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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"
- a carrot
- a can of coke
- a 2l pop bottle
Or just eat the weed.
Or smoke it in a joint.
I mean, poor american taxpayers, how much are you paying a year now to try and keep those dangerous stoners from running amok?
"Old man yells at systemd"
You can access the site and it's forums (that have information on the takeover) here:
ISONews
-----
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
From the DoJ-defaced website:
The Department of Justice and federal law enforcement will continue to investigate and prosecute individuals and groups that violate the federal criminal copyright laws at home and abroad.
Eh... abroad? Isn't that the Department of Infinite Justice?
My next comment will be ready soon, but moderators can beat the rush and mod it up early.
This kind of thing should not be tolerated. Isn't this against his constitutional rights?
I would have thought his website would have been protected speech.
Eitherway, there needs to be a huge network of foreign isonews mirrors set up.
Sony took some people selling mod chips to court and lost.
"Don't forget the prunes." L. Francis Herreshoff
When I read the article first I was reminded on this one I saw yesterday: DRUG ENFORCEMENT TAKES CONTROL OF DOMAIN NAMES, THREATENS PRIVACY.
Seems that the war on [drugs, terrorism, general stupidity etc] has moved on to a level higher.
bash$
As much as I dislike the console pirating scene, this is a really bad turn of events.
I have my PS2 chipped, and I'm going to do the same to my XBox. Not so I can pirate games, but so I can play imports, access savegame files on the hard drive, and so on. If I *can't* add that capability to a console with a mod chip, I'm much less likely to buy them in the first place.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Ok here is the official word straight from one of the ISOnews staff
"Yes its true. The DOJ has taken control of the isonews.com DNS which now points to 149.101.1.91
If you link directly to http://66.201.243.170 you can still reach the site. This is a good interim solution as the official DNS may be gone for good.
If you can still reach isonews.com from the old dns its only because your ISP has not updated its cache. Take note of the ip now if you still want to be able to reach isonews
Http://66.201.243.170
Hop into efnet #isonews for updates as they arrive. We'll try to keep things running here until the situation becomes clearer.
in the meantime , i wanna make some things clear.
1.theres about 8 isonews servers.
2.they are currently not being touched by anyone except isonews staff.
3.theres no need to back anything up.
In the meantime theres little need to specualte as we will keep you updated , in the meantime just use the forum as normal and pass the ip on to any friends who use the site till we sort this out."
It's sad. John Ashcroft is the first person I've ever had spawn the words "Fascist Fuck" spontaneously in my head when seeing his image on sites like this. Normally I am a pretty level-headed guy. I think if you measured my autonomic responses, I would register more of a reaction to Ashcroft for than Saddam.
... if I then do something illegal like piracy or service theft with the modchip, punish that action, not the ownership of the modchip ... it should be no more illegal than having IP connectivity (which also enables software piracy if you want to take it to one possible logical conclusion).
Between things like this and the Patriot Act parts I and the soon to be released part II, this administration has been the most un-American in office since the anti-communist folks in the 50's.
I fully believe that unless the modchip affects someone -elses- hardware, modifying hardware I own should be legal, especially if my use is to do something like run Linux
And before some idiot tries to subpoena my IP address to come search my house, my PS2 is not modified and I long ago (4-5 years) killed my software piracy habit in favor of free software. Just because I'm abiding by the law doesn't mean I agree with the way our current government tries to enforce the law and pass new (unconstitional in some cases) ones.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
krazy8 got busted because he tried to do something that the elite of the scene rightfully frown upon: making money off of the scene. At one point iSONEWS (formerly orm.nu, after it's founder) was basically run and hosted by DEVIANCE (a game release group) and offered analysis of group's releases each month. However, when orm began to step back from the site and krazy8 took over it more, it became more commercialized and the real scene members backed away from it. There were popup ads, special deals with businesses, and worst of all... increased traffic. The elite of the scene stopped visiting and posting on isonews and it degenerated into a place for newbies to flame each other and talk about how elite they were.
krazy8 got busted because he tried to make the site more popular and profit off of it. Instead of catering to the elite of the scene, taking security precautions, and keeping the site 100% legal he appealed to the lowest common demonenator and payed the price. Sites like checkpoint cater to the elite of the scene, deny access to the public, and take security precautions.
The lesson? Don't try to make money off of piracy and don't try to expose the scene to the public.
This whole thing just bothers me. How is it that aftermarket chip mods for cars is OK but chip mods for XBoxes or other types of computers isn't?
Seems to me that this is a matter of offering features that somebody else refuses to offer. Ford isn't going to put a chip that offers you more performance due to government meddling in auto manufacturing. But obviously the public demands these features and somebody is bridging the gap. How is this harming anyone? Isn't it actually expanding the market?
What do you expect from Ashcroft though? It wouldn't surprise me if this fellow is indicted on charges of "terrorism."
some of you may know me from there.
all i can confirm that, krazy8 has not been seen in a long, long time... and that he was busted FOR selling modchips.
the details of his plea bargain are not out, and nobody is speaking about anything.
i would suspect anyone not speaking openly about it, to be part of the plea bargain.
Runnin' On Empty
Hell, first of all GW Bush unilaterally appoints the US as the world's international police force, stepping into the internal politics of other soverign nations and fostering the widespread hatred of Americans amongst some of the world's most populous countries.
Then, in the name of the "war against terrorism", the government usurps the very constitutional rights of its own citizens to legal representation and the presumption of inocence.
And now it seems that the US government is set on forcing its own laws upon all citizens of the world.
It strikes me that the American people need to wake up and realize that those in power are starting to run amok and need to be reigned in -- for the benefit of *everybody* on the planet.
The USA is a great nation and I have lots of really nice American friends -- but hasn't anyone over there noticed that there's a bunch of crazies driving your wagon?
And yet in Australia I could buy both and still not be a criminal...
This is getting way out of hand. Pretty soon, I won't be able to make modifications to my PC or my car, not because it would void the warranty (don't care), but because I'M NOT FREAKING ALLOWED TO IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Of course, by this logic, all of NASCAR should be banned and taken over by the DOJ. Perhaps we can get a few of those judges to try driving those cars too. Sounds like Darwinism in action to me....
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Why on earth did this guy plead guilty? It seems to me he is accused of a non-crime, at least the way the web-site reads. He should appeal and the EFF should help him.
This is extremely revolting that the selling of mod chips would be viewed in and of itself as illegal. All you people out there who think the DMCA covers this are very confused. The DMCA violation occurs when you strip a client game program of its authentication key (and this is copyright infringement anyway). All this guy did was sell parts that turned the game console into a general purpose computer. This is NO different than selling general purpose computer parts.
Conservatives fucking take care of business.
Please dont confuse conservatives with republicans. As a conservative, my concern is the strict interpretation of the constitution. what Ashcroft is doing is not, by any standard, a scrict interpretation of the constitution.
REAL conservative believe that you should be able to do anything you want as long as it doesnt adversely affect others.
Republicanism is not the same as conservatism. No matter what the media tells you.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
On the Xbox, each disc has a signature which the Xbox must verify before it'll allow it to boot. If you look back in last week's archives, the Xbox Linux team had written a letter to Microsoft asking them to sign Xbox Linux so it could boot without a modchip.
"Programming is like sex - one mistake and you'll have to support it for the rest of your life."
Are mod chips illegal? Should they be? Let's look at the facts.
Fact #1: Mod chips have to be utilized for modern console game theft to exist. Theft of games is illegal. Without modchips, burnt copies of games are set up the bomb.
Fact #2: Mod chips circumvent regional protections, allowing users to buy and play games from foreign markets - games which are often not sold in their home markets. AFAIK, there is no law saying the idiocy of regional encoding must exist. Nor is there a law preventing people from circumventing it.
Fact #3: Mod chips allow people to utilize their hardware in legal ways. Such as, running Linux on an X-Box.
Fact #4: Hitting someone in the head with a hammer, repeatedly, may cause death. At the least, such an act most certainly qualifies as battery. Without hammers, the act of bludgeoning someone to death with a hammer is set up the bomb.
Fact #5: Hammers can be used to drive nails into pieces of wood that are various lengths and shapes. This is totally legal.
Fact #6: You can buy a hammer in any Home Despot.
Thus, the High Court of Sanity finds that mod chips, provided that they do not contain proprietary code of which the chip maker is not owner of, are legal.
(Sadly, the High Court of Sanity's jurisdiction only extends in a foot-long radius about me.)
home page
Ohh - not that's not true! I've seen games consoles modded so they can play Japanese games - not even to save money, just because the games were released in Japan first.
I think you're too ready to shallow the hype - M$ seem to be forgetting fair use, and that the customer has bought the Xbox - if they want to mess with it, well I think they have the right. Sure if they rip off games then MS have a perfect right to stop that, but to say I can't mess with a machine I bought is not on. And there are legitimate reasons for modding an Xbox.
It looks like the modchips were illegal because they contain a BIOS. Most chips are shipped without a BIOS, but the Enigmahs are pre-flashed.
A modchip without a bios isn't a usable device.
you are all criminals.
Over the years, I've run across a number of articles explaining why, in most of the country, this is quite literally true. It turns out that in most of the US, it isn't logically possible to follow all the laws simultaneously. There are almost always logical contradictions in the various laws, so that following one law means breaking another.
Some of the examples get downright silly. For example, in one place that I lived, the law students dug out the anti-gambling laws, and verified that, under a literal interpretation, carrying cash was "being in posession of gambling devices". You know the various penny-matching games or serial-number games that can be played with money? They make money itself a gambling device.
OTOH, if you weren't carrying money, that was ipse facto evidence of vagrancy, for which you could be arrested and held in jail.
Then, of course, there are all the laws that you could follow if you knew about them, but you'd never suspect that such stupid laws exist. There are supposedly several states in which the legal speed limit is still 10 or 15 mph, dating from 100 years ago when that was fast enough to scare the horses.
Granted, such laws would probably be overturned, but first you have to be arrested and charged, so that you can defend yourself in court. This gives you an arrest record, which can be used against you.
This isn't entirely frivolous. Almost all urban black males have arrest records by age 18. The reason is that they can be and are routinely arrested on just this sort of violation. They have little or no defense, since they are in fact always in violation of some law, even if they're just standing on the corner watching the world go by. This arrest record is then used to deny them access to education and jobs. So much for decades of "equal opportunity" legislation.
Back to frivolity: I lived in Florida for a few years, and one of the fun laws there turns out to outlaw "nude bathing". The wording does not exclude a bath in the bathtub in your own bathroom. But if you shower nude (with or without a friend), you are apparently legal.
All in all, if you're in the US, you are usually in violation of some law at any time. You are at least a criminal part of the day, no matter what you do or don't do.
(I'd guess that this is also true in much of the rest of the world, but I've only read about it in US terms.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
They must have been terrorists. I'm sure they are in Cuba by now. Houses sold, assets frozen and confiscated. Or they violated the DMCA. Can that land you in Guantanamo these days? Or is violating the DMCA now the same as being a terrorist? It's so confusing, really. I guess I probably should not be writing this. I think they're coming for me now...
In Soviet Russia (no, this is not one of those jokes) they had a name for the person who turned you in. They called them a Stukatch (bad transcription from the Cyrillic, sorry). It was an offtake on the word Stuk, or "knock". If your neighbor did not like you, or disagreed with your "morals" they would turn you in, and soon enough you would get that knock.
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
Slightly offtopic, here in Georgia there is a city called Kennesaw where it is ILLEGAL for any home to not possess some kind of firearm. I'm sure there is some contradiction here I just cannot think of it right now (luckily I got my bong a few weeks ago).
It's just video games! Get a grip!
You can legallly play any game on the planet if you pay for the games and the systems they were made to be played on. It won't kill you to shell out a few more bucks. Video games are NOT a necessity! We're not talking about important issues like access to public water reservoirs or voting booths. Believe or not, billions of people today have lived their whole lives without playing video games, and are no worse off for it.
IMHO, this is utterly trivial. But since many of you think it's a critical, life-or-death, the-sky-is-falling, Constitutional abrogation, I will continue...
We are a nation of laws, not chaos. Just because Joe Citizen doesn't like a law doesn't mean he gets to be self-appointed dictator. The law does not bow to prima donnas, post-modernists, or cry babies. Although you yourself can't make or repeal laws, you do get to choose the people who do that. The laws were created by representatives that the people have voted into office. That's the way a democracy (or, "representative republic," for the nitpickers) works.
With over 280 million American citizens, there will always be major disagreement over the merit of particular legislation. Notwithstanding, you must obey the laws or freely accept the punishment for breaking them, even if they aren't written like YOU would want them to be. You may practice civil disobedience, but in doing so, you still must face the consequences until the other people in your movement have been effective in lobbying for the amendment or repeal of the contested laws.
So please, keep your ideas to yourself.
[don't be afraid to say what you want
I look at the two lines above, one right after the other, shake head, blink eyes and conclude: it's just, utterly bizarre.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I wonder what would happen if I created a razor blade that fit the Mach 3 razor, was equivalent to the Mach 3 blades, and sold it for half the price of the Mach 3 blades...
What happened to 'generic' stuff? You never see plain old black and white "CEREAL" boxes anymore..
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
The racial "thing" is completely justified. Look at mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine versus regular cocaine. It is a vicious cycle, and there is no one thing to blame, but blatently racist drug laws perpetuate this cycle.
And isn't it possible that you, like so many white people, don't have a freaking clue about what it's like living in that world?
Great cop-out. No matter whether we're white, black, asian, etc, we all live in the same world, with the same laws. Black people get picked up more, you're right, but black people commit more crimes. Him pointing to the fact that the people were waiting in jail with him were there for bullshit reasons doesn't dispute the fact that 1 in 4 black males are in jail (for more than a night) on a serious charge.
I've been called a racist before, it doesn't bother me and I'll admit it. I also wouldn't think to turn my back if a fellow human needed help (money, a lift, overwhelmed in a fight, etc). I'm just not going to close my eyes and pretend that minotirites are SO unfairly treated because of their race. If anything, minorities in general ARE treated fairly because of their race.
--trb
A black guy calling in to a talk radio station said it very clearly for me:
">I'm afraid of a group of kids approaching me in $200 sneakers. It's incumbent upon white people to make the correct distinctions and conclusions."
Part of what I extrapolated from that is that white people can never come off their pedestal by thinking that "there are many black people I admire" -- because they can always to categorized as exceptions. You have to start in your own back yard and see that, "Gosh there are a lot of thuggish white trash running around." Then, magically, the universe comes into balance. And, to stay on topic, good black people can get together with good white people and we can work together to do something about Nazis like Ashcroft.