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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[MindlessAutomata]

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

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

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.

[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.

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: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.

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.

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).

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

[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.

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.

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