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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.
"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.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
and GIVING them to china
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...
Idiot. It doesn't matter which party runs the White House. This is about money. Money always rules.
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?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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?
Libertas in infinitum
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.
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.
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 :(
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.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Trickle down economics... the rich just move to another country.
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.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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.
-- $G
Except that this enforcement emphasis is biased in favor of protecting the rights of a collective (the MPAA/RIAA) at the expense of the individual. And this is worse than (theoretical) communism, where the collective represents the people.
The government is taxing me to protect the property rights of a small group. The least they could do is to levy a tax on intellectual property* and use that to fund enforcement. Instead of picking my pocket in the name of national security and diverting that revenue to someone else's benefit.
*Which raises the issue yet again of why, if IP is property just like my house, the gov't doesn't assess a tax on it.
Have gnu, will travel.
this will probably be modded down, but I do find it unbelievable that in the U.S. there are org's (Sea Org's ?) that are so powerful that both domestic and foreign policy (ACTA, ITO etc) are held-up as examples of "good practise" to the extent that what they want becomes law.
Where's Alan Shore when you need him?
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
John Gilmore's quote was always an oversimplification. The net itself doesn't do anything but move packets. The people that use the net are the ones that find ways over, under, and around censorship. And this is censorship. We can argue about whether or not it's justified (and in the case of websites selling Chanel knockoffs as the real thing, it might be) but the fact the ICE and DHS have exerted control over ICANN is not good.
I'm a US citizen, born and raised here. The prospect of my government having the power to control the web scares me shitless. It's time to start working on a decentralized, cryptographically sound successor to DNS. It's also time to get serious about IPv6 and IPSec (encryption at the network layer) as a way to foil deep packet inspection.
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
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%.
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.
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.
I find it hard to say that a one sided argument to a judge of DHS's choosing is due process.
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 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.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
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.)
My blog
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.