Slashdot Mirror
US Gov't Orders 73,000 Private Websites Offline
joeszilagyi sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"... according to the owner of a free WordPress platform which hosts more than 73,000 blogs, his network of sites has been completely shut down on the orders of the authorities. Blogetery.com has been with host BurstNet for 7 months, but on Friday July 9th the site disappeared. ... Due to the fact that the authorities aren't sharing information and BurstNet are sworn to secrecy, it is proving almost impossible to confirm the exact reason why Blogetery has been completely taken down. The owner does, however, admit to handling many copyright-related cease and desists in the past, albeit in a timely manner as the DMCA requires."
Who said US doesn't pull stunts like China? I think I've heard so many times on slashdot.
US is just as bad. It's just for different interests (protecting the money and cash flow of huge corporations versus ensuring that the people in the country don't start bloody revolts).
Twist it how you want to, but the fact remains that both countries act like assholes and US is in the same level.
The only reason I can think of for this kind of government censorship is if there is some national security related issue with the blogs on this site. I wonder if it's related to those Russian spies they caught recently? A terrorist plot? I'm sure we'll find out soon enough....
Government shuts down one private website.
Mark my words. This is only the beginning of high-profile shutdowns.
The nest has been stirred and the wasps are now out in full force.
There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel.
You cannot get by with stuff like this without angering a lot of people.
Enough angry constituents and things will start to change.
Lets just hope for the best as that's all we can really do.
~The roAm
Like the history now being created of seizing private property without due process that may or may not actually reside outside of American sovereignty?
youtube.com has thousands of videos with infringing content. They must get slammed with DMCA claims.
<in best German voice>
Seize Heil! Seize There! Seize Everywhere!
One day, maybe soon, the US or some other country that likes to project its policies with force will kill someone in a data center during one of these raids or will bomb a data center in a foreign country.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Does this have anything to do with the filesharing websites they were messing with recently?
Endless nation building and the war on drugs continues.
What makes you think a few pirate takedowns are going to stir the wasps?
Twist it how you want to, but the fact remains that both countries act like assholes and US is in the same level.
Oh my. There differences are many. For starters, the quantity blocked in China versus what could be considered blocked in the United States. In the United States, this sort of thing happens in isolated cases for criminal reasons and the end result is that the website might be vindicated. Point me to one case in China that ended up where the government was wrong. I'm waiting. At least YouTube was vindicated by the government against Viacom. There's some semblance of justice in the United States with regards to blocking websites. In China, it's a bizarre "unharmonious" label or anti-PRC speech that gets you blocked (and oftentimes worse than that).
I could not disagree more with your analogy.
I'm guessing users were trading child porn or the owner wasn't handling his taxes correctly. His user name in the forums is a marketing site between the US and Canada. I'm guessing he could have been pulling down big ad money and not reporting it correctly between the two countries. Hosting websites is a business and businesses always get into trouble. When there's money involved, there's lawyers. And with lawyers come lawsuits and with lawsuits come temporary injunctions.
My work here is dung.
Or can I post copyrighted material to a political site I disagree with and give some gov't agency an excuse to take it down without a court order? I'm sure they'll admit they were wrong after 11/2 and let the site back up.
This looks like a different scenario with multiple violations by the site owner, but it's a bad precedent if there is not a public court order listing the violations. There are ways to get a court order very quick with little evidence for a "critical mater" that they claim this is.
You seem to not understand that we're the ants and the powers that be are the wasps.
~The roAm
Where is your Freedom of Speech when you need it? Or is the American Freedom of Speech subject to the approvals of big corporations?
Not any different than freedom of speech that is subject to approval of governments.
It sure sounds like we're getting the whole story here, yes sir.
What you have to understand about China is that their government is an expression of their religious philosophies. They believe that social order is a moral expression, and something worth dying for:
In Confucianism, human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour especially including self-cultivation and self-creation. A main idea of Confucianism is the cultivation of virtue and the development of moral perfection. Confucianism holds that one should give up one's life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren and yi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism
In America, we have a culture that values liberty, which has become quite distorted in modern times. We've also retained some very puritan ideas, which is why nipples are somehow more offensive than gun violence. More recently, our only main moral metric has become profit.
This instance illustrates the point perfectly. Mose Chinese, if begrudgingly, accept the government's right to censor their speech so that the social order is maintained. Most Americans accept the government's right to censor free speech in the interest of profit.
So, if you want to stop the march to DRM and the loss of basic rights in the face of corporate rights to profit, you're going to have to convince fellow Americans that profit isn't the only thing that matters. Good luck with that.
I hate to sound pessimistic, but what good is a letter to my Congressman when some media conglomerate can afford to pay lobbyists to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into his reelection campaign? I can't even afford to buy him Springsteen tickets.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This happened about a week ago. The owner of the single server (that's right, it was all on one single server, with no backups) posted to WebHostingTalk.com to complain because BurstNet wouldn't violate the government's order to keep quiet.
The authorities ordered BurstNet to take the server offline for what appeared to be very, very serious violations. Based on BurstNet's demeanor and seriousness when asked about the issue, it could be anything from national security to child porn. BurstNet also appears to have been hit with a gag order, as they've only made one (perhaps two) public comments on the situation, and absolutely refuse to make any more announcements.
Don't take my word for it - read up on the situation at the original WHT thread (which is now closed).
in china government orders your site down, because they dont like it.
in usa private people and companies order your site down, because they dont like it. they just need to use an excuse for invoking dmca.
the only difference is, there is a storefront in usa, and people think they are 'free'.
Read radical news here
DMCA already provides a clear path to dealing with infringing material, and there's no good reason to keep an anti-piracy action secret. That's the sort of thing authorities and overlords like to advertise. I bet we'll hear all about the terrorist blog network the quick-thinking government agents shut down once the dust settles.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Lets just hope for the best as that's all we can really do.
That's the American, can-do, revolutionary spirit of our founding fathers! In fact, I think that's written somewhere in the Declaration of Independence. "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, just hope for the best, as that's all we can really do."
Have a revolution or don't. Don't pretend there's nothing you can do.
Nothing. You will do nothing about it because you can't do anything about it.
Submit to Uncle Sam or go to jail.
This didn't start with Obama either. This is ingrained in our society, and accepted by many in the name of national security. That's a very grave mistake. Books like "The Federal Mafia" have been banned, and New York Times reporters have been silenced by being thrown in jail. It is very troubling that this trend continues, and everyone should be protesting it.
Just like in China, if you don't submit to the government you shall be punished.
You can blame it on culture. You can blame it on trends. It's really as simple as the people who have the power will do anything to keep the power. They will make as many laws as they have to, they will trample as many civil liberties as they have to, because they function as a mafia.
You are either with them or against them. Submit or go to jail.
Are we talking about information-material that is illegal to posses per se such as child pornography or material which is not illegal for the average American to possess at all?
If the former then I can see why this is an extraordinary case but I can't see why the people responsible haven't been arrested already.
If the latter then it's extraordinarily stupid and un-American to use law enforcement in such a heavy-handed, hush-hush manner.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They who want the power, the profits, the control over all information and intellectual property, will do anything to get it. It's a war for information control. It's a war you as a civilian cannot win. It does not matter if you are a civilian artist (you'll get pimped by the system), it does not matter if you are a civilian consumer (you'll be forced into submission or jail.)
The rules to this game are simple. Submit or jail.
If you are a civilian, you have one of two options. You can either submit, or you can go to jail. That is the game. The owners who made the rules designed it so that you only have two options. It does not matter whether or not you are an information producer or information consumer, if you are a producer you have to submit to being pimped and treated like their property. You are going to be forced to whore yourself out to the highest bidder. If you are a consumer you'll have to submit to some of the most draconian anti consumer laws on the planet.
Just like in the 60s, those who don't submit will go up against Cointel Pro. You want to start a militia? You want to rebel? Not going to be an option. The only option is to submit or go to jail. Choose your option wisely because they can always change the game later to submit or die.
Anytime you hear stories from anonymous government sources and anonymous agents, it's bullshit. Anybody who really works for the government and who really has something to say, will be able to say it on the record or provide authentic documents to back up what they are saying.
Otherwise it's as simple as someone wearing a suit and tie with a fake badge telling people they work for the government. Anybody can say this, anybody can talk like this, I see it on Alex Jones all the time. Thats when they call it a conspiracy theory, and I'm calling it a conspiracy theory in this instance.
You, and others like you, have no alternative. You can submit to the authority of the US government or you can be assassinated in a way which looks like natural causes by secret agents who have the legal authority to assassinate terrorists.
What this means is there is no option to rebel. There is no option to protest beyond mere words, and even words can get you put in jail in this environment.
Could you at least get the heading correct. Government didnt shut down 73000 web sites but shutdown one with 73000 blogs.
Why would they have to kill someone in a raid when they can kill someone with the flu, or with something which will look like natural causes? You underestimate the abilities of the government. They have biological weapons, this means viruses of all sorts which can kill in all kinds of ways without a trace or shred of evidence so that it's completely deniable. The same legal authority which allows the government to conduct raids and trample free speech is the legal authority which allows them to assassinate American citizens. It's the law that if you are considered to be a terrorist, it's open season on you.
Once the government declares you fair game, they'll put the green light on you and whoever takes you out will become a millionaire. Fortunately it's still expensive for them to do this so they don't have the ability to kill millions of people, but it should be common knowledge that the US government has the power to assassinate American citizens.
The proof is here:
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/04/07/can-the-u-s-government-assassinate-u-s-citizens-based-on-secret-evidence/
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations
Finally some real info.
"If you see a man on a horse, he is likely an enemy. Kill the man and eat the horse."
From the wikipedia article, there are three Americans that were held at Guantanamo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay
Free speech is a myth.
Human rights is a dream.
Freedom isn't real.
The meaning of these three sentences is very simple. Every human on planet earth must submit to the authority of Uncle Sam or they shall be punished with jail or death.
Fortunately the US government has not decided on mass assassinations, but the authority exists under the law to make every living person submit under the threat of death.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations
This means it's no longer an option to disobey the US government. If you disobey then you'll go to jail. If you disobey in the wrong way, you may be declared a terrorist and then you go to jail and get tortured in jail. If you fight by with physical force you can be declared as an enemy combatant and then you can get assassinated.
All of the evidence against you can be kept secret. The fact that you were assassinated and didn't die in a freak accident can be kept secret. The game is submit or go to jail. And sometimes even if you submit you still go to jail if you piss too many people off.
Thanks to the "War on Drugs", law enforcement has been doing this since the mid 80's. Maybe this is just the next logical step?
There is a war going on for your mind.
I doubt it was over copyright or illegal content issues. If it was, the justice dept would have tripped over itself to make an example of this evil hosting service. A very public example.
The whole secrecy thing, together with taking down 73,000 blogs, makes me think that they were targeting a few (perhaps only one) page. But they don't want us to know which one. So take them all down and it will be difficult to tell. Grab a copy of the archives while they're still up. There could be some interesting reading in there someplace.
Have gnu, will travel.
This happened about a week ago. The owner of the single server (that's right, it was all on one single server, with no backups) posted to WebHostingTalk.com to complain because BurstNet wouldn't violate the government's order to keep quiet.
The authorities ordered BurstNet to take the server offline for what appeared to be very, very serious violations. Based on BurstNet's demeanor and seriousness when asked about the issue, it could be anything from national security to child porn. BurstNet also appears to have been hit with a gag order, as they've only made one (perhaps two) public comments on the situation, and absolutely refuse to make any more announcements.
Don't take my word for it - read up on the situation at the original WHT thread (which is now closed).
If it's national security and they fight back they could get killed, or snatched up and beaten/waterboarded. Or they could just be arrested without charge and put in prison.
So nobody is going to mess with the government. The best and only option in this situation is to keep your mouth shut, call your lawyer, and hope that it can be sorted out within the legal system.
Agreed,
I think this is just a demonstration of what the proposed "Internet-Kill-Switch" would be operated like. Information getting out of hand? Turn it off.
Claims of parent to support "Fascism is coming"...
- Books like The Federal Mafia have been banned: No.
- NYT reporters have been silenced [...] in jail: "reporters" == Judith Miller, who got to do a couple months in the can to ponder the meaning of "contempt of court". She's not the first, and won't be the last.
Luke, help me take this mask off
If you claim the US government is as bad as the Chinese government, you have absolutely no fucking idea what actual dictatorship is like. Such statements are typical of those who've never had their reality meter forcibly calibrated by actual oppression and are too lazy to calibrate it themselves by learning some history.
I'll tell you what... Go to the US, talk about Bush's crimes, and see what happens. Go to China, start telling the truth about Tiannanmen Square, and see what happens.
As the IPBFree forums were also shut down earlier this week with the only information I have seen regarding it was from a Twitter account...
From Twitter: (Apparently Tomlough and several of the other people were part of IPBfree Admin or whatever):
tomlough@nands__ Sorry, everything on iPBFree has gone.
less than 20 seconds ago via web in reply to nands__
@AmandaFurukita Unfortunately I can't divulge the reason for legal reasons. We really are sorry for the damage to your communities.
half a minute ago via web in reply to AmandaFurukita
@piositweet Most of us are always doing new stuff on the web we'll let you know what we're doing if you're interested
1 minute ago via web in reply to piositweet
@Gamerx20 A lot of iPBFree stuff is compatible with IF, none of it is compatible with ZB. People will be more familiar with IF or jcink
2 minutes ago via web in reply to Gamerx20
@Gamerx20 Well, that's a matter of opinion
7 minutes ago via web in reply to Gamerx20
@Xiahfied Sorry, it's all gone forever.
8 minutes ago via web in reply to Xiahfied
@shimy88 We're really sorry, it's all gone forever.
8 minutes ago via web in reply to shimy88
@QuarantineRP Thank you
12 minutes ago via web in reply to QuarantineRP
@Aymbuh Thanks for using iPBFree. If it weren't for the users, there would have been no point in iPBFree.
12 minutes ago via web in reply to Aymbuh
@Gamerx20 We can't. Some staff members will work on new projects, but iPBFree as a site and a group is dead.
13 minutes ago via web in reply to Gamerx20
@Gamerx20 You will need to find a new host, yes. iPBFree won't return.
19 minutes ago via web in reply to Gamerx20
@znewscast All I'll say is that we had no choice in the matter. We'd never choose to let our users down like this.
20 minutes ago via web in reply to znewscast
@znewscast Unfortunately I can't divulge the reason for legal reasons
29 minutes ago via web in reply to znewscast
@shimy88 iPBFree management team. Trust me, we know how bad this is for everyone. We didn't have the option of letting people know first.
31 minutes ago via web in reply to shimy88
@yasminyu_x That's not the reason. We didn't have any arguments, all the rumours are wrong.
39 minutes ago via web in reply to yasminyu_x
@miyachan11 We'd have liked to but we weren't able to do so in the circumstances.
about 1 hour ago via web in reply to miyachan11
If you need to RT: iPBFree is gone forever and it's not possible to retrieve anything. We're exceptionally sorry, it wasn't planned.
about 1 hour ago via web
@MrHorror Not sure, I haven't tried.
about 2 hours ago via web in reply to MrHorror
@MrHorror You might have some lack with Google but otherwise there's nothing we can do I'm afraid. (And all the rumours I've seen are wrong)
about 2 hours ago via web in reply to MrHorror
@BGgourmet Unfortunately we weren't able to
about 2 hours ago via web in reply to BGgourmet
I'm sorry, but something stinks about this...
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
Here's a time saving summary of about 90% of the posts here today for those who don't feel like doing them one by one:
I haven't the vaguest idea what actually happened here, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that the fascist/conservative/liberal/communist/megacorps/illuminati/mole-people have usurped our freedom once again by taking down a half a billion websites that hosted nothing but honest discourse that they, the aforementioned fascist/conservative/liberal/communist/megacorps/illuminati/mole-people don't want YOU to read. Clearly, the U.S. is as bad as China/Soviet Russia/Somalia/Cuba/The Romulan Empire/The Sith/Microsoft, and any ideas that you live in a free society stem from the idea that you're stupid and just another sheeple being led about by the nose by THE MAN. If, somehow, it turns out that the server in question was hosting Child Pornography/Snuff Films/how-to guides to build Nuclear Weapons/Disney Movies, you can safely assume that those things were just planted in order to steal your freedom, except that you didn't have any, so it's just there to steal your imaginary sense of freedom. Since this sense of freedom was imaginary, it's just Imaginary Property anyway, and couldn't have been stolen from you in the first place, so really, nothing of value was lost. I know all this because years ago I threw out my TV because it only showed mindless pablum like American Idol, and worse yet, they make you watch ads, so now I download American Idol on Bit-torrent instead and watch it on my computer, which is inherently better than watching it on TV, so I'm smarter than you. Something about Old People In Korea, Natalie Portman Naked and Petrified, and Hot Grits. In conclusion, in Soviet Amerikkka, websites view you, and this is probably all Steve Jobs' fault.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
My server is disguised as a nuclear warhead you insensitive clod!
Size DOES matter!
My server:
outside view
inside view
The people targeted by Chinese crackdowns is also relatively small.
But perhaps you are referring to the number of people who are subject to or potentially targeted by said policies: In that case, it is approximately 80% of the Muslim world that is subject to US policies of invasion, puppet governments, torture, indefinite periods of imprisonment and out-of-the-blue extra-judicial killings.
China may still have more people than the Muslim world, but the scale is definitely in the same league.
Are modern day blogs not much closer to the 'press' at the time the US first amendment was passed than are today's corporate media conglomerates? So is taking down a site containing so many blogs not interfering with the freedom of the press - which is something the US constitution prohibits their government from doing?
really
so if i cut off your head thats bad
and just cause i didn't do that and cut off your arms legs and penis leaving you barely alive able to do nothing thats better and justifies it all?
degrees of stupid are more like the truth here. THIS will really piss off a lot of legit people and make them now question more and more the need for any copyrights
One: This is a national security letter under USA PATRIOT
Two: Burstnet is full of shit, canceled these guys for reasons of their own (which might include dealing with government investigations) and is deflecting blame to the government.
Either one is bad, but at this point I'm not ready to blame the government completely as passing the blame for unpopular decisions to some unreachable authority is one of the oldest ones in the book.
He's the only SANE one left!!
Hello....we have over 30 million people in this country illegally right now, but the Federal government is busy taking down 73,000 private websites.
Here are the possibilities
1. They specifically reviewed the content of over 73,000 private websites and took action.
1a. The manpower required to do that would be significant and could much better be used to actually secure our nation.
2. They specifically reviewed the content of a few sites, and arbitrarily and unfairly downed tens of thousands of innocent private sites, cutting off their right to free speech and conduct private business.
2a. The federal government asserted powers it does not have and unjustly deprived US citizens of their rights under the Constitution.
3. They reviewed nothing and acted solely on information provided to the UNCONSTITUTIONAL Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel by DRM proponents.
They directed action at sites ALLEGEDLY "offering unauthorized movies and music", last month U.S. authorities targeted several sites they claimed were connected to the streaming of infringing video material.
Wait a minute. They "claimed" the sites were "connected" to the streaming of "infringing video material". Last time I checked, our judicial system maintained that we are innocent until proven guilty, the federal government was PROHIBITED under the Intelligence Oversight Act from spying on its citizens, and the US Federal government cannot run around shutting down businesses on nothing more than the speculation of competitors. WTF?!
Many personal websites are primarily to be viewed by extended groups of friend (meatspace or cyberspace). They could benefit from a bit of anonymity, personal control over their hosting, and freedom from dependance on a third party. I know that the freenet, diaspora, and tonika guys think that. But, this is a really great opportunity to point out the strong progress in speed and usability made by the I2P community over the last year. They offer a simple java program that when installed connects you to an anonymous network overlay in which you can irc, email, and publish websites from your machine. It also supports torrent and mule activity. Check out useable cipherspace that feels like the internet before AOL joined at geti2p dot net !
"Society" is only an abstraction. In reality there are only individuals. As long as everybody respects everybody else's rights, no compromises are necessary. What gives some individuals the right to tell others what to do?
The owners of these websites were not selling their data to this service and coming back every day trying to buy it back. It would be more like a storage unit is found to have dead body in it so they open up everyone's storage lockers and take everything as evidence.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Looks like they shut down a host, which just happens to have a lot of sites.. Tons of collateral damage but i don't think the goal was to shut down 73k sites.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Freenet: "free" web hosting that can't be taken down or blocked without permanent removal or disruption of a majority of nodes on the network. Making Freenet itself illegal would be legally very difficult in any society that has "free speech".
Bonus: Like torrents, the more popular content on Freenet is, the faster it can be fetched. So Freenet pages are immune to the /. effect.
Drawback: Freenet only stores and retrieves data, so all pages are static [scripting not allowed for security reasons, HTML and CSS are also white-list filtered]. This is fine for a blog, or art gallery site.
http://www.freenetproject.org/
Actually there are lots of places with restrictions on how many unrelated consenting adults can live together. It's mostly college towns and beach towns, trying to keep away rowdy young people, but sometimes it's just anti-slum zoning. That obviously doesn't apply to people living in separate apartments, but some places limit those as well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
We'll see how long that lasts when the government has the wonderful power of net neutrality to regulate Internet traffic and censor discussion to help "prevent economic terrorism" or "preserve national security."
So, you think America doesn't call in the troops to maintain order. I think you're flatly wrong.
WWI Vets protesting during the Great Depression? Call in the troops! Miners striking for better wages? Call in the national guard! College kids causing a ruckus over the Vietnam War? Keep your finger on the trigger. Got some colored people demanding rights? Send in the secret police to take them out.
Apparently you have also forgotten about the Civil War. Whether the crisis (or the injustice of slavery) could have been solved without the military, who knows. But America has shown it's willingness to kill it's citizens in order to keep the Union together.
Now, what's even more revealing, is that American investment in China went up after the Tiananmen Square incident because it proved that China could keep it's population in line. Not long after they murdered their citizens in the streets, we were lining up for their cheap communist labor. So much for our value system.
America has many more freedoms than China, but every state has a will to survive that is larger than the value of a few of its citizen's lives. America just has much better PR about that fact.
When it's possible for a government to couch new laws in terms of right and wrong and when the People are blinded enough to accept such terms, freedom suffers. When freedom suffers enough. Bad Things happen. I don't care if it was Russian spies, free dealing child pornographers, or Assassinations R Us: there is no justification for silencing speech. and as for Terrorism, I'm not even going to dignify that excuse.
Whether the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth-
These are matters of high concern
Where State-kept school men are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.
Whether The People be led by the Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by vote -
These are the things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.
Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give,
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King -
Or Holy People's Will -
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!
Saying -- after -- me:--
Once there was The People - Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once There was The People - it shall never be again!
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
It's different 'cos it's CHINA, yeah? Just get with the program, dude. When countries waterboard US soldiers, it's called torture, but it's aggressive interrogation when the US does it BECAUSE IT'S THE US!!!!
Or are you with THE TERRORISTS!!!
Based on some searching (wayback and webhostingtalk) this guy has been booted from two other hosting companies since 2008.
See the ongoing thread @ http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=964013
So, you think America doesn't call in the troops to maintain order.
Did I say that? No. We were talking about China and their allegedly oh so philosophical government.
The owner of the single server (that's right, it was all on one single server, with no backups) posted to WebHostingTalk.com ...
Has anyone from "the government" (state, fed, department?) contacted Blogetery.com's owner? I bet BurstNet just messed up and lost the server, and are feeding him a line.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
disappear people.
Where the hell is Julian Assange?
Where the hell have the secure uploading options for wikileaks gone?
Thank you for rescuing my hope for humanity. POTD, YWTI; Wheaties, breakfast of champions.
What you have to understand about China is that their government is an expression of their religious philosophies. They believe that social order is a moral expression, and something worth dying for:
This interpretation rather conveniently ignores the PRC government's long suppression of Confucianism. Its rehabilitation is something quite recent:
"I think he [Qin Shihuang] killed too few Confucian scholars. All those Confucian scholars were indeed counter-revolutionaries." -Chairman Mao
I'll take less movies and music over a complete loss of individual rights.
Also: http://mschaut.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/fascist.jpg
Historically, marriage is about property -- a commitment for the combined wealth of the participants (the couple, their extended family, the tribe) to stay together.
Marriage for love was remarkable in the ancient world: not unknown, but neither the norm.
Related note: Peter Farb argues (in Man's Rise to Civilization) that the incest taboo reflects economic reality: cultures that outbreed tend to accumulate more wealth (through marriage and other combinations) than cultures that inbreed.
-kgj
I don't recall the Bush administration being so keen on enforcing copyright law, and I don't recall them being so brazen, yet at the same time secretive about it.
"The authorities" shut down an entire site and refuse to tell the owner why?
Prior to the ascension of The One, the leftysphere and MSM (but I repeat myself) would have been all over this, proclaiming the birth of the Bush Police State.
Yet now all I hear is some grumbling from the same fringe kooks who think copyright law is invalid to begin with.
I have to suspect that this action may be a trial balloon. I have to suspect that in the future, websites that host content that the regime finds objectionable will also be subject to arbitrary termination, and for equally mysterious reasons.
Tyranny depends on information control. It isn't easy to control what people think, but it is easy to control what they think ABOUT if you control what information they have access to.
How long before the Drudge Report gets taken down? (I am engaging in hyperbole there, but you get the point).
Wasn't this supposed to be the new era of transparency? Well it is, transparent evil.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
This is a major First Amendment issue. Where's the court order? I don't care what they were doing, there's no excuse for doing this without legal process. Judges are available 24/7 for emergencies.
Also, it doesn't help the Government that they got BurstNet to do their dirty work. Anything the U.S. Government is constitutionally prohibited from doing directly, they cannot do through a private party.
This is not the "government oversteps boundaries chasing torrent users" story the site owner is doing his best to promote... The company provided "free" and pay for upgrade blog hosting which attracted numerous DMCA complaints. Unfortunately, the site owner had no content control system in place at all other than waiting for his datacenter to send DCMA notices. Imagine his surprise when after getting quite a few of these that someone decided there was a pattern of willful / negligent violations of copyright and filed a lawsuit. If this is what happened the "victims" all seem to be the last people in the entire World to know you cannot host pirated content on a US located server. If you do, there is a real risk that some agency will come and take your server away to be examined eventually and the owner of said server will face civil as well as criminal actions. In all honesty that's a best case scenario at this point as the other possibilities involve Federal offenses (child / beast / etc porn, tax evasion, hacking / phishing and so on). Now we have individuals who were hosted by blogetry complaining because the un-named agency did not leave the server in place and handle things on a site by site basis. What rock have these people been living under for the past four years or so??? Given the fact this sort of thing happens on other free blog hosting sites (the hosting of pirated material, not the sudden transfer of servers from datacenter to Quantico) it's pretty obvious that there is something more serious involved here or that the site owner was allowing a great deal of pirated material to be posted. Those other providers all have some form of internal content monitoring / abuse department as well as treating their clients seriously with hosting on hardware they own, connections they own and IP space they lease direct. Blogetry was using the least expensive, rent a server plan from a hosting provider datacenter. (At that level you can get maybe 6 DCMA notices before suspension if they're "liberal" about that sort of thing). So far the owner has blamed the datacenter he was leasing servers from (mostly because they refused to disclose information the law enforcement agency told them not to) and now it seems he's blaming the US Government. Why can't he point that finder where it belongs (inwards)? I'd advise the torrent community and e-freedom folks to keep some distance from this one. There's a huge chunk of data still missing here and regardless, this is not the poster boy for torrent user's rights we want or need.
It appears from looking at google cache that only the top domain has been take down. I think cached links still lead to live blogs.
Concerned citizens should scan them promptly before somebody decides to take them down.
Antarctica is illegal to own, even if you had the technical means to live there, I don't think you could. IIRC, it is only legal for certain countries explicitly for purposes of science.
And all the little islands are already taken, except maybe 3-4, which are unfeasible, and if you would as much as be seen frolicking on the soil of some tiny island of some say African or South american nation, they would send some military boats and remove you asap, by all means, without much forethought.
There are people who would want to band together, to form a new nation - it is not as easy as it sounds.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
Adapted from a typical Soviet political joke from the communist era:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_political_jokes#Armenian_Radio
Burstnet is known to pull the plug fast, I host my blog with http://beyondhosting.net and I've not had any problems... http://blog.undecim.org/
You think like a ReThuglican Jew!
OBEY! SUBMIT! CONSUME!
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!