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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.
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.
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?
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.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
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.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
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.
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
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.
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.
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.