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IsoNews Ostensibly Shut Down By The DOJ
According to Yahoo News and also Cyber Crime The longest running news site for Piracy has been turned over to the Department of Justice. Stating David Rocci AKA krazy8, has recently plead guilty to selling modchips via his website http://www.isonews.com with profit of $48,000. Now the domain has been linked to the Cybercrime Site warning all pirates all there that modchipping is not a game. [chrisd] In case you needed a reminder...you don't own your hardware. Eff? That said, this is not 100% positive, and there are rumors of the old site floating around on other ip addresses out there.
In related DOJ web hijinks..joemite writes "Cannabis News released this article about how the DEA is seeking to redirect indicted businesses that sell glass bongs and pipes to the DEA's website. "If the court orders the sites to be redirected, Ashcroft said, they will point to a DEA.gov Web page that says: "By application of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the Web site you are attempting to visit has been restrained by the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania pursuant to Title 21, United States Code, Section 853 (e)(1)(a)."" Also check out an analysis of the entire situation by Richard Cowan"
Registrant:
The iSO News (ISONEWS-DOM)
Jacobus van 't Hoffstraat 69
Nijmegen, MR 6533
NL
Domain Name: ISONEWS.COM
Post article
TheRegister story
Quote:
---
Two Justice Department attorneys said Internet users would eventually be steered to the government's address as name servers across the Internet are updated over the next several hours.
"There is going to be some lag time between the domain-name switch-over," one attorney said. "But the domain name isonews.com now belongs to the federal government."
---
Enjoy...
GameTab
More info HERE This links to the ISOnews forum Will prolly be Slashdotted soon.
Their 'competitor', NFOrce is seemingly still alive and kicking. I suppose the difference is in their strategy for collecting funds. As a note, both removed serial numbers from all posted NFO files.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
Since shutting down 8 servers at once (some of them being out of the US) is hard, the DOJ took control of the DNS for the isonews.com domain and pointed it to their own site, which is what many people get when they go to http://www.isonews.com now.
Some people still get redirected to the existing servers, but this will happen less and less as the DNS changes propagate out to leaf nodes.
http://66.201.243.170/
the real isonews.com with working forums
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You can read more info about the plea bargain and case at: http://www.cybercrime.gov/rocciPlea.htm
-OctaneZ
Selling modchips is legal here in the US also. Selling modchips with copyrighted code (i.e. BIOSes) is not.
I used to be a regular on isonews back in 98-99. krazy8 was making bucketloads of cash off banner ads. The trick was that you never actually saw them -- the ads were in invisible frames that automatically refreshed every so often. It's sad that he's had to resort to making money by selling actual product.
Not sure on the Xbox or PS2 but on the PS1 some sectors were marked with what appeared as errors on something that the burner generated and the rest of the computer wasn't invovled in. (From quick skims appears the PS2 has something similar, and the Xbox has that reverse DVD format or something, hardware copy protection)
The main thing they are dealing with is that is allows the consoles to boot copied discs and out of region discs (like region encoding with DVD players).
I also know that I have seen modchips (at least for PS1) that don't let you play copies but would let you play out-of-region disks (region free DVD player like).
It's partly illegal to own one and partly not. The headshops I've been in, if you stray from "water pipes" and "pipes" and call stuff "bongs" or "bowls" they'll kick you out. And there's signs posted everywhere saying this. Basically it's a gray area where it's legal to use a bong or pipe to smoke tobacco or any of the herbal smoke stuff you can get, but if you use it for marijuana it's illegal. The thing with head shops is it's kinda obvious what you're gonna do after you walk out with a bag with wraps, a new bong, a tshirt and stickers and shit with marijuana slogans and pictures on them, and the latest copy of high times. But they're legal as far as I know as long as there's no marijuana residue in them. Also, there's a lot of really nice pipes out there that could be considered works of art, and last I knew you can't censor art. As long as they don't shut down my supplier of salvia I'll be happy.
The case of Lik Sang are covered below. Sorry for the wrong link given above.
Microsoft Shuts Down Lik Sang
More on Microsoft vs. Lik Sang
Lik-Sang Back Online, Minus Modchips
Lik-Sang Back Online
Lik-Sang To Take On The Big 3?
The Lik-Sang Saga Continues
It's partly illegal to own one and partly not. The headshops I've been in, if you stray from "water pipes" and "pipes" and call stuff "bongs" or "bowls" they'll kick you out.
:)
Correct. We sell tobacoo products. And the cops know we do, and give us no grief. We have signs that say its for tobacco only, and anyone making any reference to illegal use will be asked to leave. Its not all we sell, but its a part of what we sell. Notice I am posting as AC tho
In Australia mod chipping is legal. The Federal Court held last year that the owner of a Sony Playstation can buy a mod chip from a supplier to permit him play region locked games,etc. The decision in essence starts that if you own a machine (Xbox, Playstation whatever) and buy software for it from overseas that have been crippled by region locking or the like you can fiddle with your machine to get your property (eg games) working. By implication this extends to all similar modding. The case was supported by the A.C.C.C, which enforces the Australian equivalent of the Clayton and Sherman Acts (ie US anti-trust laws)and Federal Government. The ACCC has commenced and supported similar litigation in the past.Region free DVDs are the norm here, maybe because we are lumped into a region with Latin America and we see a trickle of "legit" DVDs from the US.
Microsoft's reaction was to threaten to withdraw Xboxes from the Australian market. Xboxes aren't sold in Australia's largest electrical chain stores because M$ won't sell Xboxes to them unless they dropped Playstation and M$ was told to get lost.
Sorry, but this is plain wrong.
writable media does NOT have any flags which are accessible via standard read calls (ie on anything other than a burner) which indicates whether it's a burned copy or not. The PMA/ATIP area on a CD-R does have information regarding the kind of dye used on the disc, etc, but this is only accessible via CD-R(w) specific commands which you can't rely (as a copy protection manufacturer) on drives supporting.
Admittedly, DVD[+-]R(w) media DOES have no provision for burning to the keyspace, but I would doubt that that's accessible from userland either.
The way that PS(2) copy protection worked was to fudge the data in one of the subchannels which burners (to this day) can't burn to for some obscure reason. The problem with this scheme is that subchannel data is designed for things such as non-block-accurate positioning (think red book audio, accurate to within 75 sectors,) CD+text, etc, and was never designed to be reliably readable. The data in subchannels isn't reliably addressable or error corrected, which lead to a lot of borked PS discs which would (funnily enough) still play with a modchip....
Peace,
MH
You're doing it wrong.
*Possesion* of a pipe *assumed* to be for smoking an illegal substance is a federal offense.
Ain't it grand?
One of my tobacconists also sells glass pipes. It's no accident that they sell tobacco. It removes the question of assumption.
According to the DoJ *rolling papers* are also now considered "drug paraphenalia" and a federal offense to possess, which will surprise the hell out of a lot of "roll your own" tobacco smokers I know.
KFG
Are you for real? pull you head out of the sand. I love these naysayers that try to pull something down without even offering any alternatives, examples or evidence to support their opinion, other than 'oh please...'.
The EFF has been one of the most high profile and active organizations out there. See the list of cases below, easily available from their website and newsletter, though I'm sure you are aware of these since you've been following them since the early 90's.
Recent cases
Active cases
At worst, at the very worst, they have made an extremely large number of people aware of these issues, which in turn has led to many more people getting involved. And even if they dont have the same clout(meaning cash to burn) as the tobacco lobbyists or hollywood, your suggestion is to stop supporting them now so they never do? sh'yeah.
P.S. their address is in San Francisco, they left DC sometime ago.
yeah, but show up with an air rifle and your a terrorist.
Enjoy.
Given that /. harbors a high number of dissidents, you can be pretty sure that they are.
Why bother.
The whole thing is actually a fake, not only are there rumors of sites running on other ips, the site is really just where it was before on http://66.201.243.170 and it's not just a fake, it's the real site. Either the DOJ is just a bunch of numb-skulled idiotic... or the whole thing wasn't done by the DOJ. From December to Feb 26 is a long time, and there is nothing on the DOJ site about David M. Rocci.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
The press release is right here.
They probably just made an A record change to the DNS.
This buys them time to go seize the server physically, or copy all the user records off if it's a virtual colo.
If leaving the IP alone for a while prompts some clueless users to continue to log in or attempt to order more stuff, it's a smart move.
Get off my launchpad!
why some people don't like usa and say they don't like them because they bully around the rest of the world.
Including Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General:
Neighborhood Bully, an interview with Ramsey Clark by Derrick Jensen for The Sun magazine.
BTW, I don't normally post as AC, but in this case I am afraid of the US government. I'm currently applying for my Green Card, and don't want to have to live apart from my wife becuase I'm "undesirable.
I lived with IRA terrorism in the UK for thirty-odd years, and I'm not scared of terrorism, but Ashcroft scares the shit out of me...
The use of the pacifier predates the existence of extasy.
By decades. In fact, it predates the internet, on which you will not yet find the sum total of human knowledge.
The use of the pacifier by those who take extasy does not constitute drug parapenalia. Nor does it's use have anything to do with it's being an upper per se. People who take dexedrin for example don't use a pacifier.
The use of a pacifier or other suckable items as a method of delivery for LSD does constitute drug paraphenalia. People were doing this before you were born, and if you are as young as you appear perhaps before your mom was born.
Jewelry itself can be made out of pure illegal suckable drugs, but that's another subject.
KFG
Your DNS is stale or you're going to directly to the ip address. When the DNS updates, you'll get the DOJ site.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
My guess as to why he plead guilty: The Department of Gestapo... err Justice goons threatened to hold him without a bail hearing or a trial for a long time (much like the government did to Kevin Mitnick), and told him it'd be a lot easier in the long run to plead guilty rather than fight.
This is one of the reasons why it'll soon be illegal for Dutch courts to extradite people to the US. There is so much pressure on accepting a plea bargain that basically nobody gets a fair trial anymore.
The other reason is that agreements for extraditions of Dutch citizens to the US always state that they will be allowed to sit out their jail time in a Dutch prison - but this never actually happened in the last ten years.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I live in Brooklyn, NYC; I'm a black male. I was arrested outside the front of my house.. ON my steps for no reason. The reason on paper says "disorderly conduct". You watch too much TV.. Those males, who emulate a bunch of thugs, who largely prey on their own people are already in jail for entirely different reasons. I bet you also didn't know that out of every 8 black males you see during the day; 1 is in jail. While I was in central bookings in Downtown Brooklyn about 100% of the people in the cells were black so I asked what the hell is everyone in here for. "Jay walking", "Had no id on me", "Told a cop to fucking stop following me", "Didn't have my license".. Most of the things ran off were ticket offenses. One guy was caught racing his car down by Hunts Point and ended all the way in Brooklyn? Wtf is that? (I'd also like to point out that discon; disorderly conduct is a ticket offense). Surely some of these guys had to be lying but as I waited in the court room; they weren't.
I'd also like to point out that up until that point I never had a problem with the "law". Infact until my honorable discharge on Dec 5th 2002 I was an intel analyst for a Military Police Battalion and knew a truck load of police officers. The difference I realize is that I used to live in Suburbia.. Moving to Brooklyn changed the ideologies. Says alot about white people huh?
That incident, however, hasn't gone without challenge and the officers of the 79th precint who did this are being raked over the coals. The difference here is that my parents have money and my dad is in a position where he can make calls. Alot of the other black males out there don't have that. The contempt passes just the cops to their skin colors and this is why you sit there at your keyboard and make such assumptions about the social character of a black male in an urban area? You know nothing about it until you see it or experience it. So please, keep your ideas to yourself.
Many people like to mod their consoles, allowing them to make "fair use" copies of games they have purchased, in case their children destroy or scratch the disk, or allow them to play import games from other countries (that they purchase online) that are unplayable in their own country. Many people also make their own games for consoles or handhelds, especially the Game Boy Advance, which has hundreds of cool demos and games, free, for people who have moded, or "flashable" cartridges. Last Christmas, siting the DMCA, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony filed against Lik-Sang.com (my favorite game hardware site) for selling such mod chips, because they could also be used to play downloaded copies of games, which would be an illegal use under the DMCA. One of the largest issues at hand with the mod chip craze, is that most consoles are now sold at a loss, and the companies have locked themselves into a dangerous game where they primarily make money off of game sales, and these mega corporations only want you to be playing (and buying) their games, not freely downloadable games online, or booting LINUX.
A console that plays MP3s or DIVX over a network (or off its 100gb drive) as an entertainment center, or runs LINUX, is USELESS monetarily to Microsoft. This, like everything in the world, is about money.
The edited BIOS of the mod chip is the illegal thing under the DMCA. Almost all mod chip sites do *NOT SELL CHIPS WITH A BIOS*, you must download the bios from someone online. This is perfectly LEGAL (buying the mod with no BIOS), though it is illegal (under the DMCA) to download that BIOS. If he's being prosecuted and plead guilty, it was because he was selling mods preflashed with a bios. There are hundreds of MOD chip sites online, and they aren't being taken over by the DMCA.
CE
The following piracy related sites are also either down or not quite up to their usual tricks.
c dquality.com
xboxhacker.net
x-ecuter.com
BST-secure.com
v
Anyone got any idea what's going on here?
Luke