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."

Comments

The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[SquarePixel]

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.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is, we are talking about the incident right now.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[johnhp]

Bah, that's such bullshit.

China is *bad*. The U.S. is *bad*. But to say that the U.S. is "just as bad" is ridiculous and obviously false. Do even the most casual of checks about free speech rights in the US versus China, and you'll see how silly your statement is.

For all of its many faults, the U.S. has generally outstanding freedom of speech. You can say all kinds of things here that would float anywhere else in the world. Just look at how Holocaust denial is treated in Europe. Or imagine how long someone like Alex Jones could operate in China, railing against the Chinese and thousands of real or imagines murderous conspiracies.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[rotide]

Just putting this out there, but helping prop up failing businesses is not, at least in my opinion, as bad as oppressing your population's "right" to have access to otherwise publicly available information.

I see where you are trying to equate the two, but they really are in two different leagues.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[SquarePixel]

What makes you think the Chinese cant? Just because it's not on slashdot? They usually have their own sites because of language differences too. News also got around before the internet too, don't underestimate how much people can talk using normal means - especially in the Asian countries (where I have lived many times), where even little gossip goes around the really quickly. Just because you cant read about it on the usual news sites doesn't mean people don't know.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said US doesn't pull stunts like China? I think I've heard so many times on slashdot.

Idunno. For starters, in China, this guy would stand a good chance of being disappeared or shot.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[h4rr4r]

GITMO, that name ring any bells for you?

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[FooAtWFU]

I'll grant that the US does bad things, but when you say things like "just as bad" as China you're basically saying "I am viewing the world in an over-stark black-and-white manner and am thoroughly incapable of understanding nuance, and willfully oblivious to any differing *degrees* of badness".

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[rotide]

Labeling people as enemy combatants and detaining them without trial sucks and is deplorable. I'd be at a total loss for what to do if I, or someone I cared for, was in that situation. But comparing what happens to a relatively small group of people (GITMO detainees) and what happens to the entire population of China (freedom of speech/access to information) are again, in two totally different leagues. I'm not in any way suggesting I support, let alone tolerate GITMO, but we're talking apples and oranges.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[ElectricTurtle]

This would make me think the Chinese can't. One of many. So, do you think it's all well and good to suppress discourse, so long as somewhere behind a locked door a couple people who trust each other thoroughly might take the risk of actually talking about something?

Fuck you.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Locke2005]

In the US, you are free to criticize the US president publicly. In China, you are also free to criticize the US president publicly. See, they have an equal amount of free speech!

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[causality]

Labeling people as enemy combatants and detaining them without trial sucks and is deplorable. I'd be at a total loss for what to do if I, or someone I cared for, was in that situation. But comparing what happens to a relatively small group of people (GITMO detainees) and what happens to the entire population of China (freedom of speech/access to information) are again, in two totally different leagues. I'm not in any way suggesting I support, let alone tolerate GITMO, but we're talking apples and oranges.

The point is we are doing the very things we say we are against when other nations do them.

If terrorists can drive the US government to abandon its principles and find clever ways to justify it, then that's a victory for those terrorists. It's a real shame, for they do not deserve any victory of any sort.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Un pobre guey]

Wake up, pal. You are nowhere near as free as you think you are. Your life is as constrained by our bullshit corporatist state as the Chinese are by their bullshit corporatist state. The only difference is that you are showered with a moronic brain-junk-food commercial pop-culture that has evidently convinced you completely that you are free and can express yourself freely and without limit.

You're not. You are just as enslaved, censored, exploited, and brainwashed as they are. Beware, it is vastly worse than you imagine.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[ElectricTurtle]

You should attack the substance, not the person nor their background, especially when both are mere assumptions. Further, if the content is something you would support, and you don't because of who the person is rather than what they say, what kind of bigot does that make you?

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[osu-neko]

Wake up, pal. You are nowhere near as free as you think you are. Your life is as constrained by our bullshit corporatist state as the Chinese are by their bullshit corporatist state. The only difference is that you are showered with a moronic brain-junk-food commercial pop-culture that has evidently convinced you completely that you are free and can express yourself freely and without limit.

Yes, and thank you for demonstrating above that he is right.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[linzeal]

No, they get sent to labor camps ( *cough* re-education camps ), which they have been thinking about shutting down. China is rapidly modernizing its justice system, so while they are attempting to practice a bit more parsimony when it comes to crimes the US in all but a few states has seen its prison population double or triple in the past few decades.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[ArcherB]

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.

Funny. A few years ago when something like this happened, you saw the story and comments here say that Bush was the problem. Now we read that the US is the problem.

Imagine if something like this happened a few short years ago. We'd be looking at a whole different story.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[ElectricTurtle]

Don't misunderstand, I don't think I'm all that free. Hell, if I start a business, I'll have assholes like you telling me all sorts of shit I can and can't do, because suddenly now I'm not a person with rights, I'm an eeeeevil corporatist fat-cat.

However, it remains that unless I credibly threaten the life, safety or property of a person or group of persons (or represent harmful lies about them as facts, but I can offer the same as opinions), I can say whatever I want. I can prattle on about all the shit I hate about government or society at large with no fear that I will end up getting two hours in a show-trial and then the better part of a decade in prison like He Depu. I may not be as free as I'd like, but I know I'm more free than that poor man is.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[metrometro]

> Who said US doesn't pull stunts like China?
>> China is *bad*. The U.S. is *bad*. But to say that the U.S. is "just as bad" is ridiculous and obviously false

Hey look, data!

http://report.globalintegrity.org/China/2009

http://report.globalintegrity.org/United%20States/2009

Or does that ruin it?

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[h4rr4r]

People finally figured out we only have one political party?

Some people needed this lesson, I consider it a victory that they got it.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[spun]

You will always have people telling you what you can and can't do. It's called 'society.' Rational adults realize that we have to make compromises in order to live together in peace and prosperity, while spoiled children continue to whine that no one is the boss of them. If you don't want people telling you what to do, you don't have to live in society. What you don't get to do is to have all of the benefits of living in a cooperative society, while paying none of the costs. That's called 'stealing.'

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[rbanffy]

When it comes to respecting civil rights, there is no such thing as shades of gray.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[ElectricTurtle]

Rational adults compromise in terms of mutual consent, not tyranny, whether of the majority or otherwise. Ironic you should should trot out 'stealing' when you no doubt support the very thing, so long as you think it's done in some romanticized 'Robin Hood' fashion. As Cullen Hightower once said,

There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Mister Whirly]

Well, for one our ability to judge which is doing better in the freedom of speech department by not using useless strawman statistics that say nothing about free speech. But that is just off the top of my head and I don't have any useless random statistics to back it up.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[spun]

We do compromise on the basis of mutual consent. If you like the deal offered to you by your country, you stay. If you don't, you take your business somewhere else. Just as with any business you can not just walk in, demand what you like, and refuse to pay. What, exactly, do you deem 'tyranny?' I'm guessing tyranny means 'anything I don't want to do,' right? Well, that is not how society works, you do not get to dictate terms to the majority who have already agreed how things will work. You get to take the deal we offer you, or leave it and find a better deal. It is not our fault if the deal you want is not available in the world marketplace of governance.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[spun]

There is plenty of free land where no one will bother you, it just does not happen to be very good land. That's property for you, though. Nothing to do with governments and countries, everything to do with private ownership of natural resources.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Burz]

How about the "nuance" of demanding "full-spectrum dominance" (full control) over the planet?

Maybe some of us are *reacting* to the "over-stark black-and-white" world view espoused by the Pentagon.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[demonlapin]

Not everybody in Gitmo deserved to be there. That doesn't mean that nobody deserved to be there, just that the danger of the precedent is quite a bit less. What the US Government does with people taken overseas who are not US citizens is a great deal less worrying to me than what it does with US citizens on US soil; the Padilla case is the perfect example of something that really is troubling. Your statement,

GITMO, that name ring any bells for you?

was in response to this statement:

For starters, in China, this guy would stand a good chance of being disappeared or shot.

Do you really think that Gitmo is an example of how the US government behaves toward citizens? I don't. Does it mean that the US isn't perfect? Well, yes. Of course it's not. But we don't have desaparecidos, and I think that's a big difference.

Also, to the pussies who modded me troll for my original response to h4rr4r (and whoever modded h4rr4r flamebait, too), I'm pleased to know we pissed you off. Whatever will I do now? This might cost me a tiny fraction of the enormous mountain of karma I've got.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[moeinvt]

I'd like to elaborate on your point about transfer of wealth from the PRODUCTIVE for the benefit of the UNPRODUCTIVE.

You're entirely correct in the assertion, but you're wrong to include only the "poor" in the latter group.

High paid government employees are also parasitic by nature. In addition, the transfer of trillions of taxpayer dollars into the banking and financial industry is a case of stealing from people who are actually producing for the benefit of people who aren't really producing anything. Don't confuse an overpaid bureaucrat or someone that shuffles money around all day with a "producer".

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Locke2005]

The problem is that the same founding fathers that insisted on the principle of separation of church and state still allowed the legal and religious definitions of marriage to commingle. The two need to be completely and permanently separated. Register with the state to receive the legal benefits of marriage for yourself and your family. Perform a religious ceremony in your church of choice to receive the religious benefits of marriage. One does not require the other; the two can be completely independent.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[BobMcD]

In a sane society, the criteria for an obligating bond such as marriage would be "informed consent" and nothing else.

Some cultures, such as our own, also use marriage as an institution to shore up child rearing efforts. Ergo tax benefits for married couples and for merely having children. You're painting it with entirely too simple a brush, probably simply to support your position, but there it is.

Next, juxtapose:

Informed itself is limited by the capacity to be informed, and so creates natural age, intelligence and species limits

with

We live in a society guided by rank superstition and goat-age desert morality, a condition exacerbated by a legal system that tries to solve very grey problems with black and white lines in the sand such as "age."

So you reject the laws made by anyone that used to subsist off of goats outright. Strange, but okay. Next you assert 'natural limits' and yet deny the law the right to arbitrarily define them. Also very odd. Would you advocate a one-time assessment, or merely an ad-hock application of the law at the whim of the arbiter? I think the age 'line' works as sort of a compromise. You know once you've hit it, and everyone else does also. I think it sort of 'just works'. Why don't you?

On a more positive note, you can live together with any number of consenting adults you choose to and there are very few restrictions on that anywhere in the country

In the United States this is largely false. You cannot live together with more than a handful of people from different families in basically any area with zoning laws. Check your statutes for the exact details, but around my home town, the limit is five people and only two of which may be adults. Otherwise, people would be turning residential neighborhoods into frat houses, etc...

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[PaladinAlpha]

We're deep enough into this thread where this may not be read, but allow me to offer my view.

Marriage has been for years a way to ensure an equal distribution of males to females. Attraction develops from ancient rites of selection which favored those that were stronger, faster, and more likely to survive. However, as a requirement for society to develop, we suddenly need "experts" in various fields not directly connected to survival -- i.e. the person good at farming may not be "attractive", the person who knows how to predict the weather may not be "attractive", and so forth. We'll call these "beta mates", and under a non-rigorous system they would simply never mate, and therefore have much less reason to participate in society -- depriving it of their expertise.

There is another factor, as well. Historically, it has been shown that in unstructured environments, a greater number of females mated than males. The deduction to be made is that females will flock to a male they consider attractive, accepting the presence of other mates in exchange for the higher attraction and potentially stronger offspring. That we don't see this as often nowadays is precisely because of the point I'm about to make:

Structured monogamous marriage is a method of distributing males and females equally, and provides all mates ("alpha" and "beta") with a reward for participating in society -- the "alphas" benefit from the additional expertise brought by the "betas", and the "betas" have a very high chance of successful mating. This was for quite some time enforced through arranged marriage, and I would even make the argument that arranged marriage is what made civilization possible.

Polygamy would lead, ultimately, to alpha flocking again, and greatly reduce the encouragement for beta experts to contribute meaningfully to society. I would further argue that we have begun to see the effects of this in the USA with the considerable reduction in the sanctity of marriage and a (I would postulate) corresponding drop in technological leadership worldwide.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Otter Popinski]

When it comes to respecting civil rights, there is no such thing as shades of gray.

Whew! I guess we don't need the Supreme Court anymore.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[ArcherB]

"blocked from receiving information" is a really, extremely loose standard.

Have you seen the full JFK assassination file? Because I haven't. Their website says the last of it can be held until 2017, so I'm guessing (unless you're Barrack Obama) that you are blocked from receiving information by your government as well.

No, but I've seen countless documentaries on it blaming everyone from the CIA to Castro. How many Tienanmen Square documentaries do think are aired on China TV?

As far as dissidents being shot by the government, well, in recent US history we have Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. It is sort of rare, but it does happen.

Ruby Ridge was bad. But Waco? This guy was holding hundreds hostage and attempted to burn down the building around them. The US Gov't screwed it up pretty bad, but they did have a court order that allowed them to enter. They should have just tried knocking first instead of kicking the door in.

When it comes to 'relatively', and once you factor billions vs millions, I do wonder which government has actually killed more people, as a ratio. I'm not confident what the result would be, but it would be interesting to see someone actually do the math.

Unless you are considering the Civil War, the US gov't has not killed millions. Besides, the GP was comparing Gitmo to China. For starters, there are no US Citizens at Gitmo. Next, those at Gitmo are accused of terrorism. Those in China have not been accused of anything except living in China.

Please do let us know once you have that completed.

Again, the GP was comparing Gitmo to China. Please explain to me how the population of Gitmo is greater than the population of China. Also, see my paragraph above where I explain how those are Gitmo are accused of being terrorist vs the "crimes" the population of China has committed.

Seriously? Do honestly believe that those in the US are as oppressed as those in China? Before you answer, consider I am in the US, reading and replying on an open forum accusing the US government of doing something bad. I think that alone should prove my point.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[BobMcD]

I object to the use of the term 'battlefield'. Italy, for example, was not at any time within the scope of any legal operation[1]. I think that this term romanticizes things a tad, don't you?

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[commodore64_love]

>>>You will always have people telling you what you can and can't do. It's called 'society.' Rational adults realize that we have to make compromises in order to live together in peace and prosperity,
>>>

The problem is that most adults are Not reasonable. It is why I can't marry a man. Or smoke marijuana later tonight while watching SyFy Channel. Or have more than one wife. Or show a topless woman on broadcast TV (but Jack Bauer torturing people is a-okay). Or let my daughter drink beer, even if I am German and it's part of our culture. Or let my lawn "go natural" with wildflowers, but instead must have a monoculture grass, or else face fines from the city.

The other adults have placed non-reasonable and illogical restraints upon me. So basically your entire premise of "reasonable adults can tell other adults what to do" is flawed. The adults are not reasonable - they are oftentimes tyrannical.

Therefore I submit it is wiser to follow this simple rule: "No man has a right to physicall harm his neighbor - and that's all the government should restrain him." - Thomas Jefferson. i.e. Marry a guy. Have two wives. Let your kid have beer. Smoke marijuana while watching topless Amanda Tapping stroll around the Stargate. These are victimless acts and should not be outlawed. That's called FREEDOM and liberty. I think that's the best philosophy to follow.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[spun]

There is plenty of free land where no one will bother you, it just does not happen to be very good land.

Where?

Antarctica. Plenty of tiny desert islands no one wants. Anyplace no one from the government ever goes, like most of Alaska. Go, build a log cabin, hunt and gather your food, no one will bug you to do anything. Look at the Unibomber, dude was a wanted criminal and he lived in the wilderness for decades unmolested. Don't tell me someone who wasn't in the business of mailing bombs to people couldn't do it for a lifetime.

But the thing is, this argument is besides the point. Let's say I want a diamond encrusted flying pony, and I want to spend $5 on it. I go into Wal-Mart and demand a diamond encrusted flying pony. They laugh at me, so I get mad and say they are taking away my rights to a diamond encrusted flying pony. As there are no diamond encrusted flying ponies anywhere else, Wal Mart has an obligation to sell me one.

You want a diamond encrusted flying pony, and you are demanding that your country provide you with one at the cost you want to pay for it. Your rational is that you can't buy a diamond encrusted flying pony anywhere else, and you can't find one just lying around, and you deserve one, so they have an obligation to sell you one at a price you find convenient.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[BobMcD]

No, but I've seen countless documentaries on it blaming everyone from the CIA to Castro. How many Tienanmen Square documentaries do think are aired on China TV?

So as long as any information is divulged, your standard is met? Because that's still way too biased for my tastes. You are, however, tacitly acknowledging the point that both governments withhold information deemed prudent. Your only objection then, would be to the degree.

That's fine, but you'll have to go back up and redefine your position...

Ruby Ridge was bad. But Waco? This guy was holding hundreds hostage and attempted to burn down the building around them. The US Gov't screwed it up pretty bad, but they did have a court order that allowed them to enter. They should have just tried knocking first instead of kicking the door in.

Yeah, most people don't really know the true story either, so don't feel too bad.

The real sequence of events was that the ATF did knock first, and there was a conversation in front of the house. We'll never know who shot first, but somehow those trained government agents went from a tax stamp violation to shooting people in a matter of minutes.

Look into it. It was almost certainly worse than you realize.

Unless you are considering the Civil War, the US gov't has not killed millions.

Well that is an interesting point, but no I don't think that this would be appropriate in a discussion of recent history. Neither would the Chinese culture revolution, but I don't think you've brought that up specifically.

No, what I meant was, a ratio of three million people would net a MUCH larger sample once factored against two billion people. 'Guantanamo and Tienanmen Square' itself may indeed be 'apples and oranges' but 'Chinese oppression and US oppression' is 'apples and crab apples'.

Again, the GP was comparing Gitmo to China.

That's nice. There's a greater topic, though, with more posts in it than only the one that supports your point. Take, for example:

Twist it how you want to, but the fact remains that both countries act like assholes and US is in the same level.

That's comparing countries, of which Guantanamo would be only one isolated example. So depending on how far up the conversation you're willing to go, one of us is off topic.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[MindlessAutomata]

I've never seen a more breathless defense of the lynch mob.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[MindlessAutomata]

And what justifies the massive land grabs governments make, claiming ownership and domain of large swathes of land unused, uncultivated, lying bare? Because they said so?

Your paternalistic liberal views can justify anything from genocide to censorship. Your argument could be used to justify Jim Crow laws in the old South. You are living proof of just how thuggish, violent, and controlling democracy can be. Demanding strict obedience and conformity, where the only right is numbers and might. Disgusting.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Kjella]

If you don't want people telling you what to do, you don't have to live in society.

Where exactly? There's no place on earth not claimed by a country. There's no property in this country not claimed by somebody, including public property. And even though it's called public property, I can't just take a piece of it and put up a homestead and call it my own. And even if I did own it, I'd still be bound by all laws and building codes and zoning regulations and whatever else regulations. Besides, what claim could I have on any other land? It's on this land that I was born so by birthright this is the one I have the most claim to, even if I don't recognize the society running it. That I was born into this nation is not a choice, what denies me the right to cut out my own patch, raise my own flag and declare independence? Well the constitution paragraph 1 says the nation is "indivisible" ( 1. Kongeriget Norge er et frit, selvstændigt, udeleligt og uafhændeligt Rige. Dets Regjeringsform er indskrænket og arvelig monarkisk.) Who decided that? Men from 1814 that are long since dead, and the constituency is mostly drawn by borders created by vikings a thousand years ago.

I'm not trying to go off on some anarchistic rant here, I'm just trying to point out that no you don't have a choice and a lot of it is not cooperative but rather quite arbitrary and full of historical luggage. Today, people in Washington DC decide federal law that applies in California thousands of miles away. It's almost as detached as London deciding colony law even though there's some representation, you can still be overruled by a bunch of people thousands of miles away. And if you think they could just peacefully secede, dream on. In Africa there are still country lines drawn with rulers on a map as the colony powers divided the continent between them. Look at all the separatist groups all over the world, there's only one thing keeping nations from crumbling as bits and pieces decide to become independent and that is pure application of force, either military or otherwise. The closest thing you got are certain occupant areas like Freetown Christiania where around 1000 occupants have made some partially independent mini-state but the government is trying hard to "normalize" the area which in practice means forcing them into the confines of the nation state again. One person or even a handful of person would stand no chance, neither would these if push comes to shove. For real independence you need thousands of men with arms, which really only creates a difference society you want out of. You can opt out of living with other people and become a hermit, but you can't really opt out all the way.

That's called 'stealing.'

Congratulations on a worse abuse of words than the MAFIAA.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[tombeard]

That's right. We don't keep citizens at Gitmo, we lock them up in the Charleston Navel Station or the Bagrum air base. Or we ship them to helpful eastern European countries where they mysteriously disappear or commit suicide.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[GSloop]

Your argument while technically true devolves to:

Well Jimbo axe murdered, in cold blood, 100 people and I only murdered one, so we're really a lot different.

Sure, different in that Jimbo in a quantitative sense is worse.
But in a qualitative sense, you're really just the same. [I'd probably be willing to say there's some qualitative difference [between US and China gvmts] too, but I think it's a lot less than most would argue it is.]

What we [the US] has done with Gitmo, Torture, Illegal Wiretaps/Rendition etc - is truly horrific. We don't have any [or much] qualitative difference as to "why" we did it, we just have a smaller pool of people we've done it to.

So, I have a hard time feeling a lot more secure with the US than with China - the only difference is there's at least some check on the government by the people - as long as I'm in a group that's not viewed as "terrorist" I would be difficult to torture or send to Gitmo - the public would decry it.

But the government would be glad to do it once the "cost" [in PR] is reduced.
So, all they have to do is demonetize you or your group and ergo - you get tortured, sent to Gitmo [Bagram] etc.

They [the US Gvmt] certainly doesn't appear to have any moral qualm about doing it, only about the cost. And that doesn't make them much different in a moral sense than the Chinese gvmt.

Cheers
-Greg

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[GSloop]

I guess I missed the part in the constitution that says it only applies to citizens?

So torture, as long as we only do it to non-citizens is just fine - we've not sacrificed our "values?"
Jailing people in cages, without charges, without trial, picking the judicial venue at our convenience when we do offer a trial [No trial if we can't convict you, millitary tribunal if we can't convict you with real evidence] or regular civilian trial if we have good evidence] - as long as we do that to non-citizens, it's all well and good? We haven't sacrificed our values?

I don't know what your DAMN values are, but that's certainly sacrificing mine and those in the constitution we should respect.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Un pobre guey]

No need. It's called commercial pop-culture. The beauty of it is that everyone gets it beforehand, like you, practically from birth.

You don't see what is right before your eyes. You think that being able to post drivel on blogs is a showcase of freedom. We have among the worst education, medical care, and retirement policies in the industrialized world yet you exclude it from the discussion. We have a deep recession thanks to tyrants and their politician-minions, and you exclude it. We are fighting "The War on Drugs" and "The War on Terror" for the sole purpose of having tyrants loot our society side-by-side with drug traffickers and the financiers of Sunni Islamic terrorism, and you exclude it. We happily allow immigrants to come in and work as slave labor, then do everything to punish them and deny them services they have already paid for via the taxes withheld from their paychecks, and you exclude that as well from the discussion. But Oh My! We can post whatever we want on Slashdot and HuffPost and thousands of other forgettable sites! That proves we are free!

Wake the fuck up.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[andr00oo]

the person who knows how to predict the weather may not be "attractive"

You might be watching the wrong News Channel

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[LordLucless]

I take it you disagree with the American War of Indepedance then? As they did exactly the opposite of what you recommend when faced with a world that did not offer the governmental option they wanted?

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[jesset77]

For most libertarians, harm is only something that happens to them or those they care about. If it happens to someone else, why, that person is just a whiner who wants a free ride from society, and their idea of 'harm' should not be respected.

Meh, Libertarians have been getting a lot of flack along this line recently, and I think it's unwarranted. For example, Show me where's the heterosexual libertarian who won't argue in favor of Gay Marriage? If they are heterosexual, then they will never utilize this freedom themselves.

At the core of it, Libertarian's specific concerns can be recodified in spun-speak as "this social agreement causes harm to our society and produces no measurable benefit; why are so many citizens resisting it being repealed?"

If you're concern about Libertarian viewpoints is that they too frequently dismiss externalities then, speaking as a registered member of the party for 15 years I will agree that this is a problem worth chatting about. But I must also counter that most opponents we face in conversation defend virtually any incumbent policy without re-evaluating or even being able to enumerate the externalities which prompted them.

In short, just about any law on the books was probably a good idea at the time. But times change and people are great at forgetting why things were set up a certain way. Every now and then we do have to come by and audit the legislative hacks. Libertarians accomplish this by arguing for policy which foundationally presumes personal liberty (which, while selfish, is readily quantified), and counting each compromise from this simplistic ideal as an expense which must be countered by an equal or greater benefit. Alright, I can't swing my arms in every direction but at least I won't be struck. Alright, I can't build on this strip of land but it's a communally owned "road" that will bring me more benefit than anything else I would have built there myself. Etc.

And sure, this theme varies all the way down to the hard line anarcho-capitalists, but the intent is the same. Libertarians believe that we should start from personal liberty and then abridge that only to explore greater social benefits.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[Machtyn]

Actually, the TEA parties and the Daily KOS prove that people in the US are free to express themselves anyway they want. Corporations still have to sue those that they think are defaming them... that is, they can't automatically jail that person or group.

Stating that the US has the worst education is incredibly wrong. It may not be the best, but look around, visit the world, where are many of the worlds innovations made? Right here in the US. Stating that we have the worst medical care is completely wrong. The medical care that the US population enjoys is completely top-notch. You may disagree with the methods of compensation for that medical care, but the care is received quickly and is the best anywhere. I don't know about retirement policies. Personally, what I save is what I use should I not die before I stop working. Should I be so dependent upon some organization to pay me for non-work? Only if I can create a sweet contract for myself.

But Oh My! We can post whatever we want on Slashdot...That proves we are free! Well, yes, actually. Your name won't be discovered. Your IP address, while recorded, won't be used to track you down. You'll not end up in some forgotten prison as a political prisoner for posting inanity. And you'll be able to defend your right to post whatever crap against whatever company you want.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[AK Marc]

For one, the definition of marriage in a communal property state includes that everyone in the marriage owns 100% of the property. Yes, that's 200% of property split evenly. So in the case of death of one person, the other is the 100% owner, with no need for a will or probate or such. With three people sharing the same property, there are issues of, say, one person running up a significant debt and the others can be held responsible for it. Or if you can marry more than one person, why can't they marry more than one person? So that your two wives each have two husbands, and thus the husbands of your wives would own 100% of your property, even though they have no association with you directly. Not that there's anything too hard to figure out about it, but there'd need to be some serious cleaning up of the law.

And the practical nature of it was that rich males would have a harem, and women would never marry more than one man. This ended up causing some cultural issues as the rich men would get the attractive women, and the poor men would be left without options. I've heard it argued that the sexual frustration of such cultures is one of the things that feeds men into suicide bombing. And I think that such a plan would face opposition where people would point out that women could have harems and that groups of gay men could all marry each other and such. Just letting two marry seems like a massive hurdle, but to let an entire gay village get married would probably be an even harder sell.

Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China

[e9th]

The vote was 5-4. All the "conservative" justices voted for Kelo, all the "liberal" justices for New London. Kennedy, often the swing vote, chose to side with the liberals on this one.

National Security?

[wiggles]

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....

Re:National Security?

[bsDaemon]

They probably seized some equipment as evidence in an investigation and the numbers are just grossly over-inflated for sensationalist reasons. Seizing a couple of servers that have 10,000 customers each isn't the same thing as "ordering the sites off-line" -- it's seizing the hardware in order to protect chain of evidence and integrity of the data seized. It's still kind of a dick move, but I'm not really going to take the bitching of people who seem to be perfectly willing to watch movies but don't want to pay for them.

Re:National Security?

[wiggles]

How about you try harder?

Whenever you hear about this kind of thing happening due to a piracy sting, the government brags about how they made the world safe from pirates. They're all too eager to pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

The secrecy surrounding this takedown makes me think this is something much more than a piracy crackdown.

Re:National Security?

[MBGMorden]

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.

You know what? No. To hell with "National Security". If that card was being pulled appropriately then it might be justified, but these days, the powers that be have decided that they can pull "National Security" out when they do ANYTHING and get a free pass. We can lie, cheat, steal, and piss on the Constitution so long as it's a matter of "National Security"!

Like the boy who cried "wolf!", and I don't care if the wolf really is chewing on National Security's nuts right now. The excuse is falling on deaf ears at this point.

This is just the beginning.

[the roAm]

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.

Re:This is just the beginning.

[Beardo the Bearded]

"A government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested that the websites in question may have had links to child porn, utility hacking guides, and terrorist activity. They could not say exactly due to the ongoing investigation."

Re:This is just the beginning.

[electron sponge]

They forgot "weapons of mass destruction" and "baby-cooking recipes".

Re:This is just the beginning.

[linzeal]

No, it is more like shutting down an entire city because a pawn shop is selling stolen goods.

Re:This is just the beginning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets start with the title. "US Govt orders 73,000 private websites offline". TFS corrects this to ONE website that happens to be a free blog host. If we care to move on to the summary (and after that, I'm not sure it's worth it) we see that the "copyright violation" theory is just speculation based on the fact that they'd had copyright complaints before. If the US Government was in the habit of shutting down sites based on copyright complaints, there would be a hell of a lot more then one host going down. We have to move to TFA this time to find out that a perhaps more relevant set of complaints is child pornography.

Even if you disagree with shutting down the entire blog host over that, "major blog host shut down over possible child pornography connections" is a *completely* different story then "73,000 private websites shut down over copyright complaints".

Re:This is just the beginning.

[pnewhook]

If the pawn shop was allowing the sale of stolen merchandise it doesn't mean every customer was a felon. But if the police shut down the site due to repeated violations, legitimate customers would also not be allowed to go there. Exactly the same with this website service.

Re:This is just the beginning.

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

MMMMMMmmmmmmm, baby... The other, other white meat.

Re:This is just the beginning.

[linzeal]

Cooking the baby robs you of essential nutrients. Try the raw unadulterated version by just tenderizing it with a hard back version of The Origin of Species and serve with a wedge of lemon.

The Fact Is You're Out of Your Mind

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:The Fact Is You're Out of Your Mind

[Attila Dimedici]

I'm guessing users were trading child porn or the owner wasn't handling his taxes correctly.

I mostly agree with your post. However, there is one thing I want to add. My inclination is that there is a good reason for these websites to be shut down. However, I am not willing to take the government's word that they had a good reason. I want to know the reason. If I agree that it was a good reason, all's well. If not, well then it depends on how many other people also think it wasn't a good reason.
Basically, my point is that this event is not on its face evidence of the government doing something wrong. It is something to take note of and demand an explanation from the government. They don't need to provide the explanation tomorrow or next week, but by this time next month, we should know what happened and why. Maybe not the details, depending on what the reasons for this were, but at least an explanation of the reason for this action. Under certain circumstances the details and evidence supporting the reasons can remain under wraps pending court cases.

was there a court order?

[a2wflc]

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.

Re:was there a court order?

[Locke2005]

Please post objectionable material to slashdot and get it taken down... I'm losing far too much productivity at work from reading and posting on this site!

Re:was there a court order?

[Rand Race]

Yea. The 1st Amendment violations here pale in comparison to the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendment violations. No warrant? Check. Deprived of property without due process? Check. Specifically NOT informed of the accusations levied against them? Check.

Hell, they just need to quarter some troops in this guy's house and they'll have shitcanned half the Bill Of Rights in one case.

Re:get by with stuff like this without angering a

[the roAm]

You seem to not understand that we're the ants and the powers that be are the wasps.

Freedom

[Voulnet]

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's a culture thing

[copponex]

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.

Re:It's a culture thing

[Quiet_Desperation]

What you have to understand about China is that their government is an expression of their religious philosophies.

Whose philosophy do you support in this picture?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tianasquare.jpg

Re:It's a culture thing

[copponex]

Puritan ideas? The Puritans didn't believe anything from the waist up was off-limits. The nipple thing is not an outgrowth of puritanism.

The anti-sex attitude of the Puritans is also described by historian John Demos. He reports that throughout the seventeenth century, the Puritans in Plymouth Colony had "a steady succession of trials and convictions for sexual offenses involving single persons. 'Fornication,' in particular, was a familiar problem." Demos says the punishment for fornication was "a fine of ten pounds or a public whipping - and applied equally to both parties."

Although the Puritans had serious and even pathological hang-ups about pleasure, they were into violence. Calvin's Geneva beheaded adulterers. Religious dissenters were hanged, decapitated, or burned at the stake. Christopher Hitchens describes Calvin as "a sadist and torturer and killer, who burned Servetus (one of the great thinkers and questioners of the day) while the man was still alive."

http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/Puritans_dark_Side.htm

Obviously, we haven't kept all the Puritan ideals. But anti-sex and pro-violence attitudes remain.

And saying our main moral metric is profit is blatantly flaming. It's absurd.

What other value system do you governs the vast majority of our actions? Feel free to give examples.

Too Slow, Slashdot

[Revotron]

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).

Re:Too Slow, Slashdot

[Revotron]

Of course there's going to be hullabaloo - it's a Slashdot story that contains multiple instances of the words "government", "DMCA" and "takedown". That's enough for anybody to form their own opinion without even finishing the summary.

yeaaah

[unity100]

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'.

Re:yeaaah

[johnhp]

In China, if you say the wrong things, you can be arrested and then executed. That simply does not happen in the US. There IS a definite difference.

Don't take me for some cheerleader of the US. I'm horrified by other abuses, like warrantless wiretaps and rendition... but that has nothing to do with a real China vs. US rights comparison.

Re:yeaaah

[KlomDark]

Tell that to JFK. // Oh wait, you can't

Re:yeaaah

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, uh, now that the President has made it clear that he has the right to assassinate any American citizen by whom he feels threatened, there may be functional difference, but there's no longer a theoretical difference. Some might say that it's only a matter of time, now that the rules have been made clear, and apparently accepted by the people.

Re:yeaaah

[dkleinsc]

How true. In the US, if you say the wrong things or talk to the wrong people, you can just be labelled a terrorist, sent to Gitmo, and tortured for a while:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Saleh_Kahlah_al-Marri

Re:yeaaah

[Anonymous Coward]

In China, if you say the wrong things, you can be arrested and then executed. That simply does not happen in the US. There IS a definite difference.

To play devil's advocate here, you have cases like Ruby Ridge & the Waco Branch Dividians Seige where you can argue that in the US they don't even bother arresting you before they execute you.

There's also been numerous cases of law enforcement breaking into the wrong house on a drug/guns/whatever bust and killing totally innocent people because of it. It's happened often enough that there's really no good way to excuse it. Yes mistakes happen, but when mistakes result in the government basically murdering innocent people, there's something seriously, seriously wrong. After it happens once there should have been changes made to make damn sure it never happened again. And yet it keeps on happening.

And of course you yourself brought up warrantless wiretaps & rendition. You also have the ultra-secret national security orders that the PATRIOT act gave us, and then this story we're posting comments on where someone's entire domain was taken down and the ISP's not allowed to tell him WHY. I'm willing to bet that whatever the reason turns out to be it won't be a national security issue, so the ultra-secret nature of the take-down will be totally unfounded.

So, execution of innocents, murder of people without even bothering to arrest them first, domestic spying, torture, refusing to even tell you what you're accused of (and not charging you for it)... it's starting to sound pretty bad isn't it? I wouldn't personally class the US up there at China levels, but there are certainly plenty of things they do wrong enough to make the comparison not totally unfounded. And to be perfectly frank, all the things the US does wrong worries me a lot.

Posted AC because I wasn't kidding about that worrying thing. I'm scared to criticize my government openly any more.

Fascism is coming

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

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.

Re:Fascism is coming

[Jeian]

"Banned" is a bit of a stretch.

"The Federal Mafia is a book written in prison[18] by Schiff. In the book, Schiff contended that the income tax system and Internal Revenue Service were illegal. On August 9, 2004, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction issued by a U.S. District Court in Nevada under 26 U.S.C. 7408 against Irwin Schiff and associates Cynthia Neun and Lawrence Cohen, against the sale of this book by those persons.[19] This prohibition does not extend to other sellers of the book. The court rejected Schiff's contention on appeal that the First Amendment protects sales of the book, as the court found that the information it contains is fraudulent.[20]

Schiff, Neun and Cohen are currently barred under the preliminary injunction from selling or advertising material advocating nonpayment of tax, preparing a tax return for others, and from otherwise providing assistance or encouragement to others in violating tax law. Schiff and his associates are additionally required to provide a copy of the injunction to each of their customers, to post it on their website, and to provide the government with a customer list.[21]

Schiff and his associates have responded by giving the book for free on their website.[22]"

Bull... why be anonymous about it?

[elucido]

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.

Re:Bull... why be anonymous about it?

[elucido]

Go educate yourself in some fairly recent history, then come back...

Where are the documents? Without documents theres nothing to report.

Here's the article, there are three

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

From the wikipedia article, there are three Americans that were held at Guantanamo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay

Not DMCA

[PPH]

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.

Fascism may be coming, But your examples are BS

[cmholm]

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.

Here's a time saving summary

[NiteShaed]

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.

Re:I would like to help, but why kid myself

[elrous0]

Rand Paul and the other libertarian Tea Partiers are just being used by the Republican establishment. The second Republicans are back in charge, they'll purge the party of libertarians and anything related to *individual* rights will be quickly shunted aside (only corporations and the wealthy will have the government "off their back"). Paul is just a dupe.

US government forgotten their first amendment?

[grahammm]

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?

Shuts down *sites*?

[nurb432]

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.

Pot, let me introduce you to kettle...

[copponex]

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.

State, Religion, and Republicans

[Iamthecheese]

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!

Don't feel sorry for this guy

[cjjjer]

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

I question the timing

[leereyno]

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.

Don't fall for the "freedom" angle on this one

[ne0shell]

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.