Websites Shut Down By Government
December 1st, 2010 I saw a posting this morning about the US Government shutting down websites. They seem to be mostly related to illegal downloads of proprietary material but this could be a sign of things to come for the rest of us. It all depends on how you define proprietary material or for that matter national security. Who is policing the police? Are there court orders? What are the rights of appeal? Is this like being on the no fly list? Once you are on, you are in legal hell. The government has for the last few decades exerted powers in the name of the war on terror or the war on drugs or what have you that have significantly inhibited our civil rights. Now even peace activists are being rounded up and harrassed by grand juries. This goes way beyond the old bust em' and let them go of the old civil rights and anti war days of my youth. We are entering a period of repression that may mean an end to civil rights as we know them. Can groups like the ACLU fight the tide? We had better support them while there are still liberties to be had.
This is from TorrentFreak website.
U.S. Government Seizes BitTorrent Search Engine Domain and More
Written by enigmax on November 26, 2010
Following on the heels of this week's domain seizure of a large hiphop file-sharing links forum, it's clear today that the U.S. Government has been very busy. Without any need for COICA, ICE has just seized the domain of a BitTorrent meta-search engine along with those belonging to other music linking sites and several others which appear to be connected to physical counterfeit goods.
While complex, it's still possible for U.S. authorities and copyright groups to point at a fully-fledged BitTorrent site with a tracker and say "that's an infringing site." When one looks at a site which hosts torrents but operates no tracker, the finger pointing becomes quite a bit more difficult.
When a site has no tracker, carries no torrents, lists no copyright works unless someone searches for them and responds just like Google, accusing it of infringement becomes somewhat of a minefield – unless you're ICE Homeland Security Investigations that is.
This morning, visitors to the Torrent-Finder.com site are greeted with an ominous graphic which indicates that ICE have seized the site's domain.
"My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!" the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning.
"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.
Aside from the fact that domains are being seized seemingly at will, there is a very serious problem with the action against Torrent-Finder. Not only does the site not host or even link to any torrents whatsoever, it actually only returns searches through embedded iframes which display other sites that are not under the control of the Torrent-Finder owner.
Torrent-Finder remains operational through another URL, Torrent-Finder.info, so feel free to check it out for yourself. The layouts of the sites it searches are clearly visible in the results shown.
Yesterday we reported that the domain of hiphop site RapGodFathers had been seized and today we can reveal that they are not on their own. Two other music sites in the same field – OnSmash.com and DaJaz1.com – have fallen to the same fate. But ICE activities don't end there.
Several other domains also appear to have been seized including 2009jerseys.com, nfljerseysupply.com, throwbackguy.com, cartoon77.com, lifetimereplicas.com, handbag9.com, handbagcom.com and dvdprostore.com.
All seized sites point to the same message.
Domain seizures coming under the much debated `censorship bill' COICA? Who needs it?
Update: Below is an longer list of domains that were apparently seized. Most of the sites relate to counterfeit goods. We assume that the authorities had a proper warrant for these sites (as they had for RapGodFathers yesterday), but were unable to confirm this.
Update: A spokeswoman for ICE confirmed the seizures in the following statement. "ICE office of Homeland Security Investigations executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names. As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time."
Update: The authorities have revealed further details on "Cyber Monday Crackdown."
(For)Full list of 82 seized domains"
See site.
http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-seizes-bittorrent-search-engine-domain-and-more-101126/
This is from Helium July 2010 as best I can tell, the article is undated.
Why 73,000 WordPress blogs were shut down by the U.S. Government
by Bruce Tyson
The United States Government shut down about 73,000 WordPress blogs on a single Web site in a move that some fear signals an increasing disregard for individual free speech rights. The action follows the high profile government seizure of seven online movie sites weeks ago. The U.S. move dwarfs current Chinese government activity that shut down only "dozens" of blogs in China.
Recently targeted by federal action, the free WordPress blogging site Blogetery abruptly came offline after hosting provider BurstNet complied with undisclosed demands from authorities. A message viewable upon visiting the Blogetery site gives this message from its owner: "After being BurstNet customer for 7 months our server was terminated without any notification or explanation." A link on the site leads to a forum called Web Hosting Talk, where the site operator has posted correspondence with BurstNet, that suggests feederal involvement in the incident.
Those first to learn about the Blogetery shutdown seemed to think that the move was due to intellectual property concerns. The online discussion supposedly with the Blogetery owner suggests that users of his site prompted frequent cease and desist demands from copyright holders to which he responded with appropriate action against users of his site.
Original speculation seemed to be misguided upon the release of comments from BurstNet that disclosed that the action against Blogetery was not "typical" and required instant compliance with federal demands to close the entire Web site. Some reports seem to suggest that intellectual property rights actions typically target specific users of a service rather than the entire operation. Now, some fear that the suffering of the innocent together with the guilty as the free speech of many appears to have been infringed by government action. Such fear supposes, of course, that not all 73,000 blogs on Blogetery were lawbreakers. Some consider the magnitude of the federal action as an indication that the Blogetery site itself and its owner may have been involved in some type of wrongdoing.
BurstNet and authorities have been mum on specific details of the case, saying only that they have refunded the payments from the Web site owner owner. BurstNet has reportedly refused to allow the owner access to data from the site, crippling his capacity to bring the site back on a different Web site provider.
Although we do not know the underlying reason why the American government shut down Blogetery, the communist government in China indicates that a desire to throttle the popularity of social networking and micro bloggers in effort to stymie dissent within the country. Actions by that government closed selective blogs from the blogging site Sohu and shut down entire Chinese blogging sites such as Tencent, Sina, and Netease."
http://www.helium.com/items/1893892-why-73000-wordpress-blogs-were-shut-down-by-the-us-government
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