn't make any sense.
Our society is richer because Jobs and Wozniak, before they founded Apple, helped people steal telecommunications services. The world is more connected because Zennstrom and Friis, before they made Skype, behaved like 'scum' in your eyes with file-sharing Kazaa. Our culture is richer because whole genres of music and other creative arts have at times ignored the rules against sampling, collage, and other reuse.
The simple 'always defer to all prior rules' argument isn't welfare-maximizing for either individuals or the world.
And even as we enforce current laws, which I accept as a general necessity, the accused deserve a chance to make their case, and the standards for enforcement need to be clear and applied evenly. A surprise domain-name seizure without notice only makes sense in emergency situations.
But for Jobs/Wozniak, and Zennstrom/Friis, their legally-dubious earlier activities were closely related to the later more-famous and above-board collaborations. They were each hacking together, for fun or profit and arguably against the law, in hardware/software domains similar to their later successes.
You also shouldn't underestimate the effectiveness of conspiring with someone on something a little naughty to establish a strong trusting working relationship. Perhaps you've heard the expression, 'thick as thieves'?
Do you think that the police give the owner of a store filled with pirated DVDs a chance to make their case? No, they seize the stolen property and close the store.
> Our culture is richer because whole genres of music and other creative arts have at times ignored the rules against sampling, collage, and other reuse.
You seem to be picking and choosing here. The subjects of these domain name seizures weren't using this stuff in a fair use manner, they were straight up distributing (and profiting from, through ads) stolen goods and selling counterfeit goods. Our culture isn't being made richer by someone selling counterfeit purses or helping people steal movies, TV shows, and video games.
It's easy to make these statements in vague terms, but imagine if you were an iPhone game developer whose $2 game was being distributed to tens of thousands of people by piracy networks, hurting your already lower-middle-class income. Do you think that's making our culture richer?
How do you know IP violations don't make our society and culture richer? The USA's greatest period of growth -- over 100 years ago -- and China's more recently were both characterized by lax IP enforcement compared to slower-growing areas.
In your scenario about software piracy, it really depends on whether the pirated copies primarily displaced sales, or went to young/poor/loosely-attached users who wouldn't have purchased at the actual price, anyway. It is not the case that if a wand could be waved and all piracy prevented, every pirated copy would be replaced with a paid copy. Given that, some piracy in OS, office, and even game software is thought to help top publishers by making their titles/franchises more popular. It's not at all the same as 1 copy made, 1 sale lost, someone loses more than the 'pirate' gained. Sometimes it's a boon for the pirate and neutral-to-mildly-beneficial outcome for the rightsholder.
Post ho ergo propter hoc fallacy, there. The technology of making a film/video has become vastly cheaper than it used to be. This has been a far bigger influence on the economics of production than the ability to get copies via unauthorized sharing. On the other hand, it's a lot harder to make your money back than it used to be. File-sharing is partly responsible, but is only one factor among several.
First they came for the domains of the scum of the earth, and I said 'good riddance', because I'm not scum.
Yes, losing your domain is just like being sent to a concentration camp. I'm not asking you to support this (I don't) but let's keep a little sense of perspective here, shall we?
Rather, that if you cheer this tactic on now, simply because now it's used against 'scum', you shouldn't be surprised if this tactic gets abused more broadly against disfavored groups in the future. Did you fail to file your proper FEC election-expenditure reports for candidate advocacy blogging? Away with your domain name! In a back-tax dispute? Away with your domain name! Are you a troublemaker who's publishing unauthorized video of a TSA checkpoint? Away with your domain name!
The authorities should have to win a case, rather than just allege wrongdoing, to wipe a website completely from the net.
Leaving aside the fact the website hasn't been wiped, as such, in what sense is ICE's procedure insufficient? They've obtained a valid court order, supposedly, so it's been approved by a judge. And like it not, dealing in certain kinds of merchandise makes both merchandise and assets subject to seizure, using laws which have been on the books a long time (and were thus known to the domain owners). The idea that customs officers have in rem jurisdiction (over things rather than people) in certain circumstances is a very old one.
Here;'s an example of an issued warrant for seizure of domains made earlier this year, along with a (brief) explanation of in rem jurisdiction. http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/06/30/Warrant.pdf http://law.onecle.com/constitution/amendment-14/41-actions-i...
A domain name is more than just a storefront; it's also the equivalent of a printing press and mailbox. Seizing all those at once, without a hearing where both sides had representation, is the problematic precedent.
Advertising. It seems to me that money from advertising pays for most content nowadays.
But w.r.t content, sites like DaJaz1 or OnSmash were more or less embraced by the industry (industry relevant to their product). Labels would submit content and bloggers would voluntarily with hold music from their reader even with a leak. It was a (relatively) good relationship. It demonstrates how these sites /can/ be embraced.
Take a look at the list of sites closed. Last time I checked I don't remember that selling unauthorized content is legal.
louis-vuitton-outlet-store.com
lv-outlets.com
lv-outlets.net
lv-outletstore.com
The problem is not never who blocked but how and why they were blocked.
Freedom speech only means something if it's freedom for those whose speech we dislike.
It's natural that those who are angling for wide-ranging control would start by attacking "the scum of the Internet". In this instance, being able to take down website essentially without due-process means that ICE has a tool which can be used on many other targets.
The Internet is a grossly complicated system, and the ability to have nfljerseysupply.com resolve to your website is far from a given right. ISPs, web hosts, search engines, ICANN, governments, browser vendors, OS vendors, and more all have to cooperate for a domain to work. Each player has to cooperate to make your website reachable, therefore each player has the ability to make your website hard or impossible to reach.
It's scary if the US government has powerful legal tools to take down any website (see: China), but the US govt. has a track record of going after only a few criminals, not performing political censorship. So do all the players. Also, COICA, which would make this act easier, got gummed up in the Senate.
I don't know any details, but would you expect counterfeit websites to remain humming along while DHS raids warehouses involved with illegal manufacturing, importing or exporting of counterfeit goods?
The torrent search engine is a different beast, and by following legal precedent I'd expect the owner to be cleared of wrongdoing if and when it goes to trial. I also suspect the owner is being disingenuous, and was operating the site under a shell, making it difficult to find him and serve him warnings or legal papers.
I also interpret this as a sign that the media corporations are fucked. This is the best they can do with their global power, influence and money? Take out some counterfeiters and one lowly search engine?
Yes, we must be diligent against the government and corporations, but if this is all they have then it's nothing I'm going to get worked up over.
One of these things is not required for my browser to work. Hint: it starts with "govern"
The Internet is ARPANET.
Actually it's not. The Internet that we know today is really NSFNet that was created because the DoD was sick of freeloaders riding on ARPANET. The DoD had very little input on the creation of NSFNet. What was ARPANET is now NIPRNet.
This is one of the many things that I learned by reading Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet. It's a fascinating look at how the Internet was created and focuses mainly on the financial and management side of the creation from about 1965-85.
Maybe the loud voices in this forum just enjoy stealing other peoples work without having their own work stolen, but bogus free speech arguments and hysterics about jack boots do not justify what is at it's core an immoral act.
We have an independent judiciary and that is there for a reason. Whether terrorism or copyright infringement, the government has no right whatever to decide on individual cases and facts. That is the job of the judges.
Take the matters to court!
But I also wish the rest of the posters here would state their opposition to piracy while they defend the pirates on procedural grounds.
It's like when skin heads march. All sensible people defend their right to hold a peaceful demonstration but it is good taste to also point out ones disapproval of the ideas those skinheads espouse.
The lack of voices making such clarifications has been notable.
And it sounds like typical apologist arguments.
To those lamenting this action: do you pirate music, movies, or software?
Seriously though, you could be making the same case for slavery prior to the 13th amendment.
But while Voltaire was willing to defend the speech (and presumably the due process rights) of those with whom he strongly disagreed, he did take the time to point out his disagreement while doing so.
I would just like to hear more voices in this forum express their distaste for IP theft when they are forced by the foolish actions of the government to speak out in defense of pirates.
I just get the sense that some people here might have pirated material and defend the pirates and second guess the business decisions of IP holders as a sort of sub-conscious defense mechanism. No one wants to think of oneself as a bad person but surely software piracy is wrong.
Any solutions necessarily involves infringing on free speech (this) or infringing on an individual's right to do what they want with their purchases (DRM), so yes, I do support torrenting.
Are you really suggesting that creators of IP should not be able to profit from their work? Where do you work such that such a world would not directly impoverish you? Not to mention destroy the entire US economy.
While I understand that there are serious due process questions raised by this story, the tone in this forum seems to go beyond that to outright support of intellectual property theft. That is worrisome to me.
So, if you rent a car, does that mean its OK to drive it around the corner and sell it to someone else? you paid to get hold of the car, so it's yours, yes?
Oh, wait, no it isn't. You paid to rent it for a finite period under certain conditions, and signed a contract to that effect. the same is usually the case where software is concerned, but since you don't like the terms of the software contract too much, you feel free to ignore it, and redefine your licensing of the software as a purchase, granting yourself all kinds of new rights which the original creator never intended to give to end users. Now, you're welcome to say that software is way overpriced or those terms are so onerous you refuse to comply with them, a point of view I have some sympathy with. But at least be honest about the fact that you're choosing to ignore the contractual terms offered by the licensor and agreed to by the licensee.
edit: I don't mind being downvoted, but at least point out why you think the argument is flawed. Otherwise you're just blaming the weatherman for telling you that its raining.
I used the analogy of the car because we're familiar with it - we all understand you can buy a car, and also that you can rent one on a temporary basis. The kind of transactions you can perform on an object are not a function of the object itself.
So with software (or a movie or book etc. etc.) I could sell you all the rights: not just to use/watch/read it as a consumer, but to exploit it for commercial gain as a publisher. This is like the purchase of a car; you can do whatever you want with the property you now own. Or I could just grant you a limited license, reserving other rights for myself, as with the rental situation. This is what happens now when you 'buy' a piece of software or media - you're really buying the rights to a single copy of it. You can still do whatever you want with that single copy, but as soon as you start making your own copies - even if you're giving them away for free, or simply making them available via bittorrent - then you've gone into the publishing business. Now I don't necessarily approve of this approach, but that's how things are. You're getting into a contract with a publisher when you buy their wares, just as surely as if you had rented a car. That it's trivially easy to circumvent the terms of that contract doesn't alter the fact that you're a party to it.
Look at it this way: suppose you owned a printing company, and you happen to have all the technology you need to make books of any kind. And let's say you can also easily get them into bookstores. You get a hardback copy of Harry Potter's Secret Diary, a supplement to the popular series of books that is sure to sell millions. Since you have a book-style printing press on hand, you spend a busy week making plates and then rush out a paperback edition, on which you make a handsome profit. You've used your own paper, ink etc., so the original publisher is no worse off and hasn't lost a single copy of their stock.
Is this cool?
I get into a contract with a publisher when I buy their wares?
I have never had to sign a contract when purchasing a book AND I have never not signed (always requred to sign) a contract when renting a vehicle.
Again, physical objects and intellectual property are not the same thing.
As a software author myself, I sympathize with your situation, but the risks here are much bigger than the loss of income to piracy.
And secondly, but far more importantly, I for one am not willing to give up my freedom of speech and right of due process to protect your monopoly on a few specific bit patterns. We give murderers, rapists, even child molesters their day in court and the right to question the evidence brought against them, to question and examine witnesses, to be judge by a jury of their peers and to petition the government for redress of grievencess but if they help others find places where they can search for specific bit patterns and make a copy of those, we give them none of these rights?
At this point all that is left is realize that I have been trolled.
So the definite culprits of piracy are not "thieves" but bad pricing and inconvenient installation. The absence of "thieves" would not translate into more sales.
So while we started with an online offering, users demanded a desktop version and we delivered.
It is easy to assume that because your business is not a victim that those business that have suffered are just not as good at delivery, but I think you are wrong and I would argue that even businesses that make bad decisions deserve to have their IP protected by government action.
Here more people seem to care about freeing knowledge than profiting from it. They see large entities like old IBM, current Microsoft as impediments to progress, overcharging for software, making large profits from business customers and not spreading the benefits of that software or making software poorly suited to the less well off. That's a vague description of the sentiment.
Eventually these groups face off in arenas where arguments don't count and someone comes out ahead.
It's impossible to stop piracy technologically, lawyers can only threaten or fight little skirmishes for publicity to discourage the general populace from it. Ultimately struggling businesses need to put up more than arguments. It took music companies a long time to get around to that, could have been much smoother with less lawyers and more service.
10 years?
50 years?
100 years?
You can't say "I'm disregarding all of these arguments" and then claim there aren't any proper arguments against intellectual property.
In the past there has always been enough time to create a narrative so that the parties can "make sense" to the voters. One party doesn't say it's supporting trial lawyers: instead it's "looking out for the little people". Another party doesn't support the military-industrial complex, instead it's providing for the defense of the nation. In other words, its possible to spin these special interests in such a fashion as to appeal to the little guy. This makes people buy into what the government is doing -- the consent of the governed.
But the wheels seem to be coming off the trolley -- it's becoming apparent that technology is changing so fast that the political parties can't catch their narratives up with reality. When you had communists threatening to conquer the world for thirty years, there was plenty of time to make a strong case for a defense industry. When you had super-huge corporations threatening the citizenry with pollution and such, it was easy to make a case for environmental laws and enormous lawsuits.
But file-sharing? Photo-realistic-capable naked body scans? Imposing total data visibility into the world's financial systems? Declaring that Americans still owe taxes even if they leave the country for tax reasons?
There may be very valid and reasonable arguments to be made for each of these things, but in my opinion nobody has made them yet. Instead, we just have a fear of one thing trotted out -- terrorism, big corporations, whatever -- and then we're told that these things we have lost were for a good reason.
Making matters worse is that some special interests, such as the movie, music, and software guys, (and the security guys) have effectively bought off both parties. So it doesn't matter who you vote for, you're stuck with doing whatever these interests want. And its becoming more and more apparent that these interests will use the full force of law to go after anybody they see as an enemy to their cause.
Even though I'm emotional about this, I see no reason to rant and rave. It's not going to change anything, and getting emotional just gives other people something to make fun of. In my opinion this current trajectory cannot continue for many decades longer. That's just the way it is, no matter what each individual's opinion on each of these issues may be.
I'm reminded of Ronald Reagan, when asked why he left the Democrat party, said, "I didn't leave the party. The party left me."
I certainly hope the same thing doesn't happen to the consent of the governed in most of the world's major democracies.
EDIT: If you'd like a startup/technology angle to this, then my advice is not to go into business in any area that one of these interests might be involved -- unless you have strong political connections (or are willing to develop them). If you're able to develop those connections, however, it should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
And as somebody who's thinking of doing social network startup, this kind of discussion is very very relevant to my technology and entrepreneurial worlds. Do I need to plan from the beginning to host outside the US -- and if so what countries make sense? what level of business risk are investors willing to tolerate, and is that changing? and so on.
The US as a constitutional republic was designed to frustrate that tendency. Recent calls for the repeal of the 17th amendment (senators used to be selected by state legislatures; that amendment made it popular vote instead) are based on that argument.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/252825/repeal-sevente...
Under the original arrangement, senators had strong
incentives to protect federalism. They recognized that
their reelection depended on pleasing state legislators
who preferred that power be kept close to home. Whereas
House members were considered representatives of the
people, senators were considered ambassadors of their
state governments to the federal government and, like
national ambassadors to foreign countries, were subject
to instruction by the parties they represented (although
not to recall if they refused to follow instructions).
And they tended to act accordingly, ceding to the
national government only the power necessary to perform
its enumerated functions, such as fighting wars and
building interstate infrastructure. Moreover, when the
federal government expanded to address a crisis (such as
war), it quickly retreated to its intended modest level
after the crisis had passed. Today, as historian Robert
Higgs has observed, federal expansion creates a “ratchet
effect.”
Just as important as its role in securing federalism, the
Senate as originally conceived was essential to the
system of separation of powers. Bicameralism — the
division of the legislature into two houses elected by
different constituencies — was designed to frustrate
special-interest factions. Madison noted in Federalist 62
that basing the House and Senate on different constituent
foundations would provide an “additional impediment . . .
against improper acts of legislation” by requiring the
concurrence of a majority of the people with a majority
of the state governments before a law could enacted. By
resting both houses of Congress on the same constituency
base — the people — the Seventeenth Amendment
substantially watered down bicameralism as a check on
interest-group rent-seeking, laying the foundation for
the modern special-interest state.The current government, when they were the opposition, had called for Senate reforms, including direct elections. Once they got into power, they continued the status quo once they saw how beneficial it would be to them to do so. Funny how that works.
It seems that what was behind the movement to the popular vote was a strong populist sentiment without clear reason; or at least without a reason that made sense.[1]
Last I checked, bribery and cozy industry relationships in the Senate were not stopped by the 17th amendment. I doubt they will ever stop. Power and money tend to mingle, and that part of human nature will probably never go away.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
[A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution by Carol Berkin]
http://volokh.com/2010/11/15/on-the-true-story-of-the-histor...
The upside of direct election is that at least there's a chance that good Senators, not subject to the petty whims of the state houses might make better policy. State legislatures were/are generally the products of political machines and tended to appoint Senators who would advance their aims.
In the 21st century, the power of the corporations, unions and trade associations to manipulate the electorate via mass media is at least as powerful as the political machinery that the 17th amendment attempted to fight.
Also, this is more about federalism than conservatism or libertarianism. There's a strong progressive case for allowing states to be "laboratories of democracy".
There actually is some value to showing one's emotion's here. It seems clear that a lot of this does involve ICE 'testing the waters' to see much people will push back. It's good indicate an "irrational" need to fight this, it will give them pause (I'd imagine evolutionary game theory would say that this is a kind of situation where anger serves an important strategic purpose - premature commitment is an important strategy for making an opponent back down).
If you'd like a startup/technology angle to this, then my advice is not to go into business in any area that one of these interests might be involved -- unless you have strong political connections (or are willing to develop them). If you're able to develop those connections, however, it should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Investment advice simply becomes mute, really. There is no limit to what could conceivably fall under the rubric "intellectual property".
One might as easily argue special interests have always used their power to try to corrupt governments. After all, government is not in the content-production-for-profit business, and legislation like the DMCA is designed to benefit established publishers and manufacturers whose business model is threatened by unlicensed distribution.
So we might as well ask what is the fundamental problem with business, that makes it preferable to enlist law enforcement in defense of its interests than to do well by offering consumers a value they can't get from content piracy? I think there is some merit to the argument that leaders in the content industry have bought off political interests, but if they were somehow restricted from doing so, wouldn't that be a violation of free speech too? That whole Citizens United case in front of the Supreme Court last year was based on the idea that spending $$$ to influence an election is just as much free speech as any other kind of political activity.
Even though I'm emotional about this, I see no reason to rant and rave.
No offense meant here Daniel, but that's exactly what you do. On almost any thread involving regulation or government intervention, it's become very predictable to see a mini-essay from you at the top of the thread, and it's almost always general in nature rather than addressing any specific of the story itself. You always aim to be non-partisan by mentioning both aprties, but in practice it's very obvious you're conservative: in the blog post you mentioned elsewhere (http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/11/im-done-here....) you spent 5 paragraphs castigating the left for their dislike of big corporations, before going on to say: 'Of course, the same can be said of the right and the "long war". Both sides -- in fact all sides -- have plans that are not working.[...]'
Now, I have no problem with your holding and expressing conservative views - indeed, I quite enjoy reading your posts. But this pretense of being above the fray and speaking from a position of neutrality just insults my intelligence.
At first I was angered, but then I realized this is a good thing, they are shooting themselves in the foot. We don't need ICANN at all, there are already alternative DNS systems out there waiting for an opportunity for a mass exodus..
They do not control the internet and they will find that out very fast if they feel like making this common place.
ps. I wrote this after reading another post about a godaddy site that was "supposedly" on this and blamed on ICAAN. I had not read the about the homeland security warrant.
The body scanners and patdowns are similar; while they are in use right now, it's far from certain that they will exist forever. There is just too much backlash.
So I wouldn't say that we are a police state yet. Some renegades have made decisions, and the wheels of justice turn slowly. Sometimes it looks like nothing is being done, but that's just because the machinery of the government is slow.
Hell, 19 prominent senators couldn't even get their "censor the Internet" bill through Congress, even though they really wanted it. The system works!
Yes they have: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1944190
(It would be especially interesting to see what would happen if the DNS server would only service requests from areas in the US that are more than 200 miles away from the border; territory that ICE admits they have no jurisdiction over.)
Want to disagree with me? I'll call you unpatriotic.
Among people who have never set foot in an airport.
Just go visit torrent-finder.com and read the seizure note by ICE.
All any company-with-influence has to do is patent some things, put a claim against a competitor and shut them down long to put them out of business. It's not just that it lets companies dominate industries. It is that it makes such domination more profitable than anything else - thereby sucking up all available investment funds. What would you invest once the state start "picking winners".
It's really the same old story - corruption destroys enterprise.
All the more reason for you to sign your current zones (including .org, .info, .us and .eu) or pressure your registrar and TLD maintainers to implement DNSSEC yesterday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html?...
link to the official announcement on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqGziXOPO2A
what i find most disturbing is not the action against IP infringement on US territory. what i find disturbing is:
1) the announcement that "suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world." They say "American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates", sure this is true, but why should the US care that this happens outside of their country?
2) the freedom of a modern democracy is completely underminded by this measure. one should be innocent until proven guitly (by a court case -- in this case there was no trial), and secondly one has the right to free speach. both of these rights have been compromised by the measure. this --in my opinion-- voids the moral supriority of a modern democracy, and puts the US on a list of countries that cannot guarantee basic freedom for its citizens (like China).
It's all about money and who has the biggest lobbyists.
Also remember that making lots of laws and then enforcement is a big income generator for government on all levels.
- do you see this as a political story? why or why not?
- some people here may be considering starting businesses where some of user-provided content they host might fall afoul of this policy. do you think this story meets the bar of being interest to the HN community?
That the government can decide who is guilty however is not a matter of politics, but, fundamental principles.
As to your second question, this is something which effects some of the HN community, whether genuine original content producers or otherwise. Thus, I do think it is news related to technology of a relatively new nature, thus, I would say, yes it is or has the potential to be of interest to the HN community.