DHS Seizes 75+ Domain Names

Many readers have sent in an update to yesterday's story about the Department of Homeland Security's seizure of torrent-finder.com, a domain they believe to be involved in online piracy. As it turns out, this was just one of dozens of websites that were targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "In announcing that operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world. 'American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a week,' Mr. Morton said. 'Criminals are stealing American ideas and products and distributing them over the Internet.'" The TorrentFreak article we discussed yesterday has been updated with a list of the blocked sites.

Comments

One of Our Cancers

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

“the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons.”

Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk. We are seeing are the final nails in the Constitution's coffin. Their is no Constitutional justification for the seizing of these sites. It violates the core of the agreements made between the people and the Government. I really wish we could return to being a republic, where each state minds its own business but keep the Federal Government operating within the bounds of the Constitution. The people in Texas can have anarchy or whatever and the people in Massachussetes can have their pristine Government institutions. Those unhappy with their state are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to move.

I bet dollars to doughnuts that when net neutrality passes, buried deep in the legislation's text will be stronger measures than what we're seeing today.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Music2Eat]

Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk.

They wouldn't, considering this is happening in airports all over the country every day.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[dwlovell]

The websites in these cases amount to a storefront to distribute fake goods or copyrighted materials. When this happens with physical storefronts, they get shut down. I don't really see how this is any different.

This isn't about free speech, no liberties were lost, this is about people breaking the law and reasonable steps are being taken to stop them. You shouldn't fear the government as a result of this. Take off your tinfoil hat.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Ironically, of course, grabbing 75 domain names as part of a taxpayer funded handjob for the MPAA's bottom line is a tiny; but highly visible, slice of ICE's activities and, by far, not the most sinister.

This is an organization, after all, that has approximately 380,000 detainees enjoying its involuntary hospitality at any given time, in a nationwide network of facilities that range from "low profile" to "seriously shadowy". A fair percentage of them are undesirables of various stripes, so the public is wholly uninterested; but the process is opaque enough that their decisions aren't exactly subject to rigorous double checking. On occasion, a mysterious death or tragicomic "American citizen of the brown persuasion accidentally repatriated to some random country that he looked like he might be from, ICE tells his lawyer that they don't know where he is" story makes local headlines; but that is about it.

I realize that Slashdot is a good headline for melodramatic techie myopia; but domain-name seizures are boy scout stuff by the standards of ICE's bread-and-butter activities...

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

“the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons.”

Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk. We are seeing are the final nails in the Constitution's coffin. Their is no Constitutional justification for the seizing of these sites. It violates the core of the agreements made between the people and the Government. I really wish we could return to being a republic, where each state minds its own business but keep the Federal Government operating within the bounds of the Constitution. The people in Texas can have anarchy or whatever and the people in Massachussetes can have their pristine Government institutions. Those unhappy with their state are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to move.

I bet dollars to doughnuts that when net neutrality passes, buried deep in the legislation's text will be stronger measures than what we're seeing today.

American Business is stealing from everyone

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cornicefire]

I certainly agree with the quote in theory, but I also feel that it has to be broken because of the nature of society. In my town, there were some pretty nasty red-light runners. I was almost hit several times. So when they came to take away part of my liberty by installing red light cameras, I wasn't so upset. It was a trade off that would make the world better. There will probably be some people who think that letting the Feds shut down websites is a bad tradeoff to make but I'm not one of them. The constitution gives each of us the freedom to speak, not the freedom to steal someone else's word. Most of the torrent-loving people are just kind of lazy couch potatoes who seem obsessed with filling up a 2tb disk with more than they can ever watch. Yet they're too cheap to spend 99 cents on a song. Starbucks charges more for a cup of coffee than Amazon does for many of the hottest albums. Come on.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

mod parent something like +trillion insightfull.

I for one fear of this, and am now forced to take .fi domain for our business and simply make our .com a forwarder. We operate torrent seedboxes, nothing illegal in them itself, but many users seem to use it for illegal purposes, as DMCA requests for our US servers is "quite frequent", despite we are not US business, using US provider forces us to follow DMCA for the servers in question. Operating within completely in the legal domain, doing everything legally, does seem to provide us little to no safety against the whims of US goverment.

Yes, our market is likely to be used for illegal purposes. So are the tools of locksmith or the common kitchen knife possibility to be used for bad. And what the article shows is one of those.

The business plan of MAFIAA is outdated, and should be updated, but whenever new technology comes around something like this happens, but this is the first time actual tangible efforts has happened afaik.

I'm sick of this, the world is crazy. What matters is what the average person thinks and does, and businesses as well as goverments SHOULD fear the population. It's the only way for humanity to get the most out of our lives, and the most progress.

You cannot stop progress. I sense a darknet to rise if this becomes too common.

Anyone know the domain registrars in question? Is it everything ICANN controls or specific domain registrars? That would show which registrars to avoid.
I'm also curious why they did not shut down piratebay etc. as well? what is the pattern on the sites closed? ie. what is the pattern by which they do the seizing.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

What happened to innocent until proven quilty?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:One of Our Cancers

[dwlovell]

You don't get convicted/punished until proven guilty, that doesn't mean they don't shut down the operation when it's obvious they are actively selling fake goods right now. It is the courts job to decide what criminal charges may exist. Perhaps the shop owner didn't know they were fake? Just because the owner may not be the person criminally liable, that doesn't mean you allow the operation to continue.

It was obvious these sites were selling fake goods and distributing copyrighted works. They shut them down and the owner's get to plead their case about how they didn't know or whatever their case is. The site still gets shut down now if they are breaking laws now.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[KingAlanI]

I think that was the whole point of that phrasing...whoosh

Re:One of Our Cancers

[NJRoadfan]

Most of the domains appear to be online storefronts selling counterfeit goods (likely out of China), thats why ICE was involved. Does anyone have a full copy of the court documents involved with these take downs? Might answer a few questions.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

Innocent until proven guilty, or even better, the presumption of innocence, only applies in the court. YOU have the presumption of innocence and your accuser must overcome that.

These DNS entries were seized with a court order where enough evidence was shown to take action. No actual property was seized. The servers, files, original sites, goods, etc. are still in the hands of the owners. They'll have due process and the presumption of innocence if and when they are brought into court. Since I'm sure most of these owners are outside of the US, court will never happen, though.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

...whoosh

I'm glad you know what sound a plane makes! Good for you!

Re:One of Our Cancers

[93 Escort Wagon]

I really wish we could return to being a republic, where each state minds its own business but keep the Federal Government operating within the bounds of the Constitution.

Yes, except the side that espoused that view lost the U.S. Civil War. They said pretty much the same thing you did - except they wanted the other states to "mind their own business" so they could continue to own other human beings as slaves.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

By that argument, Google should be #1 on their list of domains to seize. However, the first amendment has been violated as it uses absolute terms: "Congress shall make no law...". The sites were linking to other sites that carried the questionable material. This is the same as when a journalist is given illegally obtained information and then prints it. The journalist is not breaking the law and did not conspire to break the law and thus cannot be held liable for the crime.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[salesgeek]

As with most crimes in progress, the law allows the police to take action to stop the crime and seize the evidence. The disposition of the evidence and means of committing the crime will be dealt with as part of whatever trial is coming.

In this case, it looks like a ICE took down a bunch of sellers of counterfeit goods and may have overreached on the torrent site. That said, we'll all soon learn what the relationship of torrent-finder.com is to the rest of the seized domains.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[jhoegl]

Zip and RAR and PAR are used to distribute illegal software, WAREZ, etc. as well as legitimate business items. It is ironic that they were not targeted, unless you think through the logic here.
Torrents are the major backbone of the definition "cloud", or a distributed network of systems with full or partial files contained on them which can be pieced back together to form the whole.
This too is ironic, since "cloud" is the big hype currently surrounding the IT world. (Of course this is laughable, "Cloud computing" has been around for a long time)
Because Torrents are difficult to remove due to the distribution method, they target the tracking sites instead.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MachDelta]

Hrm, I always thought planes went: "Nnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrowwwwwwwwwwwwmmmmmmmmmmmmm"

Have I really been doing it wrong for 20 plus years?! My world is shattered! :*(

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I would argue this is more significant because it is in the open. If, as you say, they do more operations 'in shadows', then this direct assault on our liberties shows how far special interests have come and how much our liberty has deteriorated.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy, freedom and other stuff like that are useless. People want two things, bread and circus. This government provides both, that's why they are free to take everything else.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[boxo1]

Who determines that the websites in question are distributing copyrighted materials?

I don't call it due process when your property is seized by way of court order resulting from a hearing in which you weren't allowed to give your side of the story.

The owner of Torrent Finder found out about the action after the site was seized. (even though the site hosts no torrents and returns search results through embedded iframes) So the site is gone until he can convince the government to give it back.

Yeah, that's my America. Give the government the power to punish without so much as a public hearing. After all there's no chance THAT power will be abused.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

Yes, our market is likely to be used for illegal purposes. So are the tools of locksmith or the common kitchen knife possibility to be used for bad. And what the article shows is one of those.

I don't know your site, but I'd wager that it's primarily used to infringe on copyright, that you know that's exactly what it's used for, and you're still trying to rake in whatever profit you can from other people's goods.

If that wasn't the case, I don't know why you'd be running to get your operations out of the US. Which, btw, is fine with me. If you don't want to be subject to US laws, don't do business in the US. Seems fairly obvious to me. And don't complain when your site doesn't resolve in DNS within the US.

Your comparison to locksmith tools and knives is absurd. They are not sold as primary tools to break the law. Neither is bittorrent the protocol.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have a full copy of the court documents involved with these take downs? Might answer a few questions.

Sorry, but DMCA & ACTA prevent me from posting them. I'm hoping they make it to the surface via Wikileaks.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[clarkkent09]

We don't live in a tyranny but we are moving in that direction. What about having nearly half of our income taken by force and most of it passed on to others whether we want it or not (tax/welfare), how about a tax system so complex that it is impossible not to break the law and where we collectively spend over $250 billion (yes with a b, look it up) on accountants just to comply with it. How about when we are forced to buy a specific health insurance policy even if we don't want one (Obamacare)? How about when we want to start a small business and have to buy a permission (license) to do so, one each from city, county and state, as well as jump through a hundred loops, each one with its own fee. How about when eminent domain is abused to take property from people on the grounds that handing it over to corporate use will bring more tax dollars? The only time kids on this site get worked up about it when their favorite stupid torrent sharing site gets shut down.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[NiceGeek]

So where in all those quotes does it say that sites selling counterfeit goods are allowable?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[arivanov]

A court order is what happened.

There is a court order for shutting down this sites and the article refers to it.

So can we cut the "freedom", "internet only", etc malarkey. It is all above board and pretty much following proper due process and established procedures. If you sell counterfeit DVDs from a stall at the market you will get shut down. Do not see why you should not be shut down if you sell counterfeit media off a website.

Now the definition of counterfeit, grey, illegal copying, etc are all an entirely different matter. However, as long as the current definitions stand there is nothing particularly outrageous and illegal here. It is in fact definitely more legal than most DMCA shutdowns.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Fewer than 20% of farms in Confederate states had slaves and had been in decline for decades. Several Union states allowed slavery. The cost of the War Between the States to the Union was enough to purchase every Confederate slave's freedom and 20 acres of land for each one of them. The Emancipation Proclimation only freed slaves in the areas controlled by the Confederacy and was a weak attempt by Lincoln to gain strategic advantage over the south by encouraging rebellion from slaves who were being watched over by the wives of the Confederate soldiers. To argue that the War Between the States was about slavery, or that the South had slavery in mind as a reason for supporting states rights, is patently false.

If you want to learn more about the 'Civil War', read The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo. He goes to great trouble to quote every source for every bit of information presented.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[zippthorne]

Indeed, the price of ending slavery in the US was very high. On the same scale in terms of affronts to human dignity as the original offense.

But imagine this: A real republic, where the states get to mind their own business, and the federal government operates completely within the bounds of the constitution, taking no more authority than is necessary to accomplish the few duties that can only be discharged at the federal level (like treaties and defense), and nothing else. AND no human slavery.

Who says you can only have one or the other?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[clarkkent09]

We operate torrent seedboxes, nothing illegal in them itself, but many users seem to use it for illegal purposes
 
I personally think that whether what you are doing is illegal or not (depends on the jurisdiction), morally you are a jackass for trying to profit from other people's work and slightly insane for thinking that you are some kind of a victim for having to sneak around the Internet instead of being a jackass out in the open. Why don't you use your abilities to do something creative instead of wasting them on something that is destructive and immoral.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[e9th]

According to the TSA, if it were not for their "thoroughness", planes would go BOOM.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

>

"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

While to some degree I agree with that part of your quote, I'm pretty sure China fears it's population, and yet you have tyranny there. China wouldn't treat dissension so harshly if it didn't fear what it could bring (revolution). I think that quote would be more accurate if it was "...Where the government fears the people and doesn't have the strength to oppress them, you have liberty." Which is why the second amendment here is a necessary evil, the same as torrents. Both can be used for bad things, but both have legitimate uses (note I didn't say legal, as that's a whole other argument).

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

They are doing what they can to protect the American Lifeline!

The product of entertainment industry is carefully exported to the euros and so on.
This brings the $$$ that is used to import those nifty gadgets and toys from asia.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Voulnet]

Too big to fail.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

And just what is "Primary" supposed to be? Do you define the "primary" use of something by what the majority does with it? If so, then should I be unable to download ANYTHING, including legal files, even if all I download is legal, just because the majority of people download illegal files?

Or do you just decide "The webmaster of this website offering downloads MUST want to share copyrighted files" and you basically put intentions in the head of webmasters?

"Primary" sounds like a concept that is meant to be useful when you want to block a website you don't like but can't find any valid and legal reason to justify blocking it.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Mysteray]

No, the police will show up and shut down physical stores for selling illegal things/things illegally. Perhaps they do need a judge to sign off on it, but presumably the DHS had its own paperwork in order.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cheekyjohnson]

So when they came to take away part of my liberty by installing red light cameras

This is exactly where the problem lies.

not the freedom to steal someone else's word.

Luckily for us then that no words are being stolen! They are being copied. Even the laws which some people defend differentiate between theft and copying.

Most of the torrent-loving people are just kind of lazy couch potatoes who seem obsessed with filling up a 2tb disk with more than they can ever watch.

Interesting. I'd like to know where this assumption comes from, and if you have any proof to back it up. Actually, you probably do.

That said, I feel the same way about people who refuse to give others all of their money. If they had given away all of their money, someone else would have had more money, but since they didn't give away all of their money, the other person was inflicted with non-existent harm because they lost the potential to receive future gain! Those lazy couch potatoes never give someone else all of their money! They're just potential profit thieves!

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cheekyjohnson]

I really wish we could return to being a republic

Really? I wish we could be less of one and grant more power to the people as opposed to a few lying, corrupt politicians. Not unlimited power, just far more. Enough so that idiots such as these couldn't do things like this or pass more idiotic anti-piracy laws without fully explaining their true motives and without consent of the people.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Culture20]

The constitution gives each of us the freedom to speak, not the freedom to steal someone else's word.

Which is exactly why a lot of people view the taking of Domain Names to be potentially chilling. Which communication medium will be killed next, radio?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cheekyjohnson]

morally you are a jackass for trying to profit from other people's work and slightly insane for thinking that you are some kind

I don't get it. What's wrong with torrent seedboxes, now? They aren't necessary always used for copyright infringement (note the proper term there instead of stealing). They're merely services/tools.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[LinuxLuver]

The interesting part is the anti- terrorism DHS being used for something that has nothing whatever to do with homeland security. That didn't take long. The US can now only be seen as a police state, given how DHS powers make a joke of the US Constitution. Yet most of the sheeple still have no idea the American democratic ideal is now stone, cold dead... and they are Tea Partying for more of the same, believing they will get less. It's perverse.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cheekyjohnson]

and the federal government operates completely within the bounds of the constitution

Not possible as long as the people have so little power and the large corporations and government have so much.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Another disturbing development, I ran five random urls through the internet archive's wayback machine, and didn't get a hit on any of them. Not good, apparently they have not only disabled the websites, but even the archives, so we can't look at them and see what they were actually doing.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[clarkkent09]

He provides a service that he knows is being used mostly (let's be honest, almost exclusively) for illegal purposes and he is ok with it. Can you explain to me how is that not wrong?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Dthief]

And pease explain why torrent-finder.com is more at fault than other search engines such as google, bing, yahoo, etc, and why the websites listed were not equally "taken over"

Re:One of Our Cancers

[X.25]

The websites in these cases amount to a storefront to distribute fake goods or copyrighted materials. When this happens with physical storefronts, they get shut down. I don't really see how this is any different.

This isn't about free speech, no liberties were lost, this is about people breaking the law and reasonable steps are being taken to stop them. You shouldn't fear the government as a result of this. Take off your tinfoil hat.

So, a torrent search engine is now a storefront for distributing fake good or copyrighted materials?

You're smarter then you keep your mouth closed and finger far from the keyboard. Really.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day, you take material that others have taken great pains to create, many with hopes of earning a living through this work, and you facilitate those who give this material away for their own personal profit. You may be operating within the bounds of legality, or maybe you're not. Legality is arbitrary. In either case, you're a parasite, and your "concern" springs from your own selfish interests.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[gnarlin]

You don't get convicted/punished until proven guilty, that doesn't mean they don't shut down the operation when it's obvious they are actively selling fake goods right now. It is the courts job to decide what criminal charges may exist. Perhaps the shop owner didn't know they were fake? Just because the owner may not be the person criminally liable, that doesn't mean you allow the operation to continue.

It was obvious these sites were selling fake goods and distributing copyrighted works. They shut them down and the owner's get to plead their case about how they didn't know or whatever their case is. The site still gets shut down now if they are breaking laws now.

Fake eh? I have a copy of a digital file. The checksum is the same. Now tell me, which one is the "fake" one? You can't? Perhaps that's because equating the digital sharing of culture with "counterfeiting" is a false dichotomy. Digital copies are perfect and therefore the copy isn't defective in any way unlike when real counterfeiting takes place. Then it's quite possible that the copy might pose some sort of danger to it's purchaser or user which is one of the reasons why manufacturing needs to be regulated in the first place while. Remember, copyright exists for the "encouragement of the science and the useful arts". Not because control of our collective human culture is a good idea.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Bigjeff5]

...and may have overreached on the torrent site.

Reading's a bitch aint it?

Some times it just gets so hard.

I mean, there were two whole paragraphs there! With two sentences apiece! One can't be expected to read and understand all that information at once now, can they?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[wygit]

So an LA cop, or an FBI agent, can go to China and grab a shopkeeper and shut down their shop without consulting Chinese authorities?

DNS names are, in theory, not supposed to be under the control of the US government.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Probably because they convinced a judge that sites like torrent-finder.com were being used almost exclusively by those deliberately breaking the law, which of course they could argue simply by observing the publicly available content those sites were advertising, while the major search engines are predominantly used by everyday people for legal activities and because of their automated nature may also be used by people looking for other purposes.

Fortunately, unlike a significant proportion of Slashdot posters, the average judge does understand the difference, can identify when a group of law-breakers is taking the piss, and will authorise the relevant authorities to do something about it where the law permits.

It's odd how the freeloaders are always quick to claim that IP is not real property, infringing copyright is not theft, they wouldn't have bought it anyway, etc., yet just because the authorities changed a few records in a DNS database after seeking a court order and acting with full judicial oversight, the sky is falling and it's some profound invasion of their fundamental human rights or something. Hypocrisy, meet Denial; Denial, this is Hypocrisy.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[emt377]

I certainly agree with the quote in theory, but I also feel that it has to be broken because of the nature of society. In my town, there were some pretty nasty red-light runners. I was almost hit several times. So when they came to take away part of my liberty by installing red light cameras, I wasn't so upset. It was a trade off that would make the world better.

Yes but red light runners don't just have their property seized. They can go to court and argue it wasn't them, demand to see evidence, and generally defend themselves. Your PD's traffic enforcement doesn't collect names and then go seize their cars because they were used in the commission of a crime. Even red light runners have a right to due process. I have no problem with red light cameras either - or law enforcement in general. I have a problem with just rampantly interfering in civil disputes. Illegal distribution and bootlegging denies the property owners income, but isn't theft since that denies use of tangible property. Unless you steal the sole manuscript it's a bit rich to call it theft; it's generally not something that requires active prevention since it doesn't deny the rightful owner use of it. Nor is it a matter of public safety - it's strictly a civil dispute over distribution rights and compensation.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

steal someone else's word.

And there is the little part that shows us that you are batshit insane.
As far as any sane person is concerned there is no possibility for anyone to own a word like for example face or book.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[ThePhilips]

"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

That seems to be out-dated. Both - people and government - are afraid of large business.

People are afraid to lose their jobs and means to sustain their families.

Politicians are afraid to lose their "sponsors" without whom they can't get themselves reelected.

If that outdated principle is what your constitution is based upon, then I can see why you have the problem.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[mfh]

I bet dollars to doughnuts that when net neutrality passes, buried deep in the legislation's text will be stronger measures than what we're seeing today.

The terrorists win.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[biryokumaru]

So if I made a perfect copy of a Prada purse, it would be legal for me to sell it for $2000? I don't think exactitude is the best standard to differentiate copyright infringement...

Re:One of Our Cancers

[borcharc]

A Domain name is personal property, a court order taking it from someone without notice of the opportunity to respond to a complaint violates the second principle of natural justice, Audi alteram partem, a important backbone to our legal system. The concept of Audi alteram partem is extremely sacred in common law and requires the other side at least the opportunity to be heard before any action is taken. This is reinforced by several portions of the US Constitution and endless relevant case law. Any action, in any common law court, requires notice to be given and a reasonable time to respond to the allegations prior to and decision made by a court. You cant take someone property in absentia without at least giving them reasonable notice. PERIOD.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[mickwd]

Strange that you should answer the question "What happened to innocent until proven quilty?" with the words:

"As with most crimes in progress..."

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Firehed]

The majority of the sites were selling knock-off physical goods - it's quite easy to make a distinction there. I only saw one site on the list that was piracy-related, torrent-finder.com, although it looks like a number of sites were selling DVDs of pirated material which you could make a valid argument about either way (I'd argue they're like counterfeits; those sites tend to target ignorant people looking for a deal, not slashdotters with a bittorrent client).

Re:One of Our Cancers

[fishexe]

What happened to innocent until proven quilty?

They ran out of squares to sew together, so they decided to just presume quilt.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Lanteran]

Gone the way of the dinosaur, and your primitive notions of modesty, *strips*

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Dunbal]

actively selling fake goods

I was under the impression that you don't have to pay for torrents - that's rather the whole point. Plus the goods aren't fake, they are genuine.

So what was your point again?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Totenglocke]

Exactly. I wrote a blog post saying pretty much the same thing a few months ago. We need to return to what the country was meant to be - a collection of individual States with a Federal government that deals with the interactions between the States. Let people choose the government that they want, don't force it on them.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[emt377]

Zip and RAR and PAR are used to distribute illegal software, WAREZ, etc. as well as legitimate business items..

I've never seen them used for anything legal. They are tools of the thief stalking the night, with no legitimate uses whatsoever. We've all seen the token legal zip file, but come on, who actually downloads these - we all know file compression was invented to facilitate illegal downloading! Internet Explorer was invented to browse illegal archives, everybody knows this and that it has no other real uses. In fact, we all know Turning invented computing so he could download porn without paying... and somewhere Mr Cerf is cackling over the grand success of his scheme to connect booty sites with downloaders.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[emt377]

To argue that the War Between the States was about slavery, or that the South had slavery in mind as a reason for supporting states rights, is patently false.

Right-wing history: now fresh daily!

Re:One of Our Cancers

[wygit]

Porn is the primary reason for the internet. We need to shut it down.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MichaelSmith]

In this case, it looks like a ICE took down a bunch of sellers of counterfeit goods

Hardly. Few people would have found them by typing in their domain name. They can jump to a different name and continue business more or less immediately.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[WitnessForTheOffense]

...and will authorise the relevant authorities to do something about it where the law permits.

Feel free to quote the laws to which you're referring in which DHS is permitted to seize domains and also feel free to explain how the ICE are "the relevant authorities."

It's odd how the freeloaders are always quick to claim that IP is not real property, infringing copyright is not theft, they wouldn't have bought it anyway, etc., yet just because the authorities changed a few records in a DNS database after seeking a court order and acting with full judicial oversight, the sky is falling and it's some profound invasion of their fundamental human rights or something.

There's no cognitive dissonance in what you described. IP is not real property and copyright infringement is not theft. The DHS/ICE overstepping their authority and jurisdiction does not suddenly make IP real property or make copyright infringement theft. And while your characterization of the people with whom you disagree is a straw-man, they are perfectly justified in feeling outraged that the fundamental basis of the rule of law is being undermined for the sake of big companies with obsolete business models.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not wrong because he's not the one doing the illegal activity. Go after the people who share illegal files, not those who provide the tools. Too hard to do? Sorry, but I don't give a shit.

What do you suggest? All websites, services and tools that allow people to share files should be banned because they can be used to share illegal files? And it's OK if as a result people can't share legal files at all since tools that let us do that are all banned?

Oh yeah, and since you want to defend the harm to the economy done by file-sharing, let's get facts straight:
- Music publishers only pay artists small amounts. Also, publishers are useless today since artists could publish their music themselves on their own websites.
- Music publishers sell music on the Internet for the same price as buying the CD, despite Internet sale costing less to them (no CDs to ship to stores (gas = $$$)). Prices should be determined, among other things, by production costs. That's how the economy works.
- Some people download music and movies to sample them, and if they like what they download then they buy the real thing. In fact, these people buy more music/movies than if they did not sample the stuff first because they are 100% sure they will enjoy what they buy. That largely compensates for those who download for free and never buy.

So who is messing up the economy for everyone, really? Who is doing something wrong?
On one hand you have people who keep their 10 bucks instead of giving them to the music industry.
On the other hand, you have an industry that :
a) Ignores the fact that production costs should be a factor in sale prices,
b) Earns more money than it deserves (by under-paying artists who do the real work)
c) Should not exist anymore (Internet lets artists publish songs on their own).

And by the way, artists make more money by giving their music away for free and requesting donations. Some have tried it and it worked well for all of them.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

requires the other side at least the opportunity to be heard before any action is taken

Where does that last clause come from? Where is "audi alteram partem" when I'm given a ticket for speeding? Where is it when a search warrant is issued for my house? I'm no lawyer, but doesn't that happen in court?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[emt377]

I suppose I should have addressed the argument that only 20% of farms owned slaves. I bet less than 1% of the population owned slaves, in fact - yet the 99%+ wouldn't vote to abolish it as a gesture of conciliation to the north? Why? Could it be that the 20% of farms that owned slaves represented 80% of output - heck, maybe even 80% of the GDP of these states at the time, and abolishing slavery was heavily subject to economic FUD arguments?

Methinks someone pays way too much attention to talk radio. Remember, for entertainment purposes only.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Dunbal]

businesses as well as goverments SHOULD fear the population.

      I just finished watching a video of stampeding bovines at Target, trampling a few people to get a small discount. After seeing something like this, I understand why government and business hold "the people" in such contempt.

      I'm also fascinated at how the great revolutions of history actually managed to get started. Perhaps it was because of the lack of things to do in a world without electricity and telecommunications that would lead the people to grumble and unite far sooner. Now it's just bread and circuses, every day. The politicians that get elected are not the smartest people, but the best showmen. So long as people have their Miller lite, their big screen TV's with ESPN and reality shows, their porn, and every now and again they can pretend to vote, they will be happy.

The smart ones among us will just be left to despair - or turn to the dark side and run for public office.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Why is this considered right-wing? Everything I stated was solid fact. Even the typically liberal-leaning Wikipedia can't hide from the facts. From the Emanicpation Proclamation article:

The proclamation did not cover the 800,000 slaves in the slave-holding border states of Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia or Delaware, which had never declared a secession; slaves there were freed by separately state and federal actions. The state of Tennessee had already mostly returned to Union control, so it also was not named and was exempted. Virginia was named, but exemptions were specified for the 48 counties that were in the process of forming West Virginia, as well as seven other named counties and two cities. Also specifically exempted were New Orleans and thirteen named parishes of Louisiana, all of which were also already mostly under Federal control at the time of the Proclamation.

The Emancipation Proclamation was ridiculed for freeing only the slaves over which the Union had no power. Over 50,000 were freed the day it went into effect[3] in parts of nine of the ten states to which it applied (Texas being the exception).[4] In every Confederate state (except Tennessee and Texas), the Proclamation went into immediate effect in Union-occupied areas and at least 20,000 slaves[3][4] were freed at once on January 1, 1863.

Additionally, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the emancipation of nearly all four million slaves as the Union armies advanced, and committed the Union to ending slavery, which was a controversial decision even in the North. Hearing of the Proclamation, more slaves quickly escaped to Union lines as the Army units moved South. As the Union armies advanced through the Confederacy, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly all (approximately 4 million, according to the 1860 census)[5] were freed by July 1865.

Near the end of the war, abolitionists were concerned that while the Proclamation had freed most slaves as a war measure, it had not made slavery illegal. Several former slave states had already passed legislation prohibiting slavery; however, in a few states, slavery continued to be legal, and to exist, until December 18, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted.

That the school systems have failed to educate people doesn't make facts any less correct.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Dunbal]

(let's be honest, almost exclusively)

      In some countries personal downloading for non-commercial uses is not outlawed. Considering that the US is not the biggest country in the world, I have trouble with "almost exclusively [for illegal purposes]".

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Ltap]

There is a very, very big difference between "illegal" and "wrong".

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Apparently a US court has issued a warrant permitting this action. Given that they are presumably far more qualified to interpret US law than I am as a non-lawyer from outside the US, perhaps you should take the matter up with them?

And the cognitive dissonance is not in sticking meticulously to the distinction between physical property and IP, it's in basing much of the advocacy for infringing copyright on the distinction, but then crying like a baby just because the government flipped a few bits that also did not harm anyone's personal property, put anyone in jail, or otherwise cause any actual, demonstrable harm to anyone. Either control of data can have a real world value worthy of legal protection or it can't, but the position of the freeloaders in this discussion appears to be that information they want to take has no value but the information they want to control is sacrosanct. I can't see that as anything but transparent hypocrisy.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Culture20]

He provides a service that he knows is being used mostly (let's be honest, almost exclusively) for illegal purposes and he is ok with it. Can you explain to me how is that not wrong?

That makes me wonder. Who makes garrotes, and how are they marketed?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[clarkkent09]

Seems like most replies are getting hung up on whether it is illegal or not. What I meant was more personal, that he, probably out of ignorance, or perhaps for material gain, thinks he is doing something worthwhile. I don't think he is. I think the economy of all advanced countries depends almost entirely on intellectual property and to undermine it is to undermine the economy and the society itself at a very fundamental level which is why the US law enforcement agencies are beginning to take is seriously. Destroying property rights is the quickest way to destroy a society. For people working in industries (like software) that depend almost entirely on intellectual property this is particularly short-sighted but what can you expect from naive self-hating leftist mentality.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Antique Geekmeister]

Do not ever assume that the Department of Homeland Security could find its own bottom with a strip search and a full body X-ray. Due to various laws such as the Patriot Act, they've been protected from having to actually pay attention to civil rights. They are _extremely_ careless of "having their paperwork in order".

Re:One of Our Cancers

[TooMuchToDo]

If you had a replicator that made it identical, than yes, why not? What difference would it be from buying it from Prada and getting to resell it for $2000 due to first sale doctrine?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe the civil war was only about freeing slaves or saving the union, then you're a retard.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's vindication is that it responds to takedown notices. Google has been the target of lawsuits, several times, and always this is the major factor in the ruling. Google also acts as a general 'everything' indexer, not specifically made for illegal downloading, and its user-submitted services (like YouTube) seem to fall under safe harbour. But here again, to quote 17 USC 512(c) ...

(1) In general. -- A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider -
        (A)(i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;
                (ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or
                (iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;
...
        (C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[History's Coming To]

The state still has a right to stop a crime in progress where they have a reasonable right to believe it is. If they're wrong then they have to return any property they've seized and make financial amends, just as they have to if they smash your door in looking for drugs that aren't there. And yes, they need a court warrant or equivalent for either.

There's umpteen torrent sites struggling to break even by offering verified, legit traffic, so nothing of value has been lost if a site is taken down which clearly facilitates, if not hosts, dodgy stuff,

Re:One of Our Cancers

[bruce_the_loon]

.com sites are under the jurisdiction of the US government, as .za sites are under the South African government. Just because the rest of the world can register in either one without being a citizen, doesn't change this. A court order to seize a .com can only be issued by a US court, and only the domain can be seized if the physical servers are not on US soil.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Antique Geekmeister]

Please look into "asset forfeiture", especually for drug related offenses. The ACLU is already active in this, as described at http://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/easy-money-civil-asset-forfeiture-abuse-police. Neither a conviction, nor a court order, is required for these seizures, and you _can_ have your assets or vehicle seized without a charge ever being filed.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Mysteray]

Good point. I did think I saw something about them having a court order.

Still, the larger point is that the effects on the network are the same from the outside even if the boundaries of the system are drawn large enough to include both the DHS and some high-level courts.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Antique Geekmeister]

It was conceivable at the time. The invention of the cotton gin, and the increasing mechanization of manufacturing and agriculture, was eliminating the economic advantage of owning slaves, just as the invention of the horse collar made horses more effective than slaves for farming in Europe and helped profoundly reduce slavery in Europe, hundreds of years earlier.

Sadly, even where it's not a key of the national economy, slavery still occurs in countries that have outlawed it. It still occurs in the USA: "Wage Slave" has real meaning when your employer holds your green card, or your passwport, and conceals your identity from immigration services and the IRS, and its still a business: just look for convictions.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[misexistentialist]

Since anything can be used illegally, anything can in certain circumstances be used mostly illegally (ski masks, oxycodone, prepaid cellphones, glue), but unless his seedbox forbids legal uses there is nothing "wrong" with it at all. Especially when the "law" allegedly being broken is incompatible with free speech and thus itself illegal.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Idiomatick]

Fuck off with the constitution. Can't something be right or wrong based on its own merits. You'd think you were talking about the bible half the time.

tl;dr: Constitutionalists are as crazy as the religious.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[hairyfeet]

If you would have bothered to RTFA you would have seen other than that one torrent site nearly all of the ones shut down were selling things like "Windows 7 Ultimate just $25! Passes WGA!" and "iron Man 2 DVD just $2!" and that kind of shit. They were the classic KIRF knockoffs and counterfeiting sites and NOT a concerted effort to take down torrent sites.

So unless you are really down for home burnt Windows copies with the malware conveniently added for you and Romex watches I don't see what the big whoop is. You try to sell fake Windows discs and counterfeit DVDs on the street corner they shut you down, how is this ANY different?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Those sites had pretty much 0 to do with MPAA. The interesting thing here is that the DHS did this instead of the FBI. When did it become DHS job to do the FBI's job?

These sorts of places sell a 'Gucci' handbag at 'discount' prices. When in reality they are a cheap knockoff with a label printed on them.

Now if a Gucci handbag is really worth as much as they sell it for is a different debate. These are the companies that are pushing for these sites to be shut down. They have been fighting this fight longer than the idea of the internet was even around. They are well versed in what laws there are and even had a hand in writing many of them.

The seizing of these sites is really shutting down a criminal organization. Not the shutting down some dudes who want to copy a movie.

The way they were seized may have some ramifications though on other parts of the internet.

Ladies and gentleman the writing is on the wall unfortunately. The day of free crap on the internet are over. The internet now belongs to corps with big enough pockets to buy whatever time they like. The monopolies have won. They bought and paid for as many politcos (both democrat and republican) as needed and have written the laws put an end to it. Long live sneakernet!

Re:One of Our Cancers

[wrook]

As with most crimes in progress, the law allows the police to take action to stop the crime and seize the evidence. The disposition of the evidence and means of committing the crime will be dealt with as part of whatever trial is coming.

In this case, it looks like a ICE took down a bunch of sellers of counterfeit goods and may have overreached on the torrent site. That said, we'll all soon learn what the relationship of torrent-finder.com is to the rest of the seized domains.

I think this is the main point. Copyright infringement is not a crime (yet). A government office should not be interfering in a civil matter.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Ankarah]

I call bullshit on your analogy. To imply a site that reflects content created elsewhere shows no ownership over that content. Your analogy of a storefront distributing stolen goods also implies that a)the storefront in question stole the goods, and b) that the goods are being stored in the storefront for distribution, neither of which are the case. The analogy FTA is much closer to reflecting the facts of the situation.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that, and I still consider piracy to be wrong.

Is it as bad as stealing physical goods? Obviously not. Do modern copyright laws go too far? I would argue that they do. That said, you have no right to distribute someone else's work without their permission.

As far as ethical transgressions go, piracy is pretty low down on the list... but it still makes you a jerk.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[whoever57]

A Domain name is personal property,

I think that the judge in one of the sex.com cases decided that a domain name is not property (hence letting Network Solutions off the hook for transferring the domain name to the hijacker).

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Man On Pink Corner]

So when they came to take away part of my liberty by installing red light cameras, I wasn't so upset. It was a trade off that would make the world better.

You've been lied to.

You should be pissed off about that, but I'm guessing not.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

While it galls me to say this, isn't a domain name really a license since they need to be renewed every few years and can be purchased by someone else once they become available?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[morgan_greywolf]

Some planes do go BOOM, particularly when they hit Mach... ;)

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I don't listen to a single radio personality. I get my information from books that are well researched with citations and bibliographies. I find this is much better than just making guesses and assumptions about history. Your postulate is completely false. The most successful farms were the ones that stopped using slaves. This was done to compete better in the international market because voluntary labor is more efficient than forced labor and many competing nations had abolished slavery.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

If intellectual property is not enforced:
    The big guy steal the small innovative guy's idea and outproduce him. The small innovative guy must innovate faster to have a small lead over the big guy.
If intellectual property is enforced
    Laywers use submarine patents then sue the small innovator guy for patent infringement.

How does knowing that if you innovate and do the difficult part you'll get sued to death by lawyers who vaguely imagined the easy part constitutes an encouragement to innovate ? Any rational innovator would just sit down on all his ideas.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this considered right-wing?

Pro-Confederate revisionist history? If you have to ask...

Even the typically liberal-leaning Wikipedia can't hide from the facts.

Wikipedia is not liberal, it is biased towards whatever point of view is held by the loser(s) who are willing to devote their lives to reverting edits on their chosen topic. Sometimes these are liberal nuts, sometimes they're conservative nuts, and sometimes they're just your run of the mill douchebags with an ax to grind.

From the Emanicpation Proclamation article:
[wall of text]

...and? The fact that it is not ideal by modern standards somehow invalidates the fact that the "states rights" they were fighting over was the right to own slaves? Please.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[llN3M3515ll]

So it would seem to me that search engines such as Torrent-Finder.com are unfairly being lumped into this category, from what you have specified is that people selling fake/knockoff items should have their storefront closed down. FTA - "When a site has no tracker, carries no torrents, lists no copyright works unless someone searches for them and responds just like Google, accusing it of infringement becomes somewhat of a minefield – unless you’re ICE Homeland Security Investigations that is." So dwlovell where do you draw the line? Should Homeland Security shut down google, because I can search for copyrighted materials on google and find it in a torrent? Its a very slippery slope we are treading.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Foobar of Borg]

A Domain name is personal property, a court order taking it from someone without notice of the opportunity to respond to a complaint violates the second principle of natural justice, Audi alteram partem, a important backbone to our legal system. The concept of Audi alteram partem is extremely sacred in common law and requires the other side at least the opportunity to be heard before any action is taken. This is reinforced by several portions of the US Constitution and endless relevant case law. Any action, in any common law court, requires notice to be given and a reasonable time to respond to the allegations prior to and decision made by a court. You cant take someone property in absentia without at least giving them reasonable notice. PERIOD.

Well, considering that the US government has gone so far as to throw out the nearly 800 year-old requirement of Habeus Corpus, it is not surprising that they are doing all they can to destroy any and all vestiges of civilized law. All that corporations and the US government ultimately wants is "fuck with us, or have something we want to take, and we will destroy you" kind of law.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Chaos Incarnate]

Creating an extra digital copy of something, as in pirating, does not impede anybody's access to the original.

Hijacking someone's domain does deprive the owner of access to the original, which certainly qualifies as "harm" in my book.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I bet less than 1% of the population owned slaves, in fact - yet the 99%+ wouldn't vote to abolish it as a gesture of conciliation to the north? Why?

The same question can be asked of the soldiers who executed the My Lai Massacre, the American public allowing the formation of Japanese Internment Camps, and any number of unjustified atrocities. I don't know the answer, other than to say it seems to be an undesirable trait of human nature. If we look at the facts of history, we find that the voting Americans were racists. Here is a little something about Ulysses S. Grant (p. 33):

Grant as a Talker

He Threatened to Resign and Cast His Lot with the South

"...The editor of the Randolph Citizen recalls some interesting reminiscenses of the great Reticent. He had a tongue at one time, it would seem:

Ulysses the Silent was Ulysses the Garrulous, and embraced every fair opportunity which came in his way to express his sentiments and opinions in regard to political affairs. One of these declarations we distinctly remember. In a public sterling conversation in Ringo's banking-house, a sterling Union man put this question to him: "What do you honestly think was the real object of this war on the part of the Federal Government?"

"Sir," said Grant, "I have no doubt in the world that the sole object is the restoration of the Union. I will say further, though, that I am a Democrat - every man in my regment is a Democrat - and whenever I shall be convinced that this war has for its object anything else than what I have mentioned, or that the Government designs using its soldiers to execute the purposes of the abolitionists, I pledge you my honor as a man and a soldier tha I will not only resign my commission, but will carry my sword to the other side, and cast my lot with that people."

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MikeBabcock]

You'd better hope you have a court order before you go closing up someone's store upon suspicion of selling illegal goods. Closing it up without one would be a major violation of someone's rights.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

You and all of your +mods need to check the actual list of sites shut down. They are clearly unrelated to digital piracy except for the aforementioned torrent site.

Some of us adults are trying to have a discussion about the issue, so chill the fuck out about the torrent site caught in the crossfire that you read about^W^Wskimmed in the summary.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anthony Mouse]

Either control of data can have a real world value worthy of legal protection or it can't, but the position of the freeloaders in this discussion appears to be that information they want to take has no value but the information they want to control is sacrosanct.

You seem to be confusing creation with destruction. Nobody is saying that the government or industry should not be allowed to use these DNS entries to resolve IP addresses or make copies of them or anything of the sort. The objection is to using the threat of violence to prohibit others from doing so. Which is the same objection that people have to copyright. So why do you feel the positions are inconsistent?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[silas_moeckel]

Actually this is pressing the issue of US control over the DNS root. As long as it's under it's control in effect all web sites fall under US law. Unfortunately the original .com etc was a rather bad idea there are few really global companies. The UK method of .co.uk etc allows them to handle there own.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anthony Mouse]

Please look into "asset forfeiture", especually for drug related offenses. The ACLU is already active in this, as described at http://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/easy-money-civil-asset-forfeiture-abuse-police. Neither a conviction, nor a court order, is required for these seizures, and you _can_ have your assets or vehicle seized without a charge ever being filed.

And people say there is no slippery slope.

The War on Drugs has brought some of the most serious abuses of government power in this country. It demands to be rolled back, not pointed to as precedent to be emulated.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Lakitu]

No actual property was seized.

They seized the domain name. What makes a domain not actual property? If it's not actual property, then why can they seize it for distributing links to torrents (not even the files themselves) that are also not "actual" property?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[GPierce]

How would you feel if you discovered that the company that provides and maintains the cameras had modified the timing of the lights to increase the number of people photographed as red-light runners. Some of them were a little sloppy in their cheating, got caught and were run out of town. There are probably a few companies that were a little more careful in their cheating and haven't been caught yet.

We live in a world where "shareholder value" is more important than honesty.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cornicefire]

The music companies may keep most of the money, but the pirates keep all of it and they don't spend anything to develop the work. If the pirates were really contributing something like the open source movement I might be torn, but I think they're all just a bunch of leeches.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[AlXtreme]

You would be allowed to give it away.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[icebike]

The websites in these cases amount to a storefront to distribute fake goods or copyrighted materials. When this happens with physical storefronts, they get shut down. I don't really see how this is any different.

If they get shut down (debatable), they get shut down by courts of law. After due process.

Not by the Homeland Security gestapo.

If you can't see the difference I cry for this country.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[countertrolling]

I'll take the replicator, thanks

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

They can change the DNS resolution because they proved to a judge that the site was contributing to copyright infringement.

Torrents and copied files are not actual property, either. Hence it's not theft, it's copyright infringement.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[countertrolling]

No actual property was seized.

Wouldn't matter anyway. Asset forfeiture laws already permit seizure of real property without due process. The trick is to accuse the property (which has no rights of its own) of the crime. Pretty cool, huh?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

where do they get their authority from to do this?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[GPierce]

After the Revolutionary War we were left with the constitution of the First United States Republic, the Articles of Confederation. It wasn't much of a constitution for the simple reason that it wasn't much of a government. There was no president except for the ceremonial office of President of the Congress. There was no federal court let alone a Supreme Court.

The states were mostly independent - of the federal government and of each other. The confederation was more of an organized rabble except that each state ran it's own affairs in about the same way that the British government had run things. The federal government such as it was had no power to do more than beg the states for revenue.

It was a living enactment of "that government is best that governs least".

There was a problem with the common people. The pre-revolutionary smugglers were now "legitimate" merchants and they were busy foreclosing on the people who actually fought in the revolution. See Daniel Shays for the details. The US aristocracy was scared silly that the common man might actually gain some control over his own government (As they did in Rhode Island, by voting not revolution.)

The common people staged a revolution called Shays' Rebellion. The merchants and bankers hired mercenaries. The rebels were beaten down but eventually pardoned after swearing never to do it again.

This was a problem in the minds of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and to some degree in the mind of John Adams. They didn't want a government that governs least, they wanted a government that could get things done - an imperial government. The French and the British had empires, and Alexander Hamilton wanted one for himself. They also had navies - and Alexander Hamilton wanted to be an Admiral.

But you can't run an empire with a rag-tag collection of states that weren't too sure about a federal government in the first place.

Washington, Adams and Hamilton (with the help of a front group called the Society of the Cincinati) tried to put together a constitution that George Bush would have loved.

The leftovers in Massachusetts refused to ratify the new constitution without "reservattions" which turned out to be the Bill of Rights. A number of othe states did the same.

Washington and Hamilton had to settle for something less than the Roman Republic they seemed to want. And when they got their new constitution, they proceeded to ignore the Bill of Rights as in the Alien and Sedition Acts.

So what was our country meant to be - the free country desired by Shays' Rebels - or the Empire desired by Washington and Hamilton?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[countertrolling]

Feel free to quote the laws to which you're referring in which DHS is permitted to...

No can do.. They are secret laws*.. Sorry that it's just an abstract, but the idea came across pretty good.

*actually regular asset forfeiture laws will do.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

It was obvious these sites were selling fake goods and distributing copyrighted works.

Fake eh? I have a copy of a digital file. The checksum is the same. Now tell me, which one is the "fake" one?

The OP really should have said "fake goods OR ... copyrighted works". You focused on the "fake goods" part, which obviously doesn't apply to copyright infringement for the points you listed. Nice try at a distraction, though.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

Which ICE apparently did before changing the DNS for these sites.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Mr. Slippery]

We are seeing are the final nails in the Constitution's coffin.

Really? Decades of civil forfeiture in the War on (Some) Drugs; the erosion of First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights under said War; the Waco massacre, where military assets were brought in using said War as a justification; the stolen election of 2000; the illegal invasion of Iraq; the authorization of torture...and it's revoking a couple of domain names that prompts you to comment on "the final nails in the Constitution's coffin"?

I really wish we could return to being a republic, where each state minds its own business but keep the Federal Government operating within the bounds of the Constitution.

I really wish that people would learn the difference between federalism and a republic, and that the current incident has nothing to do with either and is all about the denial of due process.

The people in Texas can have anarchy or whatever and the people in Massachussetes can have their pristine Government institutions. Those unhappy with their state are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to move.

I'm pretty sure most Texans have no interest in anarchy, more's the pity. Anyway, the fed took on a greater role for a reason -- we tried the "weak fed, strong states" thing and it failed miserably. It's what enabled segregation, and the corruption of the Gilded Age. If you want smaller government, first you have to get rid of big business.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

wait - so, a domain name is personal property, but copyrighted software should be freely available to all?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

lol... yes, that's a logical progression. Today DNS, tomorrow radio. I think your hat may be made out of lead instead of tinfoil. Stop licking it.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[nurb432]

That is so 1700's. Get with the times!

Re:One of Our Cancers

[ziggyzaggy]

No, the despot thinks what he is doing is right, and anyone who opposes him to be wrong. The policeman who beats a suspect who is "wrong" because he finds them annoying thinks what he is doing is right. We have a constitution for our protection from those who would force their ideas of right and wrong upon us, depriving us of liberty and life when they do so. The excesses of our government today come from ignoring the constitution and its bill of rights.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Crypto Gnome]

Insightful????

INSIGHTFUL?????

WTF is The Department of Homeland Security doing shutting down websites?
Don't they have enough CHILDREN BOARDING AIRPLANES to TERRORIZE?

Not Enough Ethnic Looking Non-Chritians to profile and arrest as potential terrorists?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Please enlighten us about the bread-and-butter activities.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[SatanicPuppy]

Little do they know it's only thanks to my magic rock that the country is reasonably terror-free.

How do I know it's magic? Well, I've had it on the shelf for years, and not one terrorist has come within 100 miles of my house.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Crypto Gnome]

The websites in these cases amount to a storefront to distribute fake goods or copyrighted materials. When this happens with physical storefronts, they get shut down. I don't really see how this is any different.

So you're admitting in full view of slashdot that YOU ARE A COMPLETE IDIOT?

In The Real World "shutdown" means the business and people running said storefronts are brought to justice.

In The Online World, all they've done is turned out the lights. Tomorrow the lights will be turned on by THE SAME BUSINESSES AND PEOPLE, doing THE SAME THINGS, from a different domain name.

YOU HAVE ACHIEVED EXACTLY NOTHING except stomped across a whole bunch of things for which you SHOULD have absolutely no jurisdiction over (copyright infringement is NOT a DHS issue no matter what recently crafted law says otherwise).

You haVe WHORED OUT the JUSTICE SYSTEM for PROTECTING COMMERCIAL INTERESTS and NOTHING MORE.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

the anti- terrorism DHS being used for something that has nothing whatever to do with homeland security

Here's a novel idea. See if you can follow it. Imagine DHS has many, many departments and they each have varying responsibilities, some of which are directly related to homeland security and some are not. Imagine a Customs department that has the responsibility of preventing counterfeit goods and illegal copies of works from entering the US. Now imagine a small section within that department specifically has the responsibility with regard to online goods.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[TapeCutter]

The "action" he is refering to is "taking your property", not serving you with notice or searching your property.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

Will that somehow make counterfeiting and copyright infringement legal or are you just going offtopic?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[jythie]

Well, for starters, these sites were in other countries.. meaning the US is abusing it's power over ICANN to shut down websites that are not owned nor operated by its citizens and exist outside its boarders. There is also the issue of due process since they did this without notification or recourse... so basically implementing punishment without even talking to the people involved or even involving a real court of law.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[jythie]

This is one of the complaints about ICE and DHS.. they tend to exempt themselves from silly things like courts and constitutional amendments because they claim things that cross the boarder are not protected. This is why they can do things like search your laptop without cause even though normal police can not do this.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[blackraven14250]

No, they (the owners) have access to the original via their hosting provider, and direct via IP, and possibly via physical access to the hosting servers. They didn't shut down the servers or change the data on them in any way, just seized the domain names that other random people use to access it.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[blackraven14250]

Bullshit, there's no physical seizure where the accused has a right to defend themselves. You get the right afterwords, not before, in every physical case, why change when dealing with an electronic case?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[theskipper]

That was a reasonably stated counterpoint.

Until you couldn't resist ending with "naive self-hating leftist mentality" and all of its obvious ultra-lunatic-fringe-far-right-nutcase-Limbaugh-nonsense-and-dumb-as-a-rock-Palin-sympathizer overtones....

See what I did there?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[index0]

"It was obvious these sites were ... distributing copyrighted works."

You say that like the owners of said works own them forever. What about things found at gutenberg.org ?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[drmofe]

You operate a business which is part, whether you like it or not, of the industrialized copyright infringement and distribution networks which do flout the law and which are illegal

I understand your distinction that you yourself are not doing anything illegal

However, at some point you made a choice to operate this business

Possibly, you were naive and did not think that your service could be used for illegal purposes. Consider yourself now better informed and able to revisit your choice. This removes naivete from the list of possible excuses.

So you are able to make a characterisation: some or all of my customers use my services to carry out illegal activity.

Now you have a different decision that you can make: are you comfortable making your living taking money from those who are effectively acting as criminals.

Please note: I'm not making a judgement on you or your business. Simply pointing out that these are the decisions and assessments that you may have to or have made. Because there are implications. In many countries, as an owner or a Director of a business, you are liable for your actions and business decisions, including those of trading recklessly and there are legal penalties.

From my point of view, your business appears to be acting in the role of service provider so you have no direct liability for your customers' actions. A bit like a lockup storage operator who is not liable for any use of his facility by criminals to store stolen goods etc. However, at some point, a lawyer will make an assessment that your lack of diligence may represent aiding and abetting a crime. In which case, all bets are off.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk."

No, but I know a TSA employee when they grab my junk.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[unitron]

"We may not be able to catch Bin Laden, but by God we can damn sure make it slightly more inconvenient for him to download warez!"

---unnamed high-ranking DHS official---

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Reziac]

I vaguely recall that there WAS some attempt to sue ... a BBS, maybe? (almost 20 years ago, so I forget) over use of ZIPfiles, since everyone knows they're only used to make it easier to move warez.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[WitnessForTheOffense]

they are presumably far more qualified to interpret US law than I am as a non-lawyer from outside the US, perhaps you should take the matter up with them?

That's a big presumption. You're also presuming that they act ethically, reasonably, and neutrally in their interpretations of the law. That certainly isn't always the case. Even if individuals are just doing their jobs properly, the system itself is built on laws written by lobbyists. The appropriate people to "take it up with" don't listen to anything but money. Money equals free speech in America and having more money than others means that you have more free speech than others.

the government flipped a few bits that also did not harm anyone's personal property, put anyone in jail, or otherwise cause any actual, demonstrable harm to anyone.

This is a part of a series of extralegal actions by government agents with corporate representatives "advising" on the operations. Previous actions in this series have involved arrests and confiscations of property and violations of due process and, worst of all, the systemization of such actions with little opposition from the other branches of the government that supposedly serve to balance power and restrict abuses.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA the registrar in question in the case of Torrent-Finder.com was GoDaddy. However, it was not the registrars that did this it was ICANN. And THIS is CHILLING because ICANN is SUPPOSED to be neutral. I have no position or knowledge on whether due process under U.S. Laws were followed but the warrants should have been for the registrars. I really can't fathom why ICANN should honor such a request warrant or not? Time to setup rogue root DNS servers I guess, or dissolve ICANN as it currently exists.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this straight. A domain name, which is intellectual property, was taken from a group of people who make a living by stealing other people's intellectual property. Then, those who relish in taking other's intellectual property cry the battle cry of liberty when their intellectual property, which exists solely to take other's intellectual property, is itself taken.

This is dripping with irony....and ignorance...and stupidity...and hypocrisy...

Here's the real humor...everyone that is angry about the LEGAL seizing of their intellectual property now has a taste in their mouth for what they have done, collectively, MILLIONS of times - constantly!

If anything, this only proves the pirates are knowingly hypocritical and absolutely confirm they truly know and believe what they steal is wrong. Its wrong when someone stops their thieving ways - but its right when you steal from hard working people because they're "the man", and you're all anti-social and cool.

If ever there is a time to be completely disgusted with pirates, its now. How vulgar.

Whether you realize it or not, being pro-pirate means you are anti-capitalistic and pro-chaos. Perhaps even pro-socialist.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Hadlock]

Ironically, of course, grabbing 75 domain names as part of a taxpayer funded handjob for the MPAA's bottom line
 
I wonder if, perhaps they seized all of these domain names with the purpose of minimizing the spread of the wikileaks dump that's supposed to be happening Sunday?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

MA has pristine gov instuitutions? Really? I live in MA and that is news to me.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep voting socialist, so it's no surprise that this is happening. Until people start voting libertarian we'll never be free again.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[IKnwThePiecesFt]

This conversation is about the US government shutting down US domain names. If you want to talk in global terms, go find a conversation about the global government shutting down global domains.

Oh wait.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[ziggyzaggy]

no, primary reason for war was not about right to own slaves. Very sad, that should have been the reason for the war, but it was not. your education, like so many people's, is deficient in this matter. It is a revisionist teaching. There was a series of economic/poitical actions taken against the South by the (also slave owning, by the way) North. This led to war.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I don't even know where to begin. You've sourced a single book to match your revisionist view of history. Might as well quote David Irving on the holocaust. He goes to great trouble sourcing his "information" also.

- Slave purchasing was expensive but supported the southern farms. While the South was home to only 30% of the nation’s free population, it had sixty percent of the wealthiest men. I dispute the 20% figure, it was 47% of the total pop in the lower south, 29% in the upper south, and 13% in the middle states. Almost one-third of all Southern families owned slaves. In Mississippi and South Carolina the slave population approached one half of the total population.

- Slavery also dictated the status of free blacks in the south (i.e. New Orleans) and made them vulnerable to arrest as "escaped property" in the north. It was not on the decline seeing as the proslavery states were pushing for new territories (i.e TX) to be proslavery also.

- Buying the slave's freedom? Isn't that basically paying a ransom? Also there was the matter of the state's attacking the government of the people of the US in an act of war.

- Lincoln was reluctant to push middle states into the Confederacy (DE, MD, KY, MO for example) by emancipationat first but felt it was time to take the war to another level and give it greater meaning. It also meant countries like England who had outlawed slavery themselves couldn't openly side with the South at that point.

- The Civil War was preceded by decades of violence (bloody Kansas) and political struggles (Kansas-Nebraska act, Missouri Compromise, the status of Texas, etc) that revolved around the slavery question.

- Abolitionists in free states were growing more and more strident as escaped slaves (and even some free blacks) were being arrested by slave catchers in states were slavery was outlawed.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[ziggyzaggy]

"responsibliity of preventing counterfeit goods and illegal copies of works from entering the US" our customs does nothing of the sort. They only carried about the dollar value of the DVDs I bought in SE asia, they had no means nor interest in whether they were pirated or not. They make you pay a tax on declared items above a certain threshold, and keep you from bringing in diseased food.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

It violates the core of the agreements made between the people and the Government.

What is this agreement that you speak of? I made no such agreement with this criminal gang of thugs.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

The document you cite was published by the Democrats for use in political campaigns in 1968, the year before Grant was elected on the Republican ticket as president. I'd take it with a grain of salt.

There is the cold hard fact that Grant initiated the use of escaped slaves by recruiting them into the Union army before the emancipation. Mainly as laborers but later many were recruited as soldiers.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Creating an extra digital copy of something, as in pirating, does not impede anybody's access to the original.

Hijacking someone's domain does deprive the owner of access to the original, which certainly qualifies as "harm" in my book.

When will this idiot cliche die the horrible painful death it deserves...you do harm to creators when you freeload their work. You turn the wonderful blessing of easy digital copies and distribution into a selfish, irrational entitlement, as though you were the most important person in the world and everything is done for your benefit. When the condition of owning a copy of a work is that you pay for it, you are stealing plain and simple when you don't pay.

I know, in real life it's more complex than that because creators are not always the rights holders, and it does not address fair use. I'm just sick of assholes thinking they are entitled to everything for free. That's just as corrupt as the MAFIAA.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[evanism]

For 17 years I have felt com was an awful mistake.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[ScrewMaster]

This is one of the complaints about ICE and DHS.. they tend to exempt themselves from silly things like courts and constitutional amendments because they claim things that cross the boarder are not protected. This is why they can do things like search your laptop without cause even though normal police can not do this.

The Supreme Court has generally backed them up on this, so it's not hard to understand why. The real question is this: since the disease of unaccountability has a one hundred percent infection rate of organizations that suffer from it ... why do we continue to allow it? I do not care who you are, I do not care how honorable you may think you are, if you have power over me you require effective oversight, and you must be held accountable for whatever actions (or inactions) you perform in my name, and the name of my fellow citizens. That is so goddamn basic to civilized society (human nature being what it is) that any law, or ruling, that successfully eliminates such protections should be enough to have a lawmaker or a judge removed from office

Period. Governance by Patriot Act does not work, not if you want to live in anything resembling a free society, not if you want to live unafraid of your own leaders. Let's face a few facts here: Americans are more at risk from amoral or criminal acts on the part of their various governments (local, State and Federal) than they are of terrorism or outright war. That's not how the Founders intended us to live.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Idiomatick]

And the constitution was written by people who thought that they were right. But if it hadn't been amended many times it would be a piece of shit. The constitution has to change with the times.

As we improve and learn more, expand as a society it should be reflected in our rules and regulations. I'm not picking on any particular law. I'm simply saying that the constitution is not infallible and it should not be treated as such.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the police will show up and shut down physical stores for selling illegal things/things illegally. Perhaps they do need a judge to sign off on it, but presumably the DHS had its own paperwork in order.

Oh, they had paperwork. That explains it. Nothing to see here. Move along. They had paperwork.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

The Cyber Crimes Section of the Cyber Crimes Center of ICE has investigative responsibilities for "theft of intellectual property".

http://www.ice.gov/cyber-crimes/

So I probably didn't word it right, but you get the idea. Section of a section of a department of DHS, not the entire organization.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

What about me replicating the Avatar DVD?
Can I give it away too?

That's sort of the point in this discussion.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[ScrewMaster]

just because the government flipped a few bits that also did not harm anyone's personal property, put anyone in jail, or otherwise cause any actual, demonstrable harm to anyone.

As a U.S. citizen who lives here, I'm going to disagree with you, primarily because you comparing apples to ... well, to something that isn't even a fruit.

Many, many business owners depend for their livelihood upon a functioning Web site. So don't try to tell me that a potential sale lost due to a copyright infringer's making an illegal copy is in any way the same as closing the doors on someone's business. Because, for a Web-based operation, shutting down DNS for their site is just what you've done. Put them out of business: hell, you might as well have just pulled their license and been done with it. Understand, that's actual, provable harm, and the Feds had best have a goddamn good reason for why they did it.

And if they do not ... heads should roll.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Too big to fail is where you get bailed out. This is where the likelihood of prosecution is inversely proportional to the size of your legal department. It happens with patents, too.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

So fakes of Chanel, Vuitton, Dior, Cartier, Hermès, Valentino, Armani, Bulgari are a non-no?

WTF is the DHS doing the flunkie for the Europeans?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[wygit]

I just checked, and you're right. My mistake.
I'm surprised, but not very, to see that the jurisdiction issue was part of the Patriot Act.
http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/archives/juris.shtml

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Travelsonic]

So pirates only download and never purchase the media they like, or want to contribute [finalcial] support to? Baseless and false dichotomy.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is liberal? Let me take a guess, it isn't Fox News enough on the right for you. Maybe you are cherry picking what articles you read because it pretty much spans the gamut.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

that doesn't mean they don't shut down the operation when it's obvious they are actively selling fake goods right now.

Two scenarios apply here: Criminal and Civil infractions.

If it's a Civil infraction, the operation cannot be legally shut down or interfered with unless a Judge issues an injunction, or unless a guilty verdict is returned with that as part of the terms.
If it's a Criminal infraction, then it can be shut down once a warrant or court order is obtained. However, under the Right to a speedy Trial, charges must then be filed and brought before a judge in a timely fashion; they have to either be tried or have the assets returned to their control since the domain names themselves are not illegal.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cheekyjohnson]

Uh, just because something is illegal, that doesn't mean it's wrong.

Also, even if it actually is mostly used for copyright infringement, that doesn't mean that he's bad for selling the service. It can be used for legitimate purposes, and saying someone is bad because of what their customers do with their service/product is just stupid.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cheekyjohnson]

but the pirates keep all of it

What money do they keep? Oh, that's right, their own. They copied data and used up no extra money that the author had. Not time, resources, property, or money. They didn't even interact with the author at all. If introducing artificial scarcity (and hunting down those who merely copy data and leave the author unaffected) is the only way authors are able to turn a profit in this capitalistic society, chances are that it's flawed and needs to be fixed. What we don't need is people making illogical excuses such as: "Piracy is hurting our business and 'stealing' away our potential future gain! I know that technically everyone in existence is guilty of 'stealing' away potential future gain, but I only hate pirates for it!"

but I think they're all just a bunch of leeches.

All? That is a very broad statement. Would you care to prove it? Do you know every pirate in existence?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I made a perfect copy of a Prada purse, it would be legal for me to sell it for $2000? I don't think exactitude is the best standard to differentiate copyright infringement...

Counterfeiting is to sell a product as if it was manufactured by a specific company when it was not in fact made by them. Depending on what it is, you could possible violate patents for making the product, and then there's also the issue of violating trademark and copyright law over the use of the company's name.
However, Patents are not granted for patterns or designs for clothing and accessories, and it's nearly impossible to get a copyright for anything other than the company logo on apparel items. So the answer to your question is, "As long as you don't use the Prada logo or claim it was made by Prada, then YES you can do exactly that, legally."

This is where the digital age differs from the real world- It's possible to make a copy without actually manufacturing the product, which is not physically possible with tangible items.
So for example if I purchase an mp3 on Amazon, and copy it and sell or give it away, that is not manufacturing the mp3, it's just copying it. The manufacturing took place when the label actually created the mp3 to start with. So if I ripped my own mp3, and said it was the official one, that would be counterfeiting; but if I just ripped my own and said so it would by copyright infringement.

Counterfeiting is more about the claim of the origin and misuse of a company's name, Copyright is more about the distribution.
It's possible (although unlikely) to have a license to distribute the material but still be counterfeiting the actual product. It's also possible to have a license to manufacture the product, but not have a license to distribute it (for example an order placed with a printing company by a record label).

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently a US court has issued a warrant permitting this action. Given that they are presumably far more qualified to interpret US law than I am as a non-lawyer from outside the US, perhaps you should take the matter up with them?

And the cognitive dissonance is not in sticking meticulously to the distinction between physical property and IP, it's in basing much of the advocacy for infringing copyright on the distinction, but then crying like a baby just because the government flipped a few bits that also did not harm anyone's personal property, put anyone in jail, or otherwise cause any actual, demonstrable harm to anyone. Either control of data can have a real world value worthy of legal protection or it can't, but the position of the freeloaders in this discussion appears to be that information they want to take has no value but the information they want to control is sacrosanct. I can't see that as anything but transparent hypocrisy.

The difference is that in most cases we're talking about music or some item which has to be copied, downloaded, etc. in order to use it. That is to say, if I make a copy I'm not preventing access to either the source of the material, or other copies of the material itself.
However, if I take someone's domain name, I AM preventing access to their source material, and depending on DRM could potentially be preventing access to material other people have already obtained.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cavebison]

I love the irony/hypocrisy in there.

"We're not hosting files or stealing property, just pointing to the torrents/links."

"We're not seizing your servers, just the DNS entries pointing to them."

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

So again, why have they not shut down google? I find most of my pirated goods that way.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[LukeWink]

Mr Puppy, I'd like to buy your rock.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

What a typical load of yankee claptrap typical of a nation that needs to GROW THE FUCK UP you dont own fuck all the few wankey suits own the whole fuck load of you and you aint got the balls and or the brains to see past the shite when you start dealing with the wankey suits you might get a bit of respect from me and others till then not a fucking hope in hell .

You think you are doing good ALL you are doing is lining the pockets of a few (the ones you need to use a couple of ounces of lead on) they are the true parasites and leeches of your socieity not the ones that you are picking on .

 

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Dunbal]

The internet is global by default, irrespective of where the web-site is hosted or which domain it belongs to.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sparx139]

I think that the grandparent's argument of the boils down to the fact that stealing physical goods deprives the owner of those goods, whilst copying it does not deprive them of the ability to use it. However, seizing the domain names deprives the owner of their use. No hypocrisy is required.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[sirambrose]

Clearly the north didn't go to war to abolish slavery, but the south was fighting to preserve their right to hold slaves. The right to hold slaves was the primary right the southern states were fighting for. Using the claim that the north was fighting to abolish slavery as a strawman to distract people is a standard right wing tactic.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Legion303]

If that's what the "stupid people with too much disposable income" market will bear, I don't see the problem.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the order? Under the jurisdiction of which court? Link please. Was it ex parte or properly served? Why is a copy of the order not displayed on the seizedservers.com domain?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

The websites in these cases amount to a storefront to distribute fake goods or copyrighted materials. When this happens with physical storefronts, they get shut down.

Yes, with due process.

I don't really see how this is any different.

one is lawful under the 4th amendment, the other is not.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

These DNS entries were seized with a court order where enough evidence was shown to take action.

There was no court order. DHS told ICANN, ICANN transferred. No due process whatsoever.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

It seem that is an exception. I think it was directed at the rest of the list, torrentfinder being a glaring exception

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MasJ]

That's because the stores are physically present within the police's jurisdiction.

The police don't have the right to close down a store front in some other country.. =/

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

A court order is what happened.

The guy was NEVER SERVED a court order. He didn't know it until the site was down. I court order must be served in order to be valid. This poor guy woke up one morning and found his site gone. This IS NOT due process of law.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Several people seem to be making an argument like yours, so let's step back for a moment and analyse what you're saying.

In one sentence, you say that many business owners depend on having a functioning web site for their business. Sure, I'll buy that; I run businesses with on-line elements myself, and downtime is no fun.

In the next sentence, you make a common anti-copyright argument about "potential" lost sales. Again, there is some merit there: I certainly wouldn't claim that every illegally distributed copy of a work results in an actual lost sale.

The trouble is, you can no more prove that a web site going down cost a sale (or caused some other form of damage to a non-commercial site) than you can prove that giving someone an illegal copy of some music/movie/software did. We could probably agree that some significant amount of damage is being done in many such cases, but we couldn't accurately quantify that damage in any objective way.

Given that people who are almost certainly infringing copyright are frequently getting away with it on legal technicalities, and awards of damages in the few cases that have gone to court have been either limited initially or reduced on appeal because the original award was disproportionate to the proven actual damages, I find it hard to have much sympathy with hypothetical arguments about how knocking out domains that are probably being used mostly or entirely for illegal purposes is somehow causing some huge loss to some legitimate business.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[salesgeek]

The only person who can answer your question is the prosecuting attorney for the action against torrent-finder.com. I certainly can't. I think it's likely an overreach.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[salesgeek]

I sometimes think the US should give up control of the DNS root, but then I think about who might end up with control... and conclude the US isn't that bad, and really has done a very good job for a very long time.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[salesgeek]

So, if one isn't innocent, they are handcrafted, soft and cuddly?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[salesgeek]

False. Section 506 of the Copyright Law defines criminal infringement, and it is very much a federal crime.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I think that the grandparent's argument of the boils down to the fact that stealing physical goods deprives the owner of those goods, whilst copying it does not deprive them of the ability to use it.

The trouble is, while the anti-copyright crowd keep making that argument, it isn't really true.

Suppose you make your money by producing creative works. Typically, the up-front cost of that creation is high, but the marginal cost of copying and distribution is low. In most cases, you will market the product at a relatively low price, in order to amortise the sunk costs over the entire consumer base and sell at a cost the market will bear.

The major advantage of copyright over most other legal frameworks that I have seen proposed is that it supports this sharing of costs among the consumer base, so that many people can each contribute a small part of the overall cost but all can benefit from the entire work. This makes the creation and distribution of many works viable where relying on direct funding seems unlikely to work.

The economics of the entire industry depend on this mechanic working. However, while copying does not deprive the original holder of the material of their own copy, it certainly could have a potential impact on the market. If you reduce the size of that market, then you reduce the number of people contributing to the pool that pays (or doesn't pay) for the original cost of the work, which affects the financial viability of the product in the first place. Equally, for works that are going to break even anyway, reducing the size of the market will reduce the profit that the work makes, which is a disincentive to invest more in order to produce better works.

Some people claim that content providers are making enough from paying customers anyway, but that's a silly argument for several reasons. Firstly, it ignores the fundamental unfairness of the law-abiding subsidising the law-breaking. Secondly, it doesn't work in the limit: if we legalised copying and everyone behaved as the law-breakers do today, then the creators would have no income stream and the incentive to create and share new works would be gone. Thirdly, "content providers" in these claims usually actually means Big Media/"MAFIAA", and ignores the fact that many small organisations and individuals create valuable content and are just trying to make a living from it, and many small businesses and individual careers come to an early end because they can't make enough money.

Some people claim that you can't assume every illegal copy represents a lost sale. Well, no, of course you can't. But it's equally absurd to pretend that everyone who would have bought a work legally still does so even though they already have an illegal copy of the material. People used to claim that they were "just trying" works to "see if they like them before they buy", but since these days we have hard statistics from things like recent games with on-line elements and the popularity of specific works on P2P networks, we know very well that huge numbers of people are ripping products that are new/popular and continuing to use them well beyond just trying them out.

Some people claim that they are somehow doing content providers a favour by "marketing" their product for free. It's a good job not everyone takes that view, or there would be a whole lot of marketing but still no sales, and marketing is a cost centre rather than a revenue generator. And of course, content providers have the option to distribute taster material or even entire products for free if they wish to do so; if the marketing argument really does work, then those providers who give their work away for free will benefit and market forces will promote this behaviour in the long term. Given that this hasn't happened in the past decade, I won't hold my breath, though.

In short, while copying a work illegally may not deprive the original holder of a copy, it most certainly can deprive them of their ability to use it.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You're also presuming that [courts] act ethically, reasonably, and neutrally in their interpretations of the law.

That is true, but you have to start with some implicit trust for any civilised legal system to be worth anything.

If your courts are not going to act in a fair way according to the law, then you have far bigger problems than the current state of copyright law or a government agency rerouting a few DNS entries. I'm sure in some places in the world that is true, but I think it's rather outside the scope of this debate.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Software doesn't depend on imaginary property. When I give you software, I'm really giving a detailed set of instructions to you on how to run your own machines. It's like legal advice, only has to be correct or the machine breaks. It's not a "product", it's a long, boring speech said very rapidly and intepreted by machine.

Only the pretend-its-a-product bullshit microsofty software distribution industry depends on imaginary property, and they are a small fraction of the real software development industry.

MY civilisation lasted thousands of years without imaginary property. When we have destroyed the infonazis, it will continue just fine.

Stop trying to pretend copyright monopolies, patent monopolies and trademarks are property rights. They're simply not, under the law.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[bartwol]

Many people in the U.S., particularly young ones, are so divorced from the realities of tyranny that they think an airport security check, or the disruption of copyright pirate operations, constitutes a significant threat to liberty.

Clearly, they are unfamiliar with the doings of tyrants or the devastating mechanics of a police state.

Oh...yeah...and the next great threat to human rights...the threat to "net neutrality."

Try poking your virgin head out of your pretty little neck of the woods...there's a world out there with serious problems and yours are a sign of comfort, luxury and intellect.

Boo-hoo to you and your *serious* concerns...your "cancers." (Good gosh...your language even reveals your fantasy that you are dealing in life-and-death challenges. Wow.)

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

One is an action to help people break the law and the other is an action to stop people from breaking the law. There's no hypocrisy here.

There may well be some irony because we're talking about things that aren't physical "swapping hands".

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cavebison]

Sure. But, to nitpick, prohibition can sometimes validly be said to encourage the behaviour it's trying to discourage. That aside, who says someone is automatically breaking the law by downloading from those sites? Do you know whether they already own the material? What about free-to-air TV you could otherwise have copied on tape for personal use? I doubt there's an actual crime in certain situations.

So I see a case for hypocrisy.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[andymadigan]

They had a seizure warrant issued by a court, this went through legal process. Of course, the sites in question have the right to sue. My problem though, is that this is something the U.S. would seem to have exclusive jurisdiction over. Presumably those sites are now inaccessible (at least via DNS) all over the world. But, if the site was legally operating in its own country, why should the U.S. have the right to shut it down? If a local government should have the right to do this, then shouldn't the E.U. have the same power? This can only be done because the U.S. controls ICANN.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[hitmark]

So, lets mix in a actual terrorist between all the vocal dissenters we arrest of the street every day so that we can claim we are just making life safer for the general public.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Sepodati]

prohibition can sometimes validly be said to encourage the behaviour it's trying to discourage

Now, I'll agree with you 100% there. DNS blocking is a futile effort in the long run, but what else are you going to do when the rest of the operation is outside of the US?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[ScrewMaster]

The trouble is, you can no more prove that a web site going down cost a sale (or caused some other form of damage to a non-commercial site) than you can prove that giving someone an illegal copy of some music/movie/software did.

Sure you can! You show your sales receipts before the site went down, and you show your (lack of) sales receipts after the site went down. Furthermore, in the age of Google advertising nobody is non-commercial anymore: the money to run a site has to come from somewhere.

This is not rocket science. And the simple fact of the matter is that you cannot make a clean division between legal and illegal, in spite of MPAA/RIAA rhetoric to the contrary. Most Web sites are hosted by third-parties: they lose revenue when a site is deactivated. Not much, yet, but you know very well it's not going to stop here. This is not a simple matter, and we must err on the conservative side in order to avoid hurting innocent people and organizations. Federal law enforcement in the United States has a common theme running throughout: it inevitably abuses whatever powers it arrogates to itself. Every damn time, and this particular power extends far beyond our shores, and is a little too tempting. They will use it, and they will abuse it.

Besides, when you get right down to it, why does it matter whether you are a commercial site or not? Let the complainant make his case in court. If he doesn't feel he can win a court case, he shouldn't go about having Web sites shut down. For that matter, unless there is serious criminal activity going on, the Feds shouldn't even be involved. The fact that they are involving themselves in civil crimes like copyright infringement without profit (i.e. not piracy) indicates corruption at the highest levels. Of course, we all know that: our President has appointed a number of ex-RIAA attorneys to top positions at the Justice Department. That gives me a very cynical take on the entire affair.

This is all about cost effectiveness, not legitimate redress of grievance. Successfully suing Web site owners is an expensive process (note to RIAA: you and the rest of your kind made it that way, deal with it) and the big copyright holders would rather not have to do that. Hell, just having to cruise the major download sites like Youtube looking for copyright violations is such a pain in the ass. So they think they see a cheap way out by just having the Feds screw with DNS. Now, those are dangerous waters: the international ramifications alone should be sufficient to keep the Justice Department's grubby little RIAA-controlled mitts out of it. But it won't, not until one of the countries where we located the other root servers decides to physically take it over. Think that can't happen? Just wait: we are abusing our authority here, and there will be consequences for that.

In truth, this is more an issue with the Federal Government being conscripted to serve as a private police force than anything whatsoever to do with law, or justice. Really it has to do with bypassing due process in order to lessen or eliminate legal costs. Yes, the Internet permits large-scale copyright infringement. No, it is not the government's responsibility to deal with that, nor that of the taxpayer: it is the copyright holder's! Period. End of statement. Personally, I don't want a single penny of my income taxes going for copyright enforcement, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most of my fellow Americans would think we have better uses for that money as well.

Look, if these bloodsuckers are losing money to new technology, let them figure out a way to make money in spite of that, or go under, just like every other obsolete business model has done throughout history. Funny though: I'm no fan of Apple Computer or its imperious leader, but if it weren't for the rather inventive approach that Jobs & Co. took to selling music, the studios would probably have gone under alr

Re:One of Our Cancers

[ScrewMaster]

Throughout human history, the greatest threat to life and liberty has been not terrorism but the power of the state.

You might want to rethink your position in terms of your own sig. I happen to agree with it, by the way.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

But, you can still apply the anti-IP brigade's logic here as well. People who found the site down might come back and buy the item they wanted when the site is back up. Or, people could just visit the IP address directly if they have that information cached somewhere. This is the parallel to the "pirates might eventually buy the product!" argument.

Personally, I think that IP-infringers should be punished, and that the government should follow due process to take domains. I see this as a consistent set of beliefs. (And, for the record, it appears that due process was followed in this case.)

You also seem to be confusing a lot of issues here. This is the federal government enforcing law here, not the DMCA. But as a small business owner, I appreciate the DMCA because it is expensive to sue someone ripping off your stuff (and, sorry, I didn't do anything to help make that the reality). It's easier to make the infringer stop than try to bring suit against little Johnny Scriptkiddie. It might surprise you to learn that I'd prefer to spend my time creating things rather than bringing suits in court, but I'd still like to have control over my creative work. So, no, it's not just big media cartels that benefit.

Some perspective to go with your ranting.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Lakitu]

He paid money for the ability to use the domain name, and either he or the company he contracts it through should own it, or own the right to use it.

The government seized it from him and prevented the use of something he owned.

Music and movies are intellectual property, and owning intellectual property is a property in itself. If the government seized the copyrights of music files, and then accumulated royalties based on its sale, would you not say that the government seized property?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think, that if a Prada purse were worth $2000, than if you were to make an exact duplicate of that purse it would still be worth the same amount. You could, therefore, sell said purse for $2000. The price would likely lower because of greater supply, and the majority of people would be happy about it. The original manufacturer of that purse would have lower profit margins, and be unhappy. Of course, this describes a free market, the United States does not have a free market.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[KingAlanI]

'whoosh' is, AFAIK, a way of saying 'that joke went over your head - I just explained it for you'. whoosh. :P

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about free speech, no liberties were lost, this is about people breaking the law and reasonable steps are being taken to stop them. You shouldn't fear the government as a result of this. Take off your tinfoil hat.

Breaking the law? What law? American law does not have planetary jurisdiction.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow - someone needs a history lesson!

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Coren22]

And the right to due process...

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Coren22]

They are when they are .com, .us, .net, .org, .gov, .mil, and any I missed. These domains are owned by the US as the home of the internet. Now if these sites were .cn or .co or any other ccTLD, then that would be a matter for that country to handle.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Coren22]

Oh god no, now I am blind, thanks a lot.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Atomm]

dwlovell,

You should choose your words more carefully. In fact, Torrent-Finder did not "distribute" copyrighted material, but simply linked to other sites that distributed copyright material. AFAIK, merely linking is legal, where as actual distribution is not. Besides the point, you can search for torrents on both Google and Bing, yet those sites were not seized? In fact, I bet their database of torrents is as large as or larger than Torrent-Finders. So, I have a problem with this because they are going outside the law to take down a site that should not have been taken down because the **AA's demanded it.

As for selling counterfeit materials; I have seen many sites seized that were not actually selling counterfeit materials, but were merely linking to items on Ebay. In some cases, the items were not counterfeit, but were selling under Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price and ranking higher on Google for the said products. The Manufacturers did not like this and had the sites seized claiming it was counterfeit items. If it was really counterfeit, they should have went after Ebay, but they did not because the items were legitimate, but the site had the misfortune of doing a better job of SEO to a product that the Manufacture did not want to compete against.

Please do not blindly accept that what your government is telling you is accurate and legal. In some cases, it’s easier to sick the government on someone competing with you than to actually compete on price. If want an example, please check out page 2 of a google search for a certain high end shoe manufacturer. Scroll all the way to the bottom. Yes, the example is using the DMCA, but isn't what the OP is talking about the extreme abuse of the DMCA powers?

http://www.google.com/#q=christian+louboutin&hl=en&prmd=ivsno&ei=f8jzTPmRJ4X6lweSmKGtDA&start=10&sa=N&fp=e2bc75ee480e5afd

Re:One of Our Cancers

[RingDev]

I have stolen part of your post for my new tag line. That phrase is just too awesome to not repeat.

-Rick

Re:One of Our Cancers

[OverlordQ]

Yes, our market is likely to be used for illegal purposes.

You misspelled guaranteed.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[D Ninja]

Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk.

HEY! You leave the TSA out of this.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[bmk67]

I think this is the main point. Copyright infringement is not a crime (yet). A government office should not be interfering in a civil matter.

It can be.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00000506----000-.html

Re:One of Our Cancers

[bmk67]

No, but ICE can (and does) confiscate counterfeit goods as it enters the US.

P.S. .com, .net, etc do fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. law as they are administered by U.S.-based entities.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[WitnessForTheOffense]

If your courts are not going to act in a fair way according to the law, then you have far bigger problems...

We have bigger problems. That's exactly what I am asserting here. Even if they act according to the law, the laws are not always themselves fair, so that's not even a good starting point.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

and another case of USA forcing their own laws down the throats of citizens of other countries.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

Why would i operating it outside the US?
  - I live in Finland
  - I'm born in Finland
  - Servers are cheaper in Europe
  - Our company is registered in Finland
  - Most of our customers are all around the world

We do have US based servers tho.

Nope, it is not absurd. Our service neither is sold primarily as a tool to break the law, it does enable you to do so, just like download uTorrent to your desktop computer does, but our service primary selling point *is not* breaking the law.

Our service primary selling point is distributing any data cost effectively via bittorrent. Get a single SB from us the initial seed and ensure your files are always seeded.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

If you didn't happen to notice we are out in the open.

Our website is public, does not do anything to hide what we sell, and is marketed heavily.

Anything which creates something is creative. By your definition, creation of our services, rendering them etc. is destructive and immoral. Therefore your comment, along with your whole existence is destructive and immoral.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

I did not mean that, while it might sound like that.

With "frequent", i meant in average 1 per week DMCA notice.

The sole point of my posting was that due to the grey haze the MAFIAA has laid upon torrents in general, we have to be extra careful not to get trouble by simple "Bittorrent is EEEEVIL!" association.

Unfortunately, MAFIAA has been succesfull in the propaganda making Bittorrent seem evil.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

Parent should be modded +5 insightfull :)

He articulated it better than i did (guess it has to do with the fact it's middle of night and i'm tired).

Exactly, we do provide tools just like a company offers tools which are being used by locksmith's and thieves a like. Doesn't make our service in itself bad, illegal or something along those lines.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

and which has been proven.
Pirates actually purchase MORE music and movies than the average joe, according to some research.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

glad someone makes business minded commentary as well :)

"pirates are leeches" is completely wrong. According to research pirates spend more money to music and movies.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Pirate-Fileshare-Music-Download-Illegal,news-5001.html

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Anonymous Coward]

by your own definition MAFIAA's actions are destroying a society.

Intellectual Property in it's purest form is knowledge & information. MAFIAA is trying to restrict it's flow, therefore trying to destroy a society.

They served a purpose when data was not infinitively copyable for no cost at all (in practical terms), but in today's society they are doing a disservice for the most part.

I for one stopped purchasing games after some annoying EA DRM crap years back, because i had to pirate the game afterall to get online play to work.

For information & knowledge being free for all of society only works to benefit said society.

Yes, we need to support the authors, but if they are any good, they will gain their financial gain from tasks surrounding the intellectual property, such as support services, continual upgrades and enhancements in terms of software, and for artists doing concerts, selling fan merchandise (including CDs in nice boxes!)

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

^_^

Exactly like you said.

We don't know exact statistics, from the US based services an average ~1/12 of users received any DMCA notices.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

Uh ...
Anything can be used for illegal purposes, therefore do i dare to do ANYTHING?

My original post was widely misunderstood.

We do not accept copyright infringement, and do act upon it. Our service is not aimed at copyright infringement, but for data distribution.

We offer a distribution service - plain and simple.

We do not promote or encourage illegal activity.

And yes: We are a 2nd tier internet service provider.

And no: I'm not saying, or meant to say, that most of our customers infringe copyright, but exactly "some", as we received DMCA notices for ~1/12 users in our US servers points out.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Skal Tura]

I noticed from follow ups that i was misunderstood by many, and by some by intention, as i was expressing myself badly.

Yes, the hosting niche we work in has possibility to be used for illegal purposes, so does any other hosting service, what i meant is that our niche is more likely to be used for copyright infringement than the average hosting service (ie. regular web hosting).

Some went even far as displaying us in a light that we'd promote or encourage such behavior - we definitively do not, and take these matters seriously. What we encourage and promote is usage of Bittorrent as a distribution mechanism, simple as that.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[blair1q]

"Stealing is illegal."

Find another way to fight the power. Cribbing a copy of Toy Story 3 is not the same as throwing the tea into the harbor.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[blair1q]

if you have power over me you require effective oversight,

and previously

The Supreme Court has generally backed them up on this

so are you saying the Supreme Court is not effective oversight, or are you just contradicting yourself?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[blair1q]

If you run a business that aids criminal activity, and you don't do anything to police that activity, then why would you be surprised when the authorities get themselves involved in your business to police the criminal activity?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[Openstandards.net]

Actually, you can debate whether domain name registration is personal property, or property of ICANN. IIRC, when they extended renewals beyond 2 years, I remember something about them limiting them to 9 years instead of 10, because 10 could be interpreted as property. I don't know if that is a common law interpretation or what, or if that has been challenged since then. It is a vague memory and IANAL. But, I do remember that being the justification behind having 9 year renewals instead of 10.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[mccrew]

If you made a perfect copy, it's definitely legal to sell it for $2000 - as long as it doesn't say Prada on it. If you misrepresent the origin by infringing on the trademark (trademark applies here, not copyright), then you can't. Nor should you.

Re:One of Our Cancers

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

The 1st amendment protects people who do not break the law. I forget which one, but at least one of the sites taken down has never hosted a single illegal file, and thus has never stolen anything.

Corprations are stealing american ideas and prods

[Ryanrule]

and GIVING them to china

Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a historic moment.

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[Bobakitoo]

This is a historic moment, but not for the reason you said. In 50 years the DHS will be remembered as the Americain version of the Gestapo. Seizes property, person and thought.

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[MRe_nl]

I always think of them as "Der Heutigen Stasi".
But one has to almost admire the way "file sharing" has been turned into "piracy" and "copying" into "theft" by the media.
If the East Germans had had spin control like that, Honecker would still be president.

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[JWSmythe]

    Be careful, you're on the edge of invoking Godwin's law. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'd hate for a perfectly good statement to be nullified from simple misphrasing.

    Seizes property: check
    Person: check
    Thought: as expressed through action, speech, writing, or art... check.

    We're not so far from sliding into an Orwellian nightmare.

    or...

    Big Brother is watching you. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[russotto]

Be careful, you're on the edge of invoking Godwin's law. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'd hate for a perfectly good statement to be nullified from simple misphrasing.

Aside from that they were both ruthless regimes with a distinct lack of humanity and decency, the East German government under Honecker and the Nazis had nothing in common. Invoking East Germany does not invoke Godwin's law.

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

Gestapo = Nazi Germany
Godwin's law = Nazi Germany

Who said anything about East Germany?

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[bidule]

Aside from that they were both ruthless regimes with a distinct lack of humanity and decency, the East German government under Honecker and the Nazis had nothing in common. Invoking East Germany does not invoke Godwin's law.

Nice brainfart. The Gestapo is not the Stasi.

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[russotto]

I was referring to the post by MRe_nl, concerning the Stasi. Somehow I missed the original post with the actual Nazi reference.

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[gmhowell]

    Be careful, you're on the edge of invoking Godwin's law. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'd hate for a perfectly good statement to be nullified from simple misphrasing.

    Seizes property: check

    Person: check

    Thought: as expressed through action, speech, writing, or art... check.

    We're not so far from sliding into an Orwellian nightmare.

    or...

    Big Brother is watching you. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Step three: Arbeit macht frei?

Re:Witness the creation of an alternative to DNS

[blair1q]

Horseshit. They weren't taken down for things they said. They were taken down for stealing things other people said.

Guilty before proven innocent

[Anonymous Coward]

suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world
 
Welcome to "guilty before proven innocent"

Re:Guilty before proven innocent

[Skidborg]

Hello, DHS. I'm about 12 hours drive north of your northern border and I'm using a torrent based file sharing service right now. Come get me.

WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[EmagGeek]

Seriously, kids downloading music poses what threat, exactly, to national security?

One more piece of evidence that our government is just a puppet of deep-pocketed corporations and special interest groups.

I'm starting to think N. Korea is spot on...

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[Nerdfest]

I've been thinking recently that North Korea is probably boosting its economy by buying stock short, then sinking ships, shelling South Korea, etc, to drive the prices down. One could actually make a very large profit that way. Or I suppose they could just be nuts, sometimes it's hard to tell.

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[Dutch Gun]

I'm starting to think N. Korea is spot on...

That's sort of like amputating a leg to take care of a pesky ingrown toenail.

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[seanadams.com]

They might also be trying to break the internet just ahead of the next Wikileaks release.

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I hate the RIAA (passionately might I add) and even more the how the US govt. has handled the prosecution of piracy, there is a very valid argument to be made that the over-all sum of pirated goods (software and music are just the start) does add up in to the hundreds of millions of dollars and Uncle Sam wants his taxes on it. In a cash strapped time like now every penny counts and national security is a money hog. It may may be a little bit of a stretch to call it a National security threat, but I don't think it is as far of a stretch as it would seem. Besides, paying for a product that has been produced by someone is a pretty democratic way to do business. Stealing and distributing it.. well- not very democratic is it?

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[Anonymous Coward]

He may want the taxes, but wouldn't it be better to start by stopping these companies from evading taxes first?

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[Naturalis Philosopho]

While I hate the RIAA (passionately might I add) and even more the how the US govt. has handled the prosecution of piracy, there is a very valid argument to be made that the over-all sum of pirated goods (software and music are just the start) does add up in to the hundreds of millions of dollars and Uncle Sam wants his taxes on it. In a cash strapped time like now every penny counts and national security is a money hog.

Then why are they supporting the MPAA in this instance? We're talking about the industry that used Forest Gump as a tax write-off as their accountants jiggered the numbers to make it look like they lost money on the movie. Oh, or was that only after the "donations" went out? They're the first "citizens" to protect...

Look, I don't think people should copy illegally. I've advocated again and again that if you don't like the company or product then you should just not use that product. I really don't like the counterfeit goods dealers as they hurt both the companies and the purchasers. But we have tons of laws, and only those without bucket-fulls of cash have to follow them. Someone copies 25 songs? Millions in fines. Someone fraudulently uses my credit card number (proportionately & absolutely much higher damage)? Here's a report number, give it to your credit card company and have a nice day. Some people are upset that their toys are being taken away, many more of us are upset that society has swung so far back toward having laws applied based not on fairness but on money.

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[blarkon]

The US' economic future relies on intellectual property. If the US doesn't take radical steps to protect that property, it will have little to export. The US cannot compete on labor costs, but has been able to lead with raw intellectual power. If the US doesn't protect the revenue generating ability of that intellectual property - if the US simply turns a blind eye as China and India reverse engineer every American invention and sell it at a fraction of the cost, the US is farked.

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[Dunbal]

that the over-all sum of pirated goods

      Please demonstrate how you calculate this number.

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[nurb432]

DHS will lose all the bribes... err funding... Ya that's it..

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my initial reaction too, except even in the summary it says: Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Every law enforcement agency falls under DHS. That's why it was originally created, so all law enforcement could be under one organization and share information.

While technically true, the /. title is over-sensationalistic FUD, as difficult as that is to believe.

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[drfreak]

Well... If I had something I wanted hidden in plain sight, but distributed globally to protect deletions, I'd probably hide it in a pirated copy of a popular game or insignificant bits of an audio file. Just my two cents.

Re:WTF? What's the threat to national security?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

if the US simply turns a blind eye as China and India reverse engineer every American invention and sell it at a fraction of the cost, the US is farked.

And what when the west is sufficiently entrenched in this system, of us inventing stuff and the east paying us to be allowed to make said stuff, will we do when they just stop paying?
Economies should be founded on the production of actual goods with some level of actual scarcity. We should not be encouraging our economies to become reliant on producing intellectual goods which only have value so long as we retain the goodwill of other nations to pay for them.
Far from tightening protection of intellectual property, we should loosen it and leave those who would try to make it their sole source of income acutely aware of how little retailable value ideas actually have. Perhaps that would encourage them to continue making real goods.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[amiga3D]

Idiot. It doesn't matter which party runs the White House. This is about money. Money always rules.

DHT?

[Jugalator]

I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country. I'm not quite seeing torrent-finder.com as that, a torrent site I haven't even visited despite being a pirate. Is this honestly the same organization behind providing supplies to Katrina victims, as protecting private businesses against business models in crisis?

Re:DHT?

[Mashiki]

Well the Obama admin, seems to have this heart-on for the term of "man made disasters", so I suppose being a pirate and copying something would qualify.

Now some stuff like knockoff electronics, and actual items I can see the government wanting to go after and shutting them down. In Canada, we do this all the time, because cheap knockoffs can be an actual danger, but this stuff? Nah, most if it is the government trying to flex it's muscle and avoid due process.

Re:DHT?

[Skal Tura]

MAFIAA revenues are national security. Haven't you been paying attention? ;)
MAFIAA atleast would like it to be so ;)

Re:DHT?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter which party is in charge; the government is still determined by the people's will. By people, we mean corporations.

The entertainment industry is only one tiny facet of American business, but even the FBI considers priacy to be among its top priorities. If you dislike it then vote against it; if you cannot stand it then move to a different country and contribute to its success.

Re:DHT?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Well the Obama admin, seems to have this heart-on for the term of "man made disasters", so I suppose being a pirate and copying something would qualify.

The term is hard-on. The heart is a completely different part of the body.

Re:DHT?

[NeutronCowboy]

Department of Homeland Terrorism? How apt.

Re:DHT?

[maiki]

Is it just me, or does the piracy thing sound like a cover? It seems the gov are trying to prevent access to the Wikileaks release. Or perhaps it's time I got me a tinfoil hat.

Re:DHT?

[sribe]

I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country.

I'm from the U.S., and I pay attention to the news, and I thought so too.

I am however relieved to know that the government agency that was founded to prevent terrorism has such a huge excess of personnel and resources that they have time for this in addition to stopping terrorists ;-P

Re:DHT?

[Sepodati]

An organization like DHS has numerous departments and sections within it that have a WIDE array of responsibility. The Customs section has responsibility to ensure counterfeit or otherwise illegal goods are not brought into the US. That's essentially what these sites are attempting to do, either through physical counterfeit goods or by facilitating copyright infringement by making illegal copies. The MANY other departments within DHS are focused on their own responsibilities and likely have no idea or even care what other sections are doing.

Contrary to what many other people post, the entire US government is dedicated to tearing these sites down while everything else goes ignored. I should also note that it's unlikely President Obama is sitting there adjusting the DNS entries himself, laughing maniacally as he organizes his Thought Police brigade, which many believe is a logical progression from blocking DNS resolution.

Re:DHT?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect the DHT acronym is in reference to "Department of Homeland Terrorists", sort of a loose association of folks like the TSA. Either that or a weird sort of preservative like BHT is.

Due process? This is the Internet and the operators are not in the US or anywhere subject to US laws. There is a choice then - either allow the Internet to operate as a consequences-free zone where anything goes or try to impose some kind of penalty (even if only temporary) for illegal acts.

The problem is that seizing a domain name is pretty temporary. Any registrar is going to allow them to just sign up again with a new name making this an endless process. Without some sort of law the Internet is going to remain a consequences-free zone where you can do whatever you want without any concern of legal action. So while this is a minor hassle, the guy at torrent-freak should see about signing up for t0rrent-freak.com right away. Bet he gets it.

Yes, I want everything to be free really soon now and every day I sit back and admire the efforts of the millions of people dedicating their lives to providing me with free stuff online. I just wish they could talk to my grocery store or mortgage company and convince them that everything should be free. We are in serious need of expanding this "free stuff online" deal.

Re:DHT?

[Anonymous Coward]

The term is hard-on. The heart is a completely different part of the body.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but heart-on and hard-on can both be used. One is a state of love with an idea, and one is a knee-jerk reaction to the idea.

[citation needed]

Re:DHT?

[guyminuslife]

He catches the rebound, he shoots....and he flubs it again!

Re:DHT?

[ScentCone]

ICE is part of DHS. The "C" in ICE stands for "Customs." The sites involved were taken down under a court order. Read the actual paperwork involved ... much of this action was about web sites dealing with counterfeit goods, faked product labels, etc. Stuff that has been the responsibility of customs agents for as long as we've enforced customs laws (i.e., back when we were just colonies, and ever since). Taking down a web site that's part of a counterfeit goods operation isn't any different than padlocking, on the same judges's orders, a warehouse that's involved in such an operation, or seizing a boat full of counterfeit goods as it enters port. It's a matter of stopping a crime in progress. First amendment portections for free speech don't provide cover for fraud and other criminal activity.

Re:DHT?

[fishexe]

I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country.

The Americas? DHT is from Belgium and seems to deal primarily with remixing '80s ballads with hoppin' trance beats.

Re:DHT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to bubble your pin, but "heart-on" is just a mis-hearing of "hard-on", used as a pun, or just a puritan-American version of same.

Re:DHT?

[Sepodati]

No, no, no... they're preventing access to time machines. I mean, if we're making shit up, aren't time machines cooler than wikileaks?

Re:DHT?

[unitron]

Is this honestly the same organization behind providing supplies to Katrina victims, as protecting private businesses against business models in crisis?

Now you see the kind of innovative thinking that allowed the George W. Bush administration to achieve its stellar level of excellence and efficiency.

Re:DHT?

[lnxnomad]

Well given that wikileaks provides torrents for the large releases, and the new release is to be a big one full of diplomatic cables and such, then this may not be too far out there. They probably know that they can't stop the leak, so they may try to slow the dissemination, one way is to try to make it hard to find the torrents. This is a full blown information war, people associated with wikileaks are being detained and their laptops are being searched, they're applying all types of pressure to wikileaks (financial, political, personal, legal). If none of that is working then they may try big broad strokes and couch them as something else. At no time will they appear to be in a panic over wikileaks, but it probably is a panic at this point -- must be a juicy leak -- and once it gets off wikileaks servers then they have no hope of containment.

Re:DHT?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country. I'm not quite seeing torrent-finder.com as that, a torrent site I haven't even visited despite being a pirate.

First, ya that's what they are supposed to do.
Second, it's because obviously it's a threat to a business, which means a threat to the economy, and well Damn It the Economy is a critical part of our National Security, so there you have it. (there is a hefty bit of sarcasm in that statement, just FYI. But this really IS how it's rationalized)

Is this honestly the same organization behind providing supplies to Katrina victims,

No, that agency is FEMA. DHS is a law enforcement agency, FEMA is a disaster-response agency which doesn't directly get into legal matters.

Re:Corprations are stealing american ideas and pro

[amiga3D]

and Selling them to china

fixed that for ya

Yikes! Terrorists everywhere!!1!

[serutan]

Copyright Infringement.
It's like Communism, only newer.

Re:Yikes! Terrorists everywhere!!1!

[dwlovell]

It is interesting that most countries that dont have copyright laws also dont have basic human rights protected by law.

I think perhaps the majority of the modern world considers artistic control of your work is worth protecting. You could always move somewhere like China to avoid the stigma of copyright laws.

Re:Yikes! Terrorists everywhere!!1!

[PPH]

Except that this enforcement emphasis is biased in favor of protecting the rights of a collective (the MPAA/RIAA) at the expense of the individual. And this is worse than (theoretical) communism, where the collective represents the people.

The government is taxing me to protect the property rights of a small group. The least they could do is to levy a tax on intellectual property* and use that to fund enforcement. Instead of picking my pocket in the name of national security and diverting that revenue to someone else's benefit.

*Which raises the issue yet again of why, if IP is property just like my house, the gov't doesn't assess a tax on it.

Re:Yikes! Terrorists everywhere!!1!

[toriver]

Well, the same could be said for the death penalty (common in countries lacking human rights).

Also, "artistic control of your work" seems something the artist these days have to wrestle from the greedy hands of the industry pretending to look after them.

You know there is a reason "classic" and "in the public domain" often go together? Why stages around the world play Romeo and Juliet rather than modern plays? Why you are more likely to hear Beethoven at a symphony concert than a modern composition?

Copyright is supposed to be a limited monopoly granted bu the State before the work enters the public domain and becomes part of the shared culture. But that is insufficient for the entertainment industries which could not care less for the artistic value, only the commercial revenue generated by sales and licensing.

If copyright disappeared tomorrow, works of art would still be made by people with the desire, as they are by the 90% of artists who are not in the stables of the entertainment industry. But we would lose the "focus group" directed, advertised-to-death purely commercial ventures.

Where is the Constitution? Where is due process?

[SonicSpike]

The 5th Amendment says that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Due process means that one must be found guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.

And since when did the mission of DHS become copyright enforcement? And where did they get the unilateral authority to act as judge, jury, and executioner?

Last time I checked, "copyprivilege" infringement required a civil suit by the person who held the privilege to begin with? Were these domain holders sued? Were they found guilty (liable) by a court of law?

Is the US government out of control and operating outside the bounds of the Constitution?

Government control

[bonch]

Now do you people understand the opposition to net neutrality? The government would "regulate" torrent traffic and other things that high-paying lobbyists didn't like.

Re:Government control

[mrnobo1024]

As opposed to a non-neutral net, where it'll just get throttled down to one packet per hour.

Re:Government control

[maccodemonkey]

The government wouldn't have anything to do with internet enforcement. It would only be tasked with preventing other companies from regulating traffic. Net neutrality, at least in the form proposed, wouldn't at all give the government the ability to do this sort of thing.

Re:Government control

[Nerdfest]

I don't even know if the pay required from lobbyists is that high anymore. Some of these agencies seem to be quite agreeable to fascism with a very small push.

Re:Government control

[SuperKendall]

Only until customers complained and started leaving. That's why your fantasy of throttled traffic has not become reality (and even what Comcast did was not throttling and would not have been blocked by network neutrality regulations as they are proposed).

Re:Government control

[thetoadwarrior]

And if the net wasn't neutral you think companies wouldn't want the government regulating torrent traffic?

Re:Government control

[Sepodati]

What part of NN gives the government the ability to regulate traffic?

Re:Government control

[Xtifr]

Now do you people understand the opposition to net neutrality?

Nope. Opposition to net neutrality remains idiotic, ill-informed and/or evil. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume #2 in this case.

The government would "regulate" torrent traffic and other things that high-paying lobbyists didn't like.

They already do. Anyway, pointing to this as an example of the "evils" of net neutrality when we don't have net neutrality yet is some pretty funky logic (using the term very loosely).

I gather that what you're worried about is that they may attach riders to any net neutrality bill. Well guess what? They can (and do) attach riders to all sorts of bills, even bills that are completely unrelated. So if what you're worried about is riders, opposing net neutrality won't help. It'll simply block the good stuff (actual net neutrality) while leaving them free to add all the bad stuff they want to other bills.

Re:Government control

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that today, but can you honestly say that in a month, or year, or when the legislation actually spearheads right before the 2012 election?

With ACTA getting limited attention as well as COICA, or whatever, we won't see the truth of Net Neutrality legislation till it's already passed.

Re:Government control

[Icculus]

Please don't feed the troll. Anyone using the phrase "you people" should be automatically put on some kind of slashdot-posting probation.


doh!

Re:Government control

[osgeek]

I don't know where I stand on net neutrality some days, but I do know that with the government, you're screwed if you don't like their policy (ie, law). At least with corporations you can go to their competitors.

Re:Government control

[the_womble]

This has nothing whatsoever to do with net neturality.

Net neutrality is about changing the regulation of consumer ISPs which are already regulated.

Re:Government control

[maztuhblastah]

The government wouldn't have anything to do with internet enforcement. It would only be tasked with preventing other companies from regulating traffic. Net neutrality, at least in the form proposed, wouldn't at all give the government the ability to do this sort of thing.

You just don't get it, do you?

Let's try an analogy. Pretend it's 2001 for a second:

"The DHS wouldn't have anything to do with copyright enforcement. It would only be tasked with ensuring the national security from terrorists/foreign threats. The DHS, at least in the form proposed, wouldn't at all have anything to do with the Web."

*Now* do you see the problem?

Re:Government control

[maccodemonkey]

So your point is... if the government didn't create a plan in line with the concepts of net neutrality, they wouldn't be following net neutrality? The logic is sound, I suppose. But it's a dumb argument. If the plan gave the government power to regulate internet content, then it wouldn't be net neutrality in the first place, as the entire point of net neutrality is that no one, not even the government, can restrict content.

I'm for net neutrality. If the government creates a plan that's not net neutrality, then I won't be for it. Simple as that.

Re:Government control

[andymadigan]

Saying that ISPs can't discriminate between traffic means just that. No exceptions.

Why is the DHS involved at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the Department of Homeland Security supposed to ... you know... worry about the security of our homeland? Why exactly do they care about torrent sites? How are torrent sites a thread to homeland security? Excuse me while I go get a nudie scan and enhanced patdown to combat piracy.

Re:Why is the DHS involved at all?

[Skidborg]

+1 there. Your government needs to get itself kicked back into line. So far Canada is looking like a better and better place to stay. I've still got the option of getting my citizenship expanded to be dual with the US, but that's never going to happen.

Re:Why is the DHS involved at all?

[SumterLiving]

You won't come to the US because of this "one final straw"? You have much higher standards than most people. Enjoy Canada and send me some of those counterfeit goods you should be able to easily buy off the internet up there. Or are you really just over-reacting?

insert subject here

[Anonymous Coward]

So, are there any alternative DNS servers that I can user that will still point to the non-seized addresses?

Re:insert subject here

[MadMaverick9]

The problem is that the whois information for these domain names has been updated with different name servers.

alternate dns servers would have to somehow get the original whois information in order to get to the original website.

do a "whois torrent-finder.com" and you see what I mean:

      Domain Name: TORRENT-FINDER.COM
      Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
      Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com/
      Name Server: NS1.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
      Name Server: NS2.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
      Status: clientDeleteProhibited
      Status: clientRenewProhibited
      Status: clientTransferProhibited
      Status: serverDeleteProhibited
      Status: serverTransferProhibited
      Status: serverUpdateProhibited
      Updated Date: 24-nov-2010

No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

The Operators of the site knew that distributing copyrighted content is illegal, and that getting targeted was only a matter of time. Granted they tried to get around it via linking to other sites, but that tactic isn't new. Heck, even seizures are common in the war on drugs, and in counterfeitting operations etc.

What is a bit odd is ICE being the ones shutting them down. That might set a bad precedent.

Re:No surprise

[Culture20]

The Operators of the site knew that distributing copyrighted content is illegal, and that getting targeted was only a matter of time. Granted they tried to get around it via linking to other sites, but that tactic isn't new. Heck, even seizures are common in the war on drugs, and in counterfeitting operations etc.

What is a bit odd is ICE being the ones shutting them down. That might set a bad precedent.

Technically, they didn't distribute copyrighted content (which is legal if the copyright owner allows, by the way). They told other people about where the content was available. In fact, you've done so yourself by merely talking about them (only two steps away instead of one). I bet you're in league with the filthy pirates! Sending ninjas now.

^^vvBA

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's nice to know who's running the show these days.

"pursued anywhere in the world"

[mrnobo1024]

Really? How about places where file sharing isn't illegal? There's still such a thing as national sovereignty, much as the US would like to think otherwise.

I wonder how the DHS would like it if, say, Iran decided to start killing people in America who violate Sharia law.

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[windcask]

I wonder how the DHS would like it if, say, Iran decided to start killing people in America who violate Sharia law.

Start? You do realize the Iranian government funds Islamic fundamentalist groups (who will kill Americans at any opportunity) like Hamas, Hezbollah, and a little-known organization called al-Qaeda, right?

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[Sepodati]

First, the sites, servers, files and goods are still there. If countries or sites don't want to be subject to US law, they should not use US-controlled TLD or DNS services. How possible is that?

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[dropadrop]

The US funded Saddam Hussein, and I don't think that was an isolated case. Not that I'd really like to defend Iranians very much, I'd rather live under a totalitarian American then Iranian world government. :D

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[X.25]

Start? You do realize the Iranian government funds Islamic fundamentalist groups (who will kill Americans at any opportunity) like Hamas, Hezbollah, and a little-known organization called al-Qaeda, right?

And you have evidence to back that, I guess?

I mean, Iraq had WMDs too. Right?

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[toriver]

Where is there any connection between the Shia Iranian government, and the sternly (as in "we hate the Shia") sunni terrorists of Al-Qaeda? "Is this another of those "WMDs in Iraq" things you people pull to justify the failed attempts at neo-colonialism?

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[windcask]

Where is there any connection between the Shia Iranian government, and the sternly (as in "we hate the Shia") sunni terrorists of Al-Qaeda?

I read about it in a book last year the name of which name escapes me, but a simple Google search yields the following results:

http://www.meforum.org/670/irans-link-to-al-qaeda-the-9-11-commissions
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,664967,00.html

It's an the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend type situation. They may be on opposite sides of the Islamic conflict but that doesn't mean they don't have similar end goals in mind.

Is this another of those "WMDs in Iraq" things you people pull to justify the failed attempts at neo-colonialism?

Ahem. Fuck you. Call it what you will, America will put the interests of its people first and foremost in deciding on courses of action when it comes to judgment of foreign nations based on credible intelligence. I stand by former President Bush's actions 100%, and think that the invasion was justified even without the consideration of WMDs. America is the leader of the free world and has a moral responsibility to take care of unstable, evil dictators like Saddam Hussein. Deal with it.

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[windcask]

Yes, they gave them support during the Iran/Iraq conflict in the early 1980s, as we are constantly reminded by liberal anti-American critics the world over from now until kingdom come. All we knew is that a failed Iraqi state occupied by Iran would be a very, very bad thing.

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[windcask]

See below.

Re:"pursued anywhere in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise you dont have a clue what your are talking about?

Idiot.

Sampling the mood

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like they're sampling the mood. Trying to ice to see how much they get away with.

The next step

[Culture20]

The DHS is doing this because they can't send FBI to other countries. The next step is predator drones launching hellfire missiles into apartments of suspected downloaders. Everyone in the US cheered when those navy snipers picked off those Somali pirates that held that captain captive...

Re:The next step

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course everyone cheered. They were BLACK pirates living outside the boundaries of government and the rule of law. That simply can't be allowed. Plus they were on the open ocean, so the collateral damage was minimal.

The white libertarian downloaders, however, are all firmly entrenched in suburban basements and university dormitories surrounded by millions of innocents. I suspect carpet bombing would be extremely bad PR, especially in an election year. I predict a rise in the use of snipers to deal with this horrible threat to national security.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[nycguy]

Is the US government out of control and operating outside the bounds of the Constitution?

Thankfully, our President was formerly a professor who lectured on Constitutional law. I'm sure he's going to sort this one out for us ASAP.

So much for the hoax theories

[Cederic]

At least we can put to bed the suggestion that yeseterday's story was a hoax.

Next can we please retrieve ICANN from US control and cut off the US DNS masters? I think it's pretty clear they can't be trusted to run the internet :(

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[Anonymous Coward]

All seized domains are .com or .net domains. The registry for those top level domains is Verisign, a US company. Most other top level domains are operated by registries in other countries. What's going to be interesting is if the United States are going to use ICANN and the root DNS control to force other registries to seize domains as well.

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Luckily the world is just overflowing with even better options...

What we need is an expert system that parses the legal codes(and news reports/statistics concerning de facto behavior, since de jure codes are often a poor predictor of that) and then tells you where you should, and really shouldn't, obtain things like domain names and hosting, depending on the nature of your content.

Gung-ho for for Falun Gong? Strong opinions about the mud races? Fancy a spot of borderline libel? Consider hosting in America, Land of the Free(tm)!

About to hoist the Jolly Roger? Avast matey, ye'd best seek a fairer port...

Depending on the details, this sort of jurisdiction shopping can get you toleration of virtually anything you might fancy(consider it the poor man's equivalent of the much more lucrative jurisdiction shopping in tax schemes, labor markets, and environmental regulations...); but I don't think that there is a single jurisdiction on Earth(and Mars has ghastly ping) where you could safely host everything you might want. America is a lousy place to violate the draconian local IP laws; but not a bad spot for unpopular opinions(being Fred Phelps is legal here, what more do you need to know?). The UK is probably the worst place you could choose for saying mean things about people and so forth.

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[Cederic]

The UK is probably the worst place you could choose for saying mean things about people and so forth.

I know, which is why I pay a regular monthly fee to a non-profit that lobbies to protect online rights and freedoms, and regularly write to my MP in an attempt to educate him and the Government on the damage they're doing.

Orbital hosting will be along in the next decade, that'll be an interesting one..

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While I'm sure there are plenty of people and entities who would like them to try, I suspect that that wouldn't get very far, unless the jurisdiction in which the other registry is operating already agrees with the US on whatever the policy being enforced is.

"Control" over DNS isn't magic, nor is there automatically just a single, consistent, DNS structure. Back in the .com boom days, there were a number of outfits peddling various crapware that would tinker with a PC's DNS setup to point them to various cowboy DNS servers affiliated with entities selling trendy TLDs that didn't officially exist. All foundered; because weird TLDs are kind of a ghetto, and weird TLDs that most people can't even see are essentially worthless; but architecturally it was unproblematic enough.

The only DNS entries that really matter are the ones that ISPs use, since those are the entries that the overwhelming majority of people are going to be using when they type in a domain name. Unless ISPs in assorted foreign lands voluntarily, or under pressure from their own governments, start going to the US for lookups of their own local TLDs, instead of just going to the local registrar, it won't much matter(outside of the US) what the US root servers have to say about those TLDs.

The US would, in all probability, have much better luck using assorted "trade agreements" and ostensibly multilateral treaty instruments(ACTA, WIPO, etc.) to just have what they want enforced locally, not that they don't already. Virtually nobody, outside of the US, would notice if the US root DNS servers started returning odd results for specific domains in assorted foreign TLDs, since most users of those TLDs would never have their DNS lookups go any higher than an ISP's cache(the only exception would be those little pacific island TLDs, which essentially have zero domestic market, and are used largely as novelty TLDs in the US and elsewhere. .TV and the like).

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[Sepodati]

What's to stop a country from doing this now with their own country domain and DNS servers?

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[Mysteray]

Any of hundreds of countries could start selling domains (wait a minute - they already did) under which the US probably couldn't jack with with under widely-accepted international treaty.

Of course, the sword cuts both ways. Consider all the hyperlinks that Libya controls (bit.ly). What if they decided they wanted the largest distributed supercomputer on the planet, for free? They simply do what DHS did here - redirect the domains to pages serving malware.

It's just as easy, if not easier, for an end-user to change his DNS resolver as it is to download and install file sharing software. If it gets bad enough, basic software will eventually just come with a built-in web proxy that does nothing except use non-US DNS resolvers.

Reasons why, in pragmatic terms, history will likely regard this as an incredibly short-sighted move by the US government.

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[Buelldozer]

Mmmm hmmmm, as soon as you make a sensible suggestion on where to put them after they leave the U.S. I'll be willing to entertain the notion.

EVERY first world nation is playing hokey-pokey with control of the Internet right now. There is almost nowhere that's safe.

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, the only reasaon the ICANN is in charge i sthat countries agree for ICANN to be in charge. change your routing and you control the root dns servers. forward or replace any addresses you want.

in other words: quitcherbitchin - it could be done yesterday if anyone really wanted.

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[NorthWarden]

These seizures had nothing to do with ICANN - they were performed at the registry level, which is Verisign for .com (IIRC). It is for this reason that torrent-finder.info didn't go down - .info is run by Afilias which is HQ'd in Ireland, outside of US jurisdictional authority. Don't get me wrong - I'm not happy about this either, but at least we can get the facts straight.

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[blair1q]

Let's stop stealing copryghted material and gain the moral high ground, first.

Re:So much for the hoax theories

[Cederic]

Ignoring the current copyright terms is the moral high ground. Make copyright laws reasonable and people might consider obeying them.

we need to set some boundaries

[craftycoder]

The government just keeps overstepping it's boundaries. It seems to have moved into it's awkward teenage years where it thinks it can do whatever it wants. It's about time we take away it's checkbook. That's what most parents do when their teenager is acting like a punk.

Re:we need to set some boundaries

[fishbowl]

>The government just keeps overstepping it's boundaries.

It doesn't *have* any boundaries, because nobody is asserting any. It can step on anything it wants. So far it hasn't provoked the first shot of the revolution.

Re:we need to set some boundaries

[craftycoder]

Your signature is funny. And I thought that the UCI rules were tough: "That which is not mandatory is expressly forbidden."

Re:Corprations are stealing american ideas and pro

[WrongSizeGlass]

and Selling them to china

fixed that for ya

And China is selling the fake goods back to us. The circle of life?

nfljerseysupply what about that American Needle la

[Joe The Dragon]

nfljerseysupply? what about that American Needle law suit that said the NFL can not make Reebok the sole distributor of hats for all 32 NFL teams

Next target: the wikileaks domains

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and by the way, torrent-finder.info is actually a great site to find torrents.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Anonymous Coward]

If you made it to the 2nd paragraph of the NYT article, you would know the sites were taken down with a warrant issued by a United States District Court. I would assume these sites were investigated and found to be distributing faked goods and infringing copyrights. Hardly No due process.

Although I admit, it is disconcerting the DHS is behind this.

They did have a court order

[SuperKendall]

Not to defend what they are doing as I don't like it either... but from TFA it seems they did have a court order to seize these domains. The question is, how those court orders were arrived at.

The torrent site seemed the most troubling as you can't really see how an order can be issued against what they were doing. The majority of the sites seemed to be selling counterfeit material like clothes and handbags; still iffy but you could see where possibly customs could have a hand in shutting down transfer of illegal goods.

Re:Corprations are stealing american ideas and pro

[jhoegl]

Trickle down economics... the rich just move to another country.

DHS? ICE?

[headhot]

This is clearly not their job. These sites have nothing to do with national security, immigration or customs.

Re:DHS? ICE?

[SumterLiving]

Research your facts and you'll find out you are misinformed. But don't let ignorance stand in your way from posting. After all we have the slowly eroding feature in this country called freedom of speech.

Re:DHS? ICE?

[Joce640k]

BitTorrent=terrorism, didn't you know?

Re:DHS? ICE?

[bmk67]

Import/export of counterfeit physical goods and IP falls under ICE jurisdiction.

ICE is a department of DHS.

Copyright Infringement Funds Terrorism!

[SonicSpike]

Didn't you hear?

Every time someone downloads an illegal song, Osama Bin Laden is sent a nickel.

Re:Copyright Infringement Funds Terrorism!

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why i download gigs of mp3's daily so he's buried in nickles and dies, because he's BAD BAD terrorist :)

Re:Copyright Infringement Funds Terrorism!

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you hear?

Every time someone downloads an illegal song, Osama Bin Laden is sent a nickel.

You hear that? Everybody pirate so we can crush Osama underneath all our nickels! If you don't, the terrorists win! Pirating is patriotic!

Dream On

[SuperKendall]

The government wouldn't have anything to do with internet enforcement. It would only be tasked with preventing other companies from regulating traffic.

And part of that regulation would be not providing access to a designated list of websites. Because they could.

Re:Dream On

[maccodemonkey]

"And part of that regulation would be not providing access to a designated list of websites. Because they could."

It could also state that everybody gets a free taco on Mondays. Doesn't change that neither concept is part of net neutrality, and any legislation that includes such things would not be net neutrality (even if the government claimed it was.)

Re:Dream On

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And part of that regulation would be not providing access to a designated list of websites. Because they could.

Of course that's the wet dream of the MAFIAA and a bunch of other organizations and they are going to try their damndest to get that put into law regardless of net neutrality legislation. Just ask all the congressdroids making a stink about net neutrality, I guarantee they are amendable to that idea if you give it enough flowery words about "protecting" business and security and whatnot.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[SonicSpike]

So there was a jury trial?

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[SonicSpike]

Yeah, that's a relief.

And if you believe that, Hillary Clinton has some land in Arkansas to sell you.

Let's test it

[hugg]

I'd like to know what would happen to a site that is 50% torrent search and 50% political speech.

Re:Let's test it

[Xtifr]

You're obviously a programmer or techie without any experience of the law. Reading Groklaw might help a little. It's not about percentages, it's about intent. The Betamax case made it clear that being useful for illegal activities is not illegal, even if the majority of current uses are illegal, but the Grokster (unrelated to Groklaw) case established that promoting the illegal uses (no matter what percentage they may be) is crossing the line.

Thus, your question is unanswerable as it stands. Percentages are irrelevant. To make this clearer, let us consider a more extreme example: a site that is 50% murder-for-hire and 50% political speech. Do you think the political speech would shield the site from legal attention? On the other hand, even if the site was 90% murder-for-hire, the owners might be able to get off if they could prove that they never once promoted the site for anything like that.

Now, I'll admit that torrent search is a much more borderline case. There are plenty of uses for torrent that are perfectly legal, whether the powers-that-be are willing to acknowledge that or not, so the whole thing may prove to be a misstep by DHS, and may result in countersuits, but currently I don't have enough information on the sites in question to judge whether that's true or not. But it's going to come down to questions of intent. Were the sites actually promoting illegal activity, or was it simply incidental? I'd suspect that many of them have a strong case for simply incidental, but we'll have to wait and see.

Re:Let's test it

[hugg]

Xtifr, my somewhat-cheeky comment was just pointing out that speech can be censored as a side-effect of these takedowns. And we have seen that whenever government gets a new capability that makes certain things more convenient, they tend to push it as far as they can (e.g. pen register requests). I think the torrent tracker was included here as a trial balloon to see just how bright that line is.

Next thing you know

[wiredog]

We'll have the President ordering the military out to seize distilleries that aren't paying their taxes!

We Finally got CHANGE!

[Veovis]

however, only thing that changed was the DNS to a few little known domain names....

Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assistance

[KingAlanI]

Whatever you think of copyright, and of torrent-assistance sites, it seems that much of what was caught in this sting are sites that sell knockoffs - dealing with that and other clear trademark issues I don't have quite as much of a problem with.

Were the seizure warrants mentioned in TFA's image actually issued and reasonably sensical? Could have a "bureaucrats who don't understand technology" issue w/r/t the technicalities.
And let's face it, such sites seem to be aiding and abetting distribution even if they're not doing the actual distribution.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[salesgeek]

I believe it's in section 506 that criminal infringement is outlined. There is no civil suit requirement, and as in any criminal investigation, the government can seize evidence and the means used to commit the crime. In this case, it looks like the only one of the sites seized that may be problematic is torrent-finder.com.

Aw man

[Anonymous Coward]

Now where am I going to get a .torrent for 'Tangled', what with usaburberryscarf.com offline?

What the...

[Skidborg]

This is not the DHS's job. Get off the Internet you gun wielding freaks.

Billions

[Nihn]

Wow......and to think, these jackasses run this country. How pathetic. I'm starting to see why the rest of the civilized world thinks little of this place. People who produce shit are wanting laws to protect said shit which ensures they get paid for said shit. What happened to the costumer is always right? If what you serve me is below my standards what makes you think Im gonna pay you for it. These places that are "bootlegging" are 3rd world countries. They have shit for capitol and can't afford "american" prices. Supply and demand becomes the absolute law when concerning capitalism. If I want something I now have many places to look. I don't have to go to a store anymore, I can order from Amazon, eBay, or any other online retailer. But that is not enough for more discerning people who want to test drive before they spend their hard earned cash. Industry people are no longer needed, the days of the street markets are slowly coming back, and individuals...not companies..are making a few dollars to off set the ever increasing prices of standard living. Maybe if the pay wages were increased to compensate people would be more than happy to throw their money away on useless rehashed shit. But thanks to the laws of the stock market the companies will continue to suck the life's blood out of everything that can be sold with no concern to the damage they are doing to the little guy.

Re:Billions

[Sepodati]

You are (part of) what's wrong with this country. You think because something is "shit" or costs to much, it's okay to steal it (liberal definition of steal here). You have every right to not pay for something or just not watch it/use it, but there's no way you can swing this into some right or excuse to break the law.

Re:Billions

[Nihn]

the definition of theft is to deprive one of property, making a copy is not theft is making a copy. People have done this for many years. Using analog tapes to digital disc its still the same thing. You are whats wrong in this country, you assume people have the absolute right to rip someone off and are free from consequence. How about paying a little more attention to the way things happen as apposed to the way you want the world to work. The law is merely as suggestion, that is why so many people ignore it, and that is the absolute truth of the matter.

I don't mind if you do that in your town.

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I just don't want you to do it in my town. You see?

DHS Seizes 75+ Domain Names

[schodackwm]

The quote (blockquoted) in the OP dates from last June... when DHS kicked this effort into gear.

Usenet providers host the same materials & wor

[wagadog]

so when is dhs going after the big usenet providers?

That list...

[Xelios]

So looking through that list all I could think of was "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong!"

Dozens of sites that (judging by the domain names) sold counterfeit clothing or accessories for profit, and then a torrent indexer. Not a tracker mind you, not even a site that hosts torrent files, just a search engine.

Time to cut DHS funding

[PPH]

They appear to have run out of terrorists to round up. And their 'Gate Rape' program is running smoothly. All this piracy stuff is well outside their original charter. They are in danger of losing focus and eventually the bad guys will take advantage of this and sneak a bomb through somewhere.

captcha: hobble

I feel more secure. Thanks, Homeland Security!

[mykos]

I was concerned for my personal safety (and the safety of the public at large) when I found out that people were hearing songs and seeing movies without a proper license to do so.

Who knows what could have happened had these sites not been taken down. A dirty nuclear bomb? Another 9/11? There's no telling what these "music and film watchers" might have unleashed. Thank you, The Government!

This is DHS's job?

[GravityStar]

I thought Homeland Security meant: "stopping people from blowing themselves up, while taking a few hundred people with them and shocking the nation to a standstill". Not "going after the pirates".

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Sepodati]

Changing a DNS entry does not deprive anyone of "life, liberty or property". The servers, files, goods, etc. are still in the hands of the owner.

DHS has many, many missions, and one likely small section within a section of a section of DHS has responsibility to deal with counterfeit goods and copyright infringement online. Since this required a court order, this section of DHS has already provided enough proof to the courts that the sites involved are breaking or helping to break the law.

Show me a site on the list that doesn't have a primary purpose of dealing in counterfeit goods or helping people infringe on copyrights. Show me a site shut down because of a dissenting opinion. Then I'll back you up, but just saying "they'll get there eventually" doesn't cut it.

Seize more sites.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should seize the Federal Reserve domain. They steal more from Americans, by devaluing the dollar, than any pirate.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a few levels of awareness short of a 10 year old.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[clarkkent09]

Is the US government out of control and operating outside the bounds of the Constitution?
 
No. This is done under Customs and Immigration, which is one of the legitimate jobs of the government, except in this case the products being illegally exported are digital.
 
  Due process means that one must be found guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.
 
Cops do not need a jury trial before they can seize stolen goods. They seized the illegal goods just like they might seize illegal physical goods and shut down the shop selling them with only a warrant while a trial is pending. If you bothered to read any of the linked articles you would find that they had a warrant from a District Court judge.

You are a terrorist.

[repetty]

I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country.

There you go... your publicly questioning the DHT has now gotten your name onto terrorist lists.

(Everyone take a knee and for a moment of silence for the late, great Joseph McCarthy.)

Re:You are a terrorist.

[fishexe]

I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country.

There you go... your publicly questioning the DHT has now gotten your name onto terrorist lists.

I publicly question the wisdom of remixing Roxette.

Dry Run for big thing: We have met the enemy

[turtleshadow]

Not to wear tinfoil but it sounds like a Law Enforcement dry run for bigger operations. .gov is "testing" to see how their methods are going to work in real life, if things will stick, how the public reaction to be.
When the horse bolts out of the barn, you better have to grab a pre-tested lasso before data gets to far out.

No one will admit how much data leakage happened since the late 90s with p2p flooding data out of .gov, R&D, and medical offices in the West.

You don't think the intel community never caught on? Lives and reputations are continuing to be be jeopardized with wikileaks... you think people are lying around for it to just happen to them?

Likely a lull as they regroup see how to improve things, then another round.

Politicians & Bureaucrats are not techies, but they tend to hire really smart companies and individuals for consulting and executing their work.

Similar methods which today were used to down some .mp3 or girlie picture site will be in the future be used to down leaked data out of Gov, IBM, Apple, Boeing, Dow Chemical, ....

As for US constitution, we have met the enemy and they is us. Peer Jury? I don't trust to be driving on the road with most of the people around me let alone have 12 decide my fate.

When certain crap is impelled through the fan certain plans are going to be set into motion. They were approved already by people voted upon and installed into power by peaceful means, and will "reflexively" activate.
If the US .gov goes out of control it is because of the citizens of the US, past and present actions, not because of anyone's future action.

Why was I groped at the airport? Someone who was elected or appointed by someone elected perceived a credible threat of real person(s) who can't be identified and "found." instituted a response to that. Whoever that person who wants other people to be hurt or die for whatever reason; will use whatever means and opportunity they have to do it. That is a situation of intractable security.

From a classical point of view; its means, motive and opportunity. US citizens can only react to means , increase/reduce opportunity and fuel or dowse the motivation for any kind of activity criminal or otherwise.

When was the last time anyone asked "why somebody needs a new 32-64GB for their videos, pics & songs?".. that's a whole lot of cash on top of the equipment -- I'm sure they could produce each cassette, cd, dvd or print magazine and the receipts proving they bought license it and they didn't DL it off somewhere for free.

We have met the enemy and they is us - greed, apathy, indifference, do it as long as nobody's hurt or if the "Big X" gets hurt even better. Enough of this kills a Constitutional democracy (big C little d)

Privacy and Usage Policy on ICE site

[Statecraftsman]

Was just looking for information about this operation from ICE and decided to take a look at the ICE Privacy and Usage policy. http://www.ice.gov/about/legal.htm ... My favorite part, and yes it's understandable if someone actually attacks their site but it's always a question what constitutes an attack these days:

In certain circumstances, however, ICE may take additional steps to identify you based on this information and ICE may share this information, including your identity, with other agencies.

Re:Corprations are stealing american ideas and pro

[Nemyst]

It's worse. Corporations are giving money to China for them to steal their inventions and innovation, in exchange for poorly manufactured, poorly supervised products.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[mswhippingboy]

Right. And old GWB was a true defender of the "little people" as well.

This is not a left-right issue. This is a issue of freedom and democracy - something that slipped away from the US quite a few years ago when the "little people" weren't looking - probably because they were too busy trying to feed their families with the crumbs of the corporate criminals that run everything. I get pissed just thinking about this - better go...

Suggestions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's pretty clear [the U.S.] can't be trusted to run the internet

And whom do you trust?
Just about every place one could think of has had a pretty abysmal record of information freedom lately.

By most accounts the US has done a pretty decent job with the 'net so far, and they only seem to be going crazy at the same rate as everyone else.

I know...

[TDyl]

this will probably be modded down, but I do find it unbelievable that in the U.S. there are org's (Sea Org's ?) that are so powerful that both domestic and foreign policy (ACTA, ITO etc) are held-up as examples of "good practise" to the extent that what they want becomes law.

Where's Alan Shore when you need him?

Full Of Shit?

[Frosty Piss]

"American citizen of the brown persuasion accidentally repatriated to some random country that he looked like he might be from, ICE tells his lawyer that they don't know where he is"

Really? American citizens deported? Reference? Names? Or are you just full of shit on this point? American CITIZENS?

Re:Full Of Shit?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This one was pretty classy. Nothing says "due process" like denying a mental patient access to care, and then deporting him to a country whose language he doesn't even speak, and from which he isn't even descended, despite having evidence that he is a US citizen(and thus not even under ICE jurisdiction)...

This article is rather more general. Cool thing is, immigration violations/deportations are considered to be civil, rather than criminal matters, despite the fact that people involved in them are generally detained in jail-esque conditions. No public defender for you, sucker. And proving your citizenship is a total cakewalk under those conditions...

Googling turns up a variety of similar stories. Perhaps the snappiest is the one that begins with the money quote from one 'James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of State and Local Coordination': "If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear.".

Obviously, if only by sheer statistical probability, ICE does manage to deport a fair number of authentic illegal immigrants every year; but they are about as callous and sloppy about it as you'd expect a bunch of jackboots with broad power and limited oversight to be.

Re:Full Of Shit?

[jedidiah]

Once you deny people and sorts of rights, including due process or legal counsel then abuses and screw-ups should be expected. That was rather the point of the OP. Once you are in an ICE black hole, the usual legal protections you take for granted no longer apply. And we all know that "cops never make mistakes" now don't we.

Re:Full Of Shit?

[Frosty Piss]

ALL of the cases that you give (questionable) links to are disturbing. But... NONE of those cases involve *bonafide official US citizens*. I'm not disputing that ICE has stepped over the bounds and that we now live in a Police State. But saying that ICE has deported *US Citizens* for anything other than legitimate extraditable crimes is, as you well know, BULL SHIT.

Re:Full Of Shit?

[Frosty Piss]

Once you deny people and sorts of rights, including due process or legal counsel then abuses and screw-ups should be expected. That was rather the point of the OP.

I agree 100% that ICE has stepped over the line, and we now live in a Police State. But claiming that ICE is rounding up US Citizens here in the USA and keeping them in Black Prisons shipping them out of the country is... Tin Foil Hat.

While we are not there yet, I agree that it may not be too far in the future when this is a reality.

Re:Full Of Shit?

[morgan_greywolf]

How are these people not bonafide official U.S. citizens? Because they happen to be Hispanic?

The guy in the first article is from Puerto Rico. Citizens of Puerto Rico are, in fact, U.S. citizens and they are free to migrate anywhere to any of the 50 states, as any other American citizen would. The second guy was born in the U.S., the son of a decorated Vietnam War veteran (that's why he and his aunt had to locate his own and his father's birth certificates.)

Re:Full Of Shit?

[rainierburger]

The first link actually concerns the deportation of a US citizen, unless you don't consider the mentally ill ``bonafide official''

Re:Full Of Shit?

[nedlohs]

How exactly is someone who was born in the United States and never renounced their citizenship not a *bonafide official US citizen*?

They deported a US citizen to a country he had no connection to at all, it's a simple fact.

And yes he was mentally disturbed and hence easily manipulated and his protests were easily ignored. That doesn't change that a US citizen was deported by ICE.

Re:Full Of Shit?

[Coren22]

The very first link indicated that ICE knew they guy was an American, in their own documents they had his SSN.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[cdrguru]

The problem is that the people operating these sites are utterly beyond any civil suit. They have the freedom to operate outside of any laws because of a US government investment - the Internet. So who has the most liability here? The web site owner, the US government or China? Sounds like someone is thinking that the US government has the most liability and I would agree. By building the Internet so it can operate as a lawless zone without any meaningful regulation the US government pretty much brought us spamming, phishing and scamming and allowed it to come right into the living room.

I'd say you can have due process when there is a "process" that affects these people. There isn't any today. And this action isn't anything useful - it takes 10 minutes plus TTL to be up and running with a new domain name and that is exactly how long these sites will be down. Google probably will have a high priority re-scan for them today or tomorrow. So this action was meaningless and futile.

Unfortunately, the other side of this is that the only way today there can be something effective like "due process" on the Internet is if everyone agrees to follow the same laws. That is unlikely to happen in anyone's lifetime. When exactly do you think Sudan will agree to follow US laws on murder? Or anyone else's laws for that matter.

So where's the list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody has the balls to actually list those 75+ domain names, for those of us who lack the balls to click on that torrentfreak.com link? Just because, you know, maybe the DHS also got to them and are adding the IP of every visitor to their terrorist lists?

Re:So where's the list?

[Dthief]

here is the full list that I saw:

2009jerseys.com 51607.com amoyhy.com b2corder.com bishoe.com borntrade.com borntrade.net boxedtvseries.com boxset4less.com boxsetseries.com burberryoutletshop.com cartoon77.com cheapscarfshop.com coachoutletfactory.com dajaz1.com discountscarvesonsale.com dvdcollectionsale.com dvdcollects.com dvdorderonline.com dvdprostore.com dvdscollection.com dvdsetcollection.com dvdsetsonline.com dvdsuperdeal.com eluxury-outlet.com getdvdset.com gofactoryoutlet.com golfstaring.com golfwholesale18.com handbag9.com handbagcom.com handbagspop.com icqshoes.com ipodnanouk.com jersey-china.com jerseyclubhouse.com jordansbox.com lifetimereplicas.com louis-vuitton-outlet-store.com lv-outlets.com lv-outlets.net lv-outletstore.com massnike.com merrytimberland.com mycollects.com mydreamwatches.com mygolfwholesale.com newstylerolex.com nfljerseysupply.com nibdvd.com odvdo.com oebags.com onsmash.com overbestmall.com rapgodfathers.com realtimberland.com rmx4u.com scarfonlineshop.com scarfviponsale.com shawls-store.com silkscarf-shop.com silkscarfonsale.com skyergolf.com sohob2b.com sohob2c.com storeofeast.com stuff-trade.com sunglasses-mall.com sunogolf.com tbl-sports.com throwbackguy.com tiesonsale.com timberlandlike.com topabuy.com torrent-finder.com usaburberryscarf.com usaoutlets.net

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[saleenS281]

You should have a problem with it. It's not WHAT they're seizing, it's HOW they're seizing. DHS has absolutely no place seizing any web property. If companies want to sue these sites, sue them in a court of law, and have them shut-down through the proper legal channels. The way they went about this is just laying the groundwork for them to abuse the power in the future. Don't be so short-sighted about the whole situation. I doubt *ANYONE* around here cares if some scammer has his site shutdown. But when it becomes guilty until proven innocent, we're headed down a VERY slippery slope.

Related To Wikileaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it interesting that this is happening on the eve of a major dump of embarrassing documents by Wikileaks? If I had a large cache of documents I wanted widely distributed, wouldn't bit-torrent be the best way to distribute them?

Re:Related To Wikileaks?

[Dthief]

I would just put them on wikileaks

The Net interprets censorship...

[Pliny]

John Gilmore's quote was always an oversimplification. The net itself doesn't do anything but move packets. The people that use the net are the ones that find ways over, under, and around censorship. And this is censorship. We can argue about whether or not it's justified (and in the case of websites selling Chanel knockoffs as the real thing, it might be) but the fact the ICE and DHS have exerted control over ICANN is not good.

I'm a US citizen, born and raised here. The prospect of my government having the power to control the web scares me shitless. It's time to start working on a decentralized, cryptographically sound successor to DNS. It's also time to get serious about IPv6 and IPSec (encryption at the network layer) as a way to foil deep packet inspection.

The government is f*cked

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof that our government's priorities are screwed. They'll do this but ignore H1-B visa corruption and the fact that US businesses will fire US workers because they can hire Chinese workers at a 3-1 rate and not have to deal with taxes and benefits.

Seriously, I give up.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Degro]

Exactly. We in the other half spent 8 years saying the same about Bush. It's like the whole thing is rigged to flip-flop every 8-12 years, just enough to keep each side in fighting spirits and everyone distracted away from that top 1-2%.

Google next?

[Dthief]

Torrent-finder is no more at fault than Bing, Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine. What a load of illegal, unconstitutional crap

Re:Google next?

[Xtifr]

It's a matter of intent, something the law can and does take into consideration. Google et al. are shielded by the Betamax decision, because they're not promoting illegal uses. Incidental illegal uses (even if they constitute the majority of actual use) are not a problem, legally, but, as the Grokster case established, once you begin promoting the illegal uses, you've crossed the line.

I have no idea whether Torrent-finder did promote illegal uses, but that's the question this is likely to hinge on.

Security Services

[MarkvW]

Homeland Security isn't just about protecting us, that's for sure.

Ideas raised to Gods!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ideas and products here are not just given rights, but promoted to the status of GODS! Every idea is truly original. They were *NOT* inspired or derived from other ideas. Each is a virgin birth! And not just that, but given copyrights extending toward infinity, they are given an immortal life. Virgin birth and immortal life. Sounds like a god to me.

Probable cause for arrest

[westlake]

Welcome to "guilty before proven innocent"

Guilt or innocence is utimately for a jury to decide.

The job of law enforcement is to bring a suspect to judgement. To find him. To arrest him. Wherever he may be found.

This how the system works. This is how it has always worked.

Re:Probable cause for arrest

[Dunbal]

Guilt or innocence is utimately for a jury to decide.

      Yes but a jury of your peers. People have forgotten that part. Why should a doctor be tried in front of a jury made of plumbers and truck drivers? Conversely, why should a farmer be tried in front of 12 rich people and business owners? Surely only other doctors understand all the nuances and problems involved with their profession. Surely only rich people understand the problems involved with managing wealth. And surely only poor people understand the plight of the poor.

      Ahh but no, "peers" apparently means a group of people dumb enough not to get out of jury duty but smart enough to keep their mouth shut when asked about any possible bias. Oh and the token black/white people.

Re:Probable cause for arrest

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, guilt or innocence is for a _court_ to decide.

Police, the agents of law enforcement non the streets, have dozens of missions. Emergency medical aid, crime prevention, and revenue gathering through fines nad regulation enforcement. And an officer who pursues a suspect, at the cost of all those other goals, may lose their job. The idea that "law enforcement" is like the idea that "the military is about defending the nation". It's an ideal that cannot be reached.

Cut DHS Budget

[syleishere]

Wasting tax payers money protecting music and movie industry instead of all the middle class workers who want file sharing who make up majority of voters! People will fight back on this one, can't arrest every person in north america, and in the process they'll further worsen the american dollar, especially when they are forcing file sharers to secure domains and servers out of country. In grand scheme of things, movie and music industry will have to learn how to make money off banners and online marketing like rest of us, best thing we can do is run them out of money, and cut their abuse of government funding, with no money for lawyers , and hitting them where it counts, we can aspire to true freedom.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't matter, but it might in the future. The Tea Party is the last hope for a government that actually stays in its Constitutional box. I don't care what you think about particular people involved with it, just get out there and support less government.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Anonymous Coward]

You would have a great point if that's what 'due process' really meant.

Americans sites only?

[munky99999]

What I want to know is if the applicable websites are of AMERICAN registrars and/or AMERICAN servers. As if they hijacked non-american DNS. Then the USA must be removed from all authority in DNS. We have allowed them this position because they were of the position they wouldnt enforce their morality on the world.

Re:Americans sites only?

[MasJ]

Looks like the registrar is Godaddy. Here's a WHOIS on the domain name:

    Domain Name: TORRENT-FINDER.COM
      Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
      Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com/
      Name Server: NS1.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
      Name Server: NS2.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
      Status: clientDeleteProhibited
      Status: clientRenewProhibited
      Status: clientTransferProhibited
      Status: serverDeleteProhibited
      Status: serverTransferProhibited
      Status: serverUpdateProhibited
      Updated Date: 24-nov-2010
      Creation Date: 30-dec-2005
      Expiration Date: 30-dec-2011

Makes sense. Kinda explains why the ever-so-popular thepiratebay.org wasn't blocked:

Domain ID:D104576138-LROR
Domain Name:THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
Created On:28-Jun-2004 16:08:27 UTC
Last Updated On:07-May-2010 07:22:02 UTC
Expiration Date:28-Jun-2015 16:08:27 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Key-Systems GmbH (R51-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Name Server:NS0.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
Name Server:NS1.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
Name Server:NS2.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
Name Server:NS3.THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
DNSSEC:Unsigned

Looks like Godaddy was coerced by someone powerful to do this. I doubt that such influence could be had over a foreign registrar. Otherwise I'm sure TPB would be the first to go since it's a proven MPAA favorite. Okay wait.. nevermind that. Just checked another domain and the registrar is chinese.

    Domain Name: MASSNIKE.COM
      Registrar: BEIJING INNOVATIVE LINKAGE TECHNOLOGY LTD. DBA DNS.COM.CN
      Whois Server: whois.dns.com.cn
      Referral URL: http://www.dns.com.cn/
      Name Server: NS1.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
      Name Server: NS2.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
      Status: clientDeleteProhibited
      Status: clientTransferProhibited
      Status: serverDeleteProhibited
      Status: serverTransferProhibited
      Status: serverUpdateProhibited
      Updated Date: 24-nov-2010
      Creation Date: 23-sep-2006
      Expiration Date: 23-sep-2014

Well then I guess they can change stuff for everyone. But even then, it's just .coms. Maybe that's of significance.

Internet can Fix This Damage

[Anonymous Coward]

So how hard would it be to set up an alternate root DNS that normally mirrors ICANN but then ignores suspected changes and redirects to malicious websites like the DHS?

wikileaks.org

[Arancaytar]

They have time to do that to torrent search engines, but fortunately seem not to have thought of seizing Wikileaks' online presence in the name of national security. Yet?

Re:wikileaks.org

[Mysteray]

A. IIRC, Wikileaks has survived domain attacks before.

B. Wikileaks is just publishing military secrets, it's not like they're selling fake handbags or sneaking into theaters or anything.

C. Wikileaks probably has a whole new branch of the US govt being formed (if not a whole new United Nations) to go after them by now. It's likely they're still more useful alive at this point.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Anonymous Coward]

And since when did the mission of DHS become copyright enforcement?
 
When it was clear that they weren't good at anything else they were supposed to be doing.

Re:Corprations are stealing american ideas and pro

[Culture20]

Never really understood why actual pirates selling bootleg DVDs and CDs at a profit are not the main focus.

Oh deary me

[The Mgt]

'American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a week,'

Somebody call the waaaaaaaambulance!

Re:Oh deary me

[Anonymous Coward]

'American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a week,'

Somebody call the waaaaaaaambulance!

Anonymous Coward likes this.

Re:Usenet providers host the same materials &

[Anonymous Coward]

so when is dhs going after the big ***** providers?

If I had mod points I would mod you into oblivion. You should know better than to even mention ***** on a public forum.

Yeah. Then prosecute them :

[unity100]

"In announcing that operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world

Here, they are in , China, Russia. Now fuck off and go prosecute them after you talked so high and mighty. i would like to see you do it.

Alternative DNS projects.

[unity100]

please list them here. up till now i didnt have a particular interest in them. from now on, i think they will get increased propagation. anyone who can, should contribute to them by code or other means.

Fixed that for ya

[Anonymous Coward]

a domain they believe to be involved in online piracy

Kind of like busting down someone's door because they are believed to be involved in {whatever)?

'American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates

American business is in control of the government and is under assault from people who can do it better/cheaper.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[fishexe]

Yeah, because the Bush admin neeeeeever did anything creepy online.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[ShiftyOne]

I find it hard to say that a one sided argument to a judge of DHS's choosing is due process.

Unconstitutional?

[Nailer235]

The Supreme Court has already decided that prejudgment seizures of property are unconstitutional if not accompanied by notice and a hearing on the merits. See: Fuentes v. Shevin I don't see why this wouldn't apply to domain names as well. Wonder how long it will be before this statute gets challenged.

it's whack-a-mole!

[circletimessquare]

knock down 1, 10 sprout up, knock down 10, 100 sprout up

intellectual property+internet=no more intellectual property. some people just need to learn the hard way. keep whacking the moles, government friends!

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[fishexe]

It didn't matter, but it might in the future. The Tea Party is the last hope for a government that actually stays in its Constitutional box. I don't care what you think about particular people involved with it, just get out there and support less government.

Bullshit. I know quite a few Tea Partiers and they will take away every last right I have as soon as they get the chance. These are people who only make a stink when the party they don't like is in power, doing the EXACT SAME THINGS that the party they do like was doing before. How many Tea Partiers do you know who said anything at all about the Bush admin's declaration that Americans only have freedom of speech within "Free Speech Zones"? It's not about liking or disliking the people involved in it, it's about recognizing that the Tea Party Movement ITSELF is a movement of hypocrisy and cynicism that claims to be about less government but really works towards more government by the proper group of mostly old white men (with the occasional token minority or female) who put large corporations first and everyday citizens second. If you participate in the Tea Party believing otherwise, you're a sucker and a patsy.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[jedidiah]

Hijack Disney's DNS record and see how quickly they scream about their property.

The idea that anything can be essentially stolen from you with nothing but a judge signing off on it is bogus. That is not due process by any stretch of the imagination. It's not necessary for criminal or civil discovery and it's not the result of an actual trial judgement. Neither is it emminient domain.

It's basically "theft by search warrant" but without any searching.

Anyone west of the Jordan River should find this sort of nonsense intolerable and not be such sheeple type peasants.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah... but Bamster often talked about the Constitution's fundamental flaws (stuff he'd like to change), being that it only talked about what the government couldn't do to you... and not what it should do on your behalf.....

I guess protecting you from yourself is one of those things.

Be a good worker and go back and pay your taxes.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[ScentCone]

since when did the mission of DHS become copyright enforcement?

Customs enforcement. The term you're looking for is customs enforcement. That's what the "CE" in "ICE" (a part of DHS) stands for. Regardless of the overall organizational changes at the top, there's nothing new about enforcing customs, and most of what was involved in this particular wave related to counterfeit goods. Nothing new, here. You traffic in faked merchandise, you get your boat seized, or your warehouse raided, or other aspects of your operation (say, your web site) shut down by a judge as the case is prosecuted. Not enough evidence to show you're actually doing that stuff? The judge won't issue the order ... or, you can get another judge to step in, when you show that your warehouse full of falsely-marked sports brand paraphenalia is actually legit. Of course the operations listed, in this case, are all flagrant knock-off guys, selling bogus wares. That they now have web sites, instead of just selling out of the back of a van, doesn't really change the legality of shutting them down.

Cyber Crimes

[westlake]

Seriously, kids downloading music poses what threat, exactly, to national security?

In the American federal system, economic crimes with an interstate and international dimension are a federal responsibility. The Secret Service, for example, was originally organized to fight counterfeiting.

IP based industry generates billions of dollars in domestic sales and exports. The work is clean, labor-intensive and - broadly speaking - very well-paying. That is why Republican and Democrat unite to protect it.

The median household income in the U.S. is $45,000. The median salary for an SDE at Microsoft is $89,000.

The government can multi-task:

ICE is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE is - among much else - the Cyber Crimes Center.

There are three sections:

Child Exploitation.

Child pornography. The sex trade in children.

Cyber Crimes.

"The CCS investigative responsibilities include fraud, theft of intellectual property rights, money laundering, identity and benefit fraud, the sale and distribution of narcotics and other controlled substances, illegal arms trafficking and the illegal export of strategic/controlled commodities and the smuggling and sale of other prohibited items, such as art and cultural property."

Digital Forensics.

"Digital evidence is quickly replacing documentary evidence as the "smoking gun" in investigations. Vital evidence is often identified, seized and recovered from a variety of electronic devices for ICE investigations. ICE special agents need access to information stored on personal computers, complex business networks, personal digital assistants, cellular telephones and multifunction communications devices."

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[fishexe]

The 5th Amendment says that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Due process means that one must be found guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.

When there's a criminal proceeding, items which are evidence in the proceeding have always been subject to seizure prior to trial. The 5th Amendment has never affected that. Also, items being used in an ongoing criminal act are subject to seizure. It's no different from the cops finding a robber in the act and seizing his gun, or catching a drug-runner and seizing the car with a secret compartment hollowed out in the seat that he was using to hide his cargo.

Last time I checked, "copyprivilege" infringement required a civil suit by the person who held the privilege to begin with? Were these domain holders sued? Were they found guilty (liable) by a court of law?

There are both civil and criminal statutes for copyright infringement. Criminal sanctions basically apply to large-scale commercial infringement operations. I'm guessing if DHS is involved then the operators of the sites are now awaiting criminal prosecution.

Is the US government out of control and operating outside the bounds of the Constitution?

Out of control? Maybe. Operating outside the bounds of the Constitution? Definitely not. As I said before, the 5th Amendment doesn't protect property directly used in the commission of a crime, and large-scale commercial infringement is a criminal matter. Also, the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution doesn't say anywhere that enforcement has to be through civil suit brought by the copyright owner. It merely says that Congress can award the exclusive rights in order to advance "Progress in Science and Useful Arts" and that these rights can only be given "for limited Times". Come to think of it, they are outside the bounds of the Constitution on that point: copyright duration has now become basically unlimited. But that's a different story for a different thread.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Sepodati]

Due process is just that, a process. This is one step in the process. The site owners have every right to speak their side in court and will have a presumption of innocence. You and I both know that not a single one would show up because they KNOW they are violating US law. They'll simply set up shop somewhere else.

fool

[unity100]

its not 'government'. its capitalism.

if there was no government, the private interests would directly would directly censor and control you themselves. because there are still laws against doing that, they are doing it through government.

Re:fool

[circletimessquare]

it's actually called corporatism

capitalism is when people compete to win market share freely and fairly. corporatism is when the largest players dominate and warp the marketplace to suit their interests, crushing the smaller players so there is no competition and their dominance is unchallenged. ideally government would guard against corporatism and keep the market free and fair for capitalism. but in today's world, the government has been bought and sold to the largest corporations

so, you're the fool. because you don't understand that corporatism is not capitalism

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[hey!]

The 5th Amendment says that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". The 5th Amendment says that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Due process means that one must be found guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.

Not always true. What you are describing is a "criminal forfeiture". You are first convicted of a crime, then if the preponderance of evidence shows the property in question was used to commit the crime, or was the fruit of the crime, the government can seize that property. In this case, the right to use the domain name *might* be an instrument of the crime, and the site owner could be deprived of it if he were convicted.

But there is another kind of forfeiture which does not require anyone to be found guilty of anything: *civil* forfeiture. It has been used extensively since the 1980s to combat drug traffickers' planes and boats. In such cases the government essentially sues *the property itself* for the harm it caused in a crime. Charges are not brought against the owner, who is treated as a third party claimant. Because criminal charges aren't involved, the rules of evidence are looser and a preponderance of evidence standard is applied and a unanimous jury is not required.

I believe what is going on here is an attempt to treat domain name rights as something other than property or a liberty protected under the 5th. That's a really quite interesting problem. Most reasonable people, I think, would look at this analogously to the police seizing a leased automobile; the police are depriving the renter of something of value.

If we accept that 5th Amendment applies to domain name control, there are two Constitutional issues I can see.

(1) Was a warrant required? If I'm caught cutting down a tree on your front yard, the police don't need a warrant to seize my chainsaw for evidence and later for forfeiture as an instrument of my crime. The necessity of protecting your property rights allows them to deprive me of my chainsaw until I have been exonerated in court. Arguably an immediate domain takedown prevents further copyright violations, but the degree of harm imposed by the delay getting a warrant would be negligible, I think.

(2) The manner of taking provides no recourse for the site owner or affected users to challenge the seizure. The announcement does not give a phone number, email address or even program name to contact, and the domain seizure uses anonymization techniques to obscure which office or agency is actually responsible for the seizure. That denies everyone affected by this action even a starting point for obtaining due process protection. This would obviously be an outrageous way to seize property, which is why I think the administration position will be that domain names and their associated rights are not property at all.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[fishexe]

You should have a problem with it. It's not WHAT they're seizing, it's HOW they're seizing. DHS has absolutely no place seizing any web property.

Even if the "web property" is being used in ongoing criminal activity and DHS has gone through the proper channels to get warrants for seizure?

If companies want to sue these sites, sue them in a court of law, and have them shut-down through the proper legal channels.

Large-scale commercial copyright infringement is both a civil and a criminal offense. These are the proper legal channels.

The way they went about this is just laying the groundwork for them to abuse the power in the future. Don't be so short-sighted about the whole situation.

You're probably right, but this is more a policy argument than a legal argument. Do I think we should restrict the rights of DHS to be much narrower than the law currently allows? Definitely. Has DHS broken the law in this case? Almost certainly not.

Let's be clear: we want the laws amended so this won't happen again. Claiming they haven't gone through proper legal channels when in fact the law was written to allow them to do this will get us nowhere.

So thiefs and infringers are shut down...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and you're all upset. Well, it's about time that the government looks after the rights of writers, singers and other creative people. Enough time has been wasted on silly arguments like "I try before I buy" and "technically it's not really stealing". My government is doing shit but at least yours is taking action.

The only thing missing is a government website where I can post links to sites that infringe on my copyrights as a writer. Shut them all down and allow me to make money of my own work.

ALTERNATIVE DNS SYSTEMS HERE

[unity100]

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

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Dunbal]

The Tea Party is the last hope for a government that actually stays in its Constitutional box.

      Hahahahaha good luck with that. The Tea party started well, but now it has sort of degenerated into a bunch of lunatics on the republican side of the fence in the minds of most people. While this is not true, politics was never about the truth. The sheep will insist on the two-party system because they don't understand the Tea Party's agenda at all, and the Tea party doesn't have the funding to make enough people aware. It's sort of a catch 22.

      Oh and inviting Sarah Palin as a guest speaker was the dumbest thing they could ever have done because this reinforced the (incorrect) association with the republicans. By the way I really don't care, since I am not American nor do I live in the US.

Downloading Communism

[istartedi]

I'm starting to think N. Korea is spot on..

Uh-oh, it must be true then.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Culture20]

Yeah, because the Bush admin neeeeeever did anything creepy online.

I heard the Bush administration routinely asked "ASL?" on the Sesame Street forums at pbs.org

IP Address

[denshao2]

I'm going to start advertising the IP addresses of my sites.

Re:DONE

[Lanteran]

go ahead and seize 4 billion computers in other countries....TRY IT I DARE YOU

Stop, quickly, you're giving them ideas!

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[emkyooess]

Having the domain and using it as much property as "intellectual properties" of copyrights.

Re:I feel more secure. Thanks, Homeland Security!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was another type of dirty bomb. A Uwe Boll movie!!!

Whereas...

[jshuford]

Le silence est d'accord...

I hate to say it, but, you're correct... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"One more piece of evidence that our government is just a puppet of deep-pocketed corporations and special interest groups." - by EmagGeek (574360) on Saturday November 27, @02:50PM (#34359326)

Per my subject-line above? It's been that way since after 1972, because McGovern & the dems had to do a telethon to get funding back then (vs. NIXON & the republicans (corporate AMERIKA backed since forever)).

Nowadays though??

Heh - Look @ the campaign contributions for either dem or repub candidates!

"StRaNgELy" (not/sarcasm)???

BOTH PARTIES GET CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BOTH REPS & DEMS, both, AND FROM THE SAME CORPORATE BODY (an example would be (not real afaik) IBM giving massive contributions to BOTH dems & reps)!

(Last time I checked, gamblers call it "hedging your bets"... meaning you win, either way, and you have "handles" on either possible candidate in the end!)

APK

P.S.=> Yes, politicians... especially "KORPORATE AMERIKA"'s politicians: They TRULY THE BEST MONEY CAN *REALLY* BUY! So, "buy Amerikan", lmao (I shouldn't laugh, it's not funny - but, it's more of a laugh on my part of disgust)... apk

Perhaps some misunderstanding over these seizures.

[flimflammer]

Looking through the list of sites seized, it seems only one was seized (apparently) due related to copyright infringement, and that's torrent-finder.com. Judging from the other sites seized it seems their actual target were websites selling forged physical goods (think: fake Rolex watches, etc)

I've got a feeling that torrent-finder was seized due to some misunderstanding rather than being genuinely targeted. If they were actually going to take down torrent sites and others related to downloading copywritten works, I could think of many sites such as thepiratebay which would be a far greater target.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many tea party types I know are former Howard Dean (2004) and Barack Obama (2008) supporters. They didn't suddenly become conservative, they've been sick of the government, regardless of which party is in charge.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Anonymous Coward]

And if they can't make money off of us peacefully, they'll get us to fight against one another to make money.

And if that doesn't work they'll want us dead, call in an outside country to kick some proverbial ass somewhere on the map, Iran, N Korea etc., kill our young and ruin a whole generation.

Until we're broke, dead, raped and tired of all the fighting, then a generation or so later they or their offspring will come back around and promise a new future. And we'll do it all over again. The vicious circle.

Bankers, Bureaucrats, Corporations, Lawyers & Government are just Bullies.
All of them. They are the scum of the earth. They never will understand what it means to let bygones be bygones.
They push because in some form or fashion they are control freaks attempting to tell everyone what is worth our time and effort.
And if we do not listen or obey, then expect to be harassed. And with every passing year the harassment gets worse and worse.

Three Topics Concerning Values.
One of Two choices to strike a balance.

People vs Money
Materialism vs Spirituality
Self Control vs Control over others

Where does your balance reside?
Where do you stand?

John T. Morton, betrayer of america.

[Anonymous Coward]

John T. Morton:

'Criminals are stealing American ideas

Thomas Jefferson:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea

How disgusting. How far the USA has fallen.

Not with a bang but a whimper

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is how your Lord and Master, the foreign born communist spawn of islam, has destroyed the Internet. Mark this date. And now that the East has stopped using the Dollar, they will stop using our DNS. Game. Set. Match.

Torrent Finder is still available

[Anonymous Coward]

at torrent-finder.info.

Not that it makes what the amerinazi eejits did right or something, just saying, if you're looking for that particular torrent meta-search engine (i.e. it isn't even a normal torrent search engine, it harvests results from a bunch of torrent search engines), it's still available and functional.

Obama's America

[Anonymous Coward]

Eight years of Bush and they didn't do this. Two years of Obama, that guy who was going to liberate the Internet, followed by feelers by the FCC/HSA... followed by lack of cooperation from Congress and actions by the courts... followed by an election where the Democrats got a royal asskicking .... followed by scrambling by power grabs by the FCC/TSA and now the HSA during the lame duck session of the old Congress. The TSA really pissed me off two weeks ago. Now I'm beginning to lose hope because of what some liberal idiot voters called "hope and change". And no, it's not about money. It's about an all-powerful, activist federal government run by bureaucrats and enabled by demagogues-oopsImean-Democrats. End this now or we will be slaves to it forever more (assuming that it doesn't collapse eventually).

Re:Obama's America

[MadMaverick9]

Well - you got "change" alright ... for the worse.

1) september - http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/09/27/1221213/Obama-Wants-Broader-Internet-Wiretap-Authority
2) november - seize domain names

So who says "they" stop here?

---
Obama: this pirate party is gonna win the next election.
Obama: and they're infringing some copyright.
Obama: shut 'em down and seize their domain names. Now.
DHS: yes sir, we'll do.

s/pirate party/any party or organization that doesn't agree with us/g
---

America used to be a country that I looked up to - this was 25 years ago when I was young. Now ...

"They all made the same mistakes by turning their back on the principles that made them great."

What is next then?

[nurb432]

Tracking DNS searches and connections to 'bad places' that bring the black vans to your door to search your home? Ya know only reason to go there or search is if you want to commit a crime. ( sarcasm there.. for you slow people )

Since the bar is being lowered in order to shut these sites down, what is to stop them from doing this? Not much different then stopping you in a bad neighborhood and searching your car because they 'just know' you are going to be buying drugs so due process is out the window..

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Money gets what money wants.

Its that simple.

Money would be perfectly fine if you had the quality of life of a poor Ethiopian.

At least FreeNet is still alive

[nurb432]

For now..

Injunctions, not seizures, are the right mechanism

[QuoteMstr]

The mechanism to accomplish what you state is called an injunction. If party A is doing something that harms party B and the cessation of the activity cannot wait until trial, party B asks a judge to issue a temporary injunction. A and B show up in court, and if the judge believes B, he orders A to stop under penalty of contempt of court.

That's how due process is supposed to work. Note that both parties have their say. What the DHS did is not due process.

USENET worse than Torrent

[wagadog]

USENET usenet Usenet *usenet.

Why go after Torrents without touching Usenet?

Usenet has much more infringing material on it, and much worse than that (kiddie porn, snuff porn, etc)

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[osgeek]

And since when did the mission of DHS become copyright enforcement?

Yeah, I came in to wonder about that part. More liberty-threatening, tax-guzzling, constitution-thrashing government scope creep.

This may be a false flag op concerning wikileaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Co-incidentally, wikileaks domain is also offline. What better way to stop the dissemination of about to be leaked cables than to also take out the torrent finders when you take out wikileaks. The product guys may have been a what the hell lets throw them in too. Just sayin.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[silas_moeckel]

The proper channels would be the country that the company is located in. This is an end run as they do not like dealing with those foreign legal systems.

Re:Injunctions, not seizures, are the right mechan

[Sepodati]

Isn't that exactly how COICA is written?

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[Shotgun]

Maybe you should participate and make your voice heard? Their slogans are all about smaller government. They are actively fighting for smaller government. They are being resisted by the established Republican leadership, mainly because of their uncompromising call for smaller government. If you feel the way you claim, just calling out the bullshitters should be enough to get them tarred and feathered by their own supporters.

US Products?

[gearloos]

'Criminals are stealing American ideas and products" --Since when is Sony & Co. American? Jeeze these Asshats will say anything to get what they want.

Is this worse than Great Firewall?

[ashmikuz]

I bet if china or any other state did so (censoring a domain even outside hos own borders) we would be ready to invade them or embargo 'em all. Great Firewall isn't so bad looking at things from this perspective, at least they only censor websites for their own citizens, as Italy and lots of other countries already do (for pedophile stuff, mainly).

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Shark]

Changing a DNS entry does not deprive anyone of "life, liberty or property".

You're mistaken on the purpose of the Constitution. It isn't there to provide life liberty and prosperity. It is there to limit the federal government to a specific set of powers. This is the federal government overstepping by a pretty broad margin the scope of powers defined in the constitution by exploiting either of the two loopholes: the general welfare clause or the interstate commerce clause.

Trying to argue that this falls under national defence wouldn't hold water either.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[nurb432]

Is the US government out of control and operating outside the bounds of the Constitution?

Yes, but who is going to stop it? Who even could?

America

[Anonymous Coward]

An outsider might get the idea that the capital is Hollywood and the president is Walt Disney.
So sad.

Uh, "Homeland Security"?

[AudioEfex]

The part I don't get is "Homeland Security".

WTH are they doing messing with copyright issues? This has nothing to do with "Immigration and Customs" either.

Homeland Security should be protecting us from all these supposed "DANGER DANGER DANGER!" things that are out there that we are so scared of we are supposed to be letting the pervs at the TSA play with our junk and feel up our kids for.

Homeless and starving families right here on our own soil, health care is a mess, bridges are falling apart, all of our "national defense" is half-way across the world, we are borrowing all our operating money from Asia...but hey, who cares, someone is downloading last week's episode of "Bones" they missed - send out Homeland Security!

What a joke.

Re:Uh, "Homeland Security"?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can clearly see here http://www.ice.gov/cyber-crimes/ that this is well-within their broad jurisdiction.

Re:Uh, "Homeland Security"?

[blair1q]

Stop voting for Republicans.

Re:Corprations are stealing american ideas and pro

[Sepodati]

Who says they aren't? Some of the comments said a few of the sites were involved in that exactly. How many of the sites are digital distribution (download/torrent) sites? If the focus was elsewhere, would that make online infringement less illegal (as if such a term existed)?

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[fishexe]

The proper channels would be the country that the company is located in. This is an end run as they do not like dealing with those foreign legal systems.

So if a foreign company sells counterfeit designer clothing in the US, we can't seize the counterfeit goods until the foreign legal system says to? That is absurd. The companies in question are committing the crimes on US soil by sending their data to US users, and making use of the domain name system to do this. There's absolutely no legal reason why the US government can't use their authority to prevent that, especially for domains ending in .com, .org, or .net whose registration is under US jurisdiction anyway.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[fishexe]

Many tea party types I know are former Howard Dean (2004) and Barack Obama (2008) supporters. They didn't suddenly become conservative, they've been sick of the government, regardless of which party is in charge.

That's interesting. I know my sample size is limited, but all the active Tea Partiers I've met were Bush and Reagan voters who claim (against all evidence) that the war in Iraq was necessary to keep our country safe. All the Howard Deaniacs I know have rejected the Tea Party and were on the side of a stronger health care bill than was actually passed, not a weaker one; it seems weird for someone supporting Howard Dean to be "sick of government" when Dean himself was the single most vocal proponent of the public option and has been a very strong advocate of expanded environmental and labor regulation and repealing the Bush tax cuts. I'll take note of your experience, though, and incorporate it into my understanding of the Tea Party movement.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Anonymous Coward]

If only they had done this while Bush was in the oval office. At least then all of the D's would be up in arms, and thus, the media as well. Sure, it's a constitutional shredding when Bush does anything like this, but Obama's admin tentacles? Nah. That's gotta be allowed somehow right?

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Anonymous Coward]

The constitution only protects the rights of Americian citizens. . .

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[fishexe]

Maybe you should participate and make your voice heard?

How is that not exactly what I'm doing? Oh, you mean participate in the Tea Party itself. Why would I do that when I recognize it's hypocritical to its core already? Am I really supposed to bring a whole movement back to sanity all by myself, just by "making my voice heard" within it?

Their slogans are all about smaller government. They are actively fighting for smaller government.

So they say, but actions speak louder than words.

They are being resisted by the established Republican leadership, mainly because of their uncompromising call for smaller government.

They are being resisted by the Republican leadership only so much as necessary to keep the Republican party majority-old-guard, and courted by the Republican leadership as much as necessary to get the them to vote for mainline big-government pro-corporate-subsidy pro-military-industrial-complex pro-earmark Republicans when general election time comes around. I think the results of this last Congressional election show how much control the old Republican leadership still has.

If you feel the way you claim, just calling out the bullshitters should be enough to get them tarred and feathered by their own supporters.

The problem is that the bullshitters are the supporters. I'm talking about rank-and-file members of the movement who chant "smaller government, smaller government!" all day long yet go to the polls and vote for Bush or Reagan. The difference between them and me is that I, after chanting "civil liberties, civil liberties!" now actively criticize Obama for violating civil liberties, whereas every single Tea Party participant I've personally met still defends voting for G.W. Bush the second time and believes Reagan reduced the size of government.

Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Get ready for distributed-DNS

I see a trend...

[Anonymous Coward]

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Re:Welcome to Obama's America.

[russ1337]

I know quite a few Tea Partiers and they will take away every last right I have as soon as they get the chance.

It doesn't matter who is in power in the US as your rights will be eroded over time anyway. The Tea Partiers will erode your rights more quickly.

Are you trying to say that...

[Camael]

... the ends justifies the means?

Aren't you the least bit concerned that vast and broad powers given to the Department of Homeland SECURITY to protect people from terrorist threats, and their expenses which are being funded by taxpayers is being abused to protect the private property rights of a few admittedly politically connected and wealthy corporations?

Well, you should be.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[Adrian Lopez]

So if a foreign company sells counterfeit designer clothing in the US, we can't seize the counterfeit goods until the foreign legal system says to?

Those goods are physically in the United States and are being sold by people in the United States. Big difference.

The companies in question are committing the crimes on US soil by sending their data to US users

By that logic China should be able to shut down American websites that contain material the Chinese government considers subversive.

There's absolutely no legal reason why the US government can't use their authority to prevent that, especially for domains ending in .com, .org, or .net whose registration is under US jurisdiction anyway.

Perhaps the US government shouldn't have control over .com, .org and .net domains?

Mmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, sometimes I think that living in Canada sucks, but then I listen to you people and feel so much better! Thank you for making me glad that I'm not you ;)

JPEGs have metadata.

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone's interested, the picture on all those sites is 18 days old and was produced with adobe photoshop CS5. Not that it tells you anything.

Simple workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

Change_hosts_file_in_Vista
2:23 AM 11/28/2010
+34c#er15+

Let Your Browser Find A Seized Domain Name

1- Find the IP Address

Go to: DNSHistory.org
Enter "Torrent-finder.com"
Record the earlier IP address. In this case it is "208.101.51.56"

2- Put the IP address and Hostname in your hosts file. Vista example:

a. Click the Microsoft Vista Start logo in the bottom left corner of the screen
b. Click All Programs
c. Click Accessories
d. RIGHT-click on Notepad
e. Select Run As Administrator
f) Click "Continue" on the UAC prompt
g) Click File -> Open
h) Browse to "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc"
f) Change the file filter drop down box from "Text Documents (*.txt)" to "All Files (*.*)"
i) Select "hosts" and click "Open"
j) Make the change In this example add the line:
    "208.101.51.56 torrent-finder.com"
      Without quotes to the end of the hosts file
k) Close Notepad and Save when prompted.

3- Clear the Cached DNS Vista example:

a. Click the Microsoft Vista Start logo in the bottom left corner of the screen
b. Click All Programs
c. Click Accessories
d. RIGHT-click on Command Prompt
e. Select Run As Administrator
f. In the command window type the following and then hit enter: ipconfig /flushdns
g. You will see the following confirmation:

        Windows IP Configuration
        Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

4- Go to your browser and enter: "http://torrent-finder.com"

regards, teacher1st

the owner of "stolen" movie still can use it

[Anonymous Coward]

the owner of stolen domain - can't.

digital or intellectual or physical is not important. being no longer able to use it - is.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[fishexe]

So if a foreign company sells counterfeit designer clothing in the US, we can't seize the counterfeit goods until the foreign legal system says to?

Those goods are physically in the United States and are being sold by people in the United States. Big difference.

The electrons comprising the files in question are physically in the US. The magnetic fields on my hard drive once I've downloaded a torrent are physically in the US. How is it different?

The companies in question are committing the crimes on US soil by sending their data to US users

By that logic China should be able to shut down American websites that contain material the Chinese government considers subversive.

No, by that logic China should be able to block American websites from Chinese access and deny them .cn TLDs. Nothing about shutting them down, nobody said US government should be able to seize servers on foreign soil either. The entire debate was about seizing US domain names.

There's absolutely no legal reason why the US government can't use their authority to prevent that, especially for domains ending in .com, .org, or .net whose registration is under US jurisdiction anyway.

Perhaps the US government shouldn't have control over .com, .org and .net domains?

Maybe, but who would have jurisdiction then?

Jurisdiction

[Putr]

What i want to know is... where the domains owned by Americans or were adlist the registrars American? In other words.. did they have jurisdiction?

I find this the first, and most important question.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[Anonymous Coward]

And since when did the mission of DHS become copyright enforcement? And where did they get the unilateral authority to act as judge, jury, and executioner?

Hey, DHS, Judge Dredd called, he wants his job back.
Oh, and the guys from Anthrax want their lyrics back (IP pun intended).

I find my torrents with Google

[Joce640k]

I bet Google is next on the list...

Global Jurisdiction?

[Nailer235]

The scary thing is that a District Court did this. District Courts are local - there are 94 of them in America. On what authority can a local court take down a global website? Just shop around until you find a district that signs the papers.

Who cares about US

[Anonymous Coward]

US can do what they want, but only to themselves.

The idea that US starts playing police for the whole world's internet via ICANN is not acceptable.

ICANN and DHS need to be removed from the equation for the rest of the world.

DHS can then police the US portion of the Internet for all they want, the rest of the world does not care.

"every day, seven days a week"

[RichiH]

Good to know, might have been six or eight, too.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[silas_moeckel]

Then they can seize those electrons/photons inside there borders. .com is the international domain name not a US one we have .us for that, unfortunately we used to require a rather complex system for .us making it rather unattractive.

How can a domain name be illegal? I'ts like saying 42 is illegal or 123 somewhere st is illegal. Were headed down a rather slippery slope that people have been worried about for years. Snatching domain names is simply put censorship we don't like what your saying so we will try stop people from hearing it. If they are selling fakes it's pretty easy to follow the money trail and stop them from getting paid by people in the US even for electronic goods, if they are not getting paid it's not a criminal issue.

The Corporation's Kneecappers

[Anonymous Coward]

The job of military and police all over the world is to enforce corporate claims and to help them rob the people, not to protect the citizens.

What's the definition of fascism again?

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[fishexe]

How can a domain name be illegal? I'ts like saying 42 is illegal or 123 somewhere st is illegal.

Hey dumbass, read the whole thread before you reply. Nobody said the domain name was illegal. Legal possessions used for illegal activity are subject to seizure. If they find a car filled with drugs, they seize the car. They're not saying the car's "illegal" when they do that.

Snatching domain names is simply put censorship we don't like what your saying so we will try stop people from hearing it.

Somehow I suspect it's not so much "we don't like what your [sic] saying" as "you are illegally distributing others' property for profit." It would only be censorship if it were the former rather than the latter.

If they are selling fakes it's pretty easy to follow the money trail and stop them from getting paid by people in the US even for electronic goods, if they are not getting paid it's not a criminal issue.

Whether they're getting paid or not, it's still illegal, and they're not selling the "electronic goods", they're getting money from advertisers. Besides, the harm to US companies is not from these web sites making money, it's from the illegal copies being distributed, forcing companies to compete with free versions of their own products.

Correction

[ScrewMaster]

They've successfully turned themselves into a global liability, one that none of us, American or not, can afford.

Oops.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[Adrian Lopez]

The electrons comprising the files in question are physically in the US. The magnetic fields on my hard drive once I've downloaded a torrent are physically in the US. How is it different?

When the US government seizes counterfeit merchandise located in the United States, only the merchandise found in the US is affected. When the US government seizes domain names of foreign websites, "electrons comprising the files" in the US are not the only ones affected.

No, by that logic China should be able to block American websites from Chinese access and deny them .cn TLDs. Nothing about shutting them down, nobody said US government should be able to seize servers on foreign soil either. The entire debate was about seizing US domain names.

So while China only gets to shut down .cn domains, the United States gets to shut down not only .us domains but also .com, .net and .org domains? How convenient for the United States.

I hold that no country should be able to seize .com, .net and .org domains for websites hosted outside their own jurisdiction.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[silas_moeckel]

Well the domain name is the only thing apparently under US jurisdiction. Illegal where in the country they are in or the US, sorry but I can not agree the US law somehow should be dominate on the internet.

It might be illegal in the states to do so (for profit as that's required for it to be a criminal matter in the states). It's not apparently illegal where there servers are or something would have been done about it locally.

It makes a big difference under US law whether or not they are making money as that is the dividing line between civil and criminal liability. I cant say weather or not they were selling ad space etc.

At the end of the day this is a stretch to having US law control the internet by allowing US judges to issue take down notices for things outside there jurisdiction. The root issue was the stupid idea of .com etc as apposed to .co.uk and similar. This moves exposes how important it is to move the dns root to the control of an international agency like the UN. The UN is primaly designed to do nothing, it takes massive international outrage to get much anything through it. Some countries actually have a differing opinion as to what is sensible copyright law or if it makes any sense at all, if the US wants to enforce it's laws it should do so inside it's boarders.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[YodaYid]

Thankfully, our President was formerly a professor who lectured on Constitutional law. I'm sure he's going to sort this one out for us ASAP.

You joke, but that's one of the reasons I voted for him :-P

Borntrade

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a customer of borntrade.com. The site is already back up under a very similar domain, and the owner sent an email to all his customers informing them of the new domain.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[KingAlanI]

Large-scale commercial copyright infringement is both a civil and a criminal offense. These are the proper legal channels.

Yeah, making IP infringement commercial/for-profit crosses a line.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[fishexe]

So while China only gets to shut down .cn domains, the United States gets to shut down not only .us domains but also .com, .net and .org domains? How convenient for the United States.

Hey, them's the fruits of having built the whole damn thing in the first place. The US was being nice by even allowing country TLDs to exist.

I mean...

[DarthVain]

...if the DHS wasn't built to enforce the MPAA buisness model I don't know what is.

Clearly this is in the realm of national security, and without the MPAA fighting copyright infringement, the terrorists win!

Everyone, put your thinking caps on!

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet should be free but NOT LAWLESS. Sure it's nice to snag a free copy of a movie but is it really right? Uh, no. If you had any hesitation with that question, then it is *you* that the law protects us from. 99% of the content shared on the internet is copyrighted. Everyone pull their heads out and think please.

Yes, you can. If you change the label.

[RingDev]

The problem with the current market of Prada purse copies isn't perfection, it's the Trademark.

The counterfeiters produce a cheap bag and slap the Prada trademark on it.

The purse itself can not be copyrighted. You could make your own exact copy, put a "Kumaru" tag on it, and sell it for $2000.

-Rick

The AC is completely wrong.

[RingDev]

You are NOT stealing. You are infringing on their copy rights.

It's not difficult to understand. It is not "more complex".

The federal government has established them as the sole entity in a monopoly over the distribution of the intellectual property.

There are actually criminal laws about IP violations, but they have NEVER been used. The government has always treated IP infringement as a civil issue.

You don't go to jail for civil issues. You don't get arrested. You can still vote. You can still join the military. You aren't found guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, you are found liable based on a preponderance of the evidence.

So by all means, attack the freeloaders in a civil court. Use the tort system to exact any lost revenues you feel are due.

But leave the government out of it, there's no need to give them dramatic increases in powers or responsibilities.

Sir, You are the freeloader.

[RingDev]

In short, while copying a work illegally may not deprive the original holder of a copy, it most certainly can deprive them of their ability to use it.

You make that argument a number of times, but you never put any explanation or argument behind it.

If you were to record a new song, and enjoy listening to it, and I were to copy that song, and enjoy listening to it with out your knowledge, would you cease to enjoy listening to it?

Now, you have a federally protected monopoly on the distribution of that song. These are generally called "Intellectual Property Rights", in this case specifically, Copy Rights.

By making a copy with out your permissions, I have infringed on your Copy Rights. While there are criminal codes for such infringements, they have never been used in US (or world) history.

But there are also Tort rules about copy right infringement. And they are used all the time, quite successfully, to deal with this specific issue.

So here's my question: You have a perfectly acceptable solution already. You have tort laws to get money for infringement, and you have the DMCA to handle taking your protected materials down when online. Along with a host of court history and industry professionals to make the process quite streamlined.

With all those tools in YOUR hands to protect YOUR materials, why do you demand that I as a tax payer subsidize YOUR profits even more?

I'm already footing the bill for the Feds to hand you a monopoly over a piece of music for what, 140 years now? I'm already footing the bill for your music. I'm already footing the bill for your lawyer (as part of the cost of your music). And now you want me to pay for the Feds to do what YOU are already capable and responsible for?

Who's the freeloader here? The guy who is infringing on your property? Or you, demanding that us tax payers subsidize your profits because you are too lazy to do the work yourself?

-Rick

Re:One of Our Cancers ScrewMaster (602015)

[seekertom]

That speil you gave was such a line of bullshit! The value of the things you mentioned that 'ought' to be, is no more than the actual, real consequences of violating those trusts you ramble on about. In this blessed country of ours (USA), NOBODY above the rank of civilian ever has to face any consequences for their actions against the Constitution, against the Republic, or against us, the citizenry. One day we the people will stand up for ourselves and put a stop to Washington's crap. Until we do, we will be the servants and they will be our rulers. To stop it we first need to bring Washington back down to the level of civil servants... create the 28th amendment. After that, repeal nearly everything they have done FOR themselves and TO us during the past 50 years, and maybe we'll call it a new beginning. Until then, your rhetoric only serves to rub salt into the gaping wound from which all Americans are currently bleeding out.

Re:Whatever you think of copyright+torrent assista

[fishexe]

Well the domain name is the only thing apparently under US jurisdiction.

And the domain name was the only thing that was seized. Where's the problem?

At the end of the day this is a stretch to having US law control the internet by allowing US judges to issue take down notices for things outside there jurisdiction.

We've already established that US law doesn't control the internet, only the US-allocated domains. The sites are presumably still up, accessible by IP address, and are presumably eligible to go get a .cx or .se or .ch domain.

The root issue was the stupid idea of .com etc as apposed to .co.uk and similar. This moves exposes how important it is to move the dns root to the control of an international agency like the UN.

Well, people who don't like the policies and jurisdictions surrounding .com are free to apply for .co.uk domains (or whatever) instead. Given that the vast majority of traffic these days goes through hyperlinks rather than people manually typing in addresses to their browsers, there's not really a reason you can't get equal traffic with basically any TLD. Yeah, it probably would have made more sense if .org, .com, .net had been internationally administered from the beginning, but given the system is set up as it is there was no over-reach in authority in seizing the domains.

Is ICE a crimminal organization?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is ICE a criminal organisation? It sure sounds like a criminal organisation. Unlawful disruption of business is (as far as I understand it), a criminal act. Can the proprietor of ICE be incarcerated for five years (per instance) and face a $5,000,000 fine (for each offence)? If I were the owners of the sites illegally taken down 'in the name of broad measures', then I would 'in the name of broad measures' sue and bring to justice the criminal organisation that took down the site. It also seems highly likely that the Department of Homeland Security is on the take for not doing a proper investigation prior to going out and acting on the behalf a private interest. The US government is looking more and more like a partial, influence peddled, body without a head, acting on behalf of corporate or private interests. They aren't interested in justice. I even suspect that they knew in advance that they were committing a criminal act in taking down sites unlawfully, in the hopes of 'shock and awe'. Perhaps too, someone at the RIAA or MPAA or some other organisation asked some of the site owners for a bribe 'to make things right' or perhaps some blow or some other kickback. When the site owners didn't comply, the MPAA/RIAA put the site on their 'hit list' which the government then illegally took down. How this is different from the Chicago branch of La Casa Nostra is imperceptible. I have no doubts that this is a "Pre-Christmas Shakedown" intended to "Send a Message"(tm) about infringement and that the government is very pro-private interests and cheerful to step all over 'fair use' and also cheerful to violate citizens rights, up to and including violating every right offered in the US Constitution in the name of protecting the interests of the businesses who have lobbied for the laws that permit these violations. The corporation after all, is a person, and its rights come before and are exclusive above rights of individuals. The US government has allowed itself to become corrupt. The Taliban don't need to make up stories about how bad the US Government has become; examples such as this are easily enough found.

Keep making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day, the Federal Government is breaking the central tenant of civilization since the Magna Carta. Innocent until proven guilty.

Seizing property because you feel like it isn't justice. It's theft.