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US Dept. of Justice, ICE Still Seizing Domains
Chaonici writes "Operation In Our Sites, a US initiative to crack down on websites related to online copyright infringement, appears to be ongoing. Rojadirecta is a site that links to (but does not host) broadcasts of major sporting events, including soccer matches. It is highly popular in Spain, where it has prevailed twice in court after its legal status was challenged. However, US authorities have now seized the .org domain of the website without notifying the site's owner or its web host, GoDaddy. Rojadirecta can still be accessed through .com, .es, .me, and .in domains, which are not controlled by the US, but rojadirecta.org currently redirects to this well-known image."
I saw this heading is red.
Why?
Is slashdot trying to make me read certain articles?
Rojadirecta.org works as of 4:14 pm, two minutes after this story was posted. No ICE image at all.
Rojadirecta.com has the ICE image.
Ya got that backwards. ;-)
It's turnover and updating of local DNS caches that allows them to get away with this crap in the first place. The solution is to make those DNS entries static, like perhaps embedding them in the local hosts file or using Treewalk or some DNS filtering utility.
Well, either that or bypass DNS entirely by using URL shortcuts that directly reference the IP address....
... is a complete lack of due process and the right of appeal in regards to Internet censorship. This is appalling. The entire Western legal code is built on the idea that if you cannot be penalized for something without the right to defend yourself in court. I realize that the seizures are of property and not people, but it's not hard to argue, hey, maybe seizing someone's business and wrongly broadcasting that the owner is a criminal* might negatively impact the owner.
* I'm referring to the case of the hip-hop blogger, who was hyping unreleased material on the request of labels and accused of piracy. I don't know the details of the site in question here.
Again, it's past time for a DNS replacement.
Not an alternate DNS root, an actual replacement that maps some kind of human readable names to an IP address.
ICANN and Network Solutions have proven that they are happy to hand over domains without a full trial, it's time to replace them.
'the media' are lapdogs of the government, both PRESENT and PAST.
what makes you think this is at all localized to one guy or another?
you fell for this '2 party' false dichotomy, didn't you? didn't you??
learn next time that it does NOT MATTER who is in charge. once power is taken, its used by whoever is IN office.
duh.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Well, in this case Google is bypassing DNS, as people link to the IP address of the site. This is a good thing, it prevents censorship and lets the Internet majority re-establish the site in Google.
Had never heard of Rojadirect.
Now I have another bookmarked site.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Was also seized. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/01/atdhe-sports-streaming-website-seized_n_817224.html
Yeah, let's put Australia in charge!
The thing about the US is that we suck when it comes to free speech. We're still better than nearly every other country on Earth when it comes to free speech, but we suck.
Countdown until the EU starts bitching about USA control of ICANN servers again? Starting... now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_governance#Globalization_and_governance_controversy
Fucking morons. The diplomatic consequences of this will be far reaching and even if we get to keep our queen despite taking these pawns, the diplomatic backlash over the soon to ensue ICANN debate is going to cost the USA billions of dollars over the next decade. How? In lost profit from trade agreements as a consequence of losing our bargaining position.
Let the record show that no one can claim the reprecussions of this were unforseeable. It took me 10 seconds from reading the summary to understand the big picture consequences.
Hopefully this will be the straw that breaks the camels back and causes a public uproar which will put an end to this pro-Corpyright anti-fair use insanity.
It really is pretty bogus that the US has such control over non-.us domains.
This is a pretty good reason to argue for the removal of ALL US hosted servers from root zone files.
There was some interesting discussion in the bitcoin forums about setting up a system similar to bitcoin for DNS, which would assign domains based on proof of work problem solutions. Essentially, generating a block of new unbound domains every time someone processed a block of work, the same way bitcoins are now generated, and allowing the generator to then assign them names and transfer ownership to others.
Would be interesting since it essentially becomes a system of ownership based on consensus amongst working nodes, and there is no way to effect the network by fiat. It has drawbacks, no way to revoke any domain... for any reason. Probably not really workable like that... but given that its just a system of consensus rules built around a proof of work block chain, other agreements on the rules are possible...
Some thoughts anyway,
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
All I can think to myself is... "These people are fucked. They're fucked and they are fucking us." I just long for the day that we can actually stand up for ourselves, but unfortunately anyone that would speak is drowned out by the uncaring uninformed idiocracy that is spoon fed to the comfortable masses. Sigh, I will not let the dream die though. "Dreamers man.... but I'm not the only one." Bonus points if you can name who I'm quoting.
hahahaha . im in the web hosting industry and i can tell you that the internet has started moving away from .com .net .org registrations already.
Read radical news here
Can the US shut down .org domains, but not .com domains? That's what the article summary seems to say.
If this is the case, is the entity that "controls" .com domains better?
I was about to buy a .org domain but now I have to research this first.
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The USA is the last of the Western World when it comes to Free Speech and Human Rights. Granted, the Western World represents less than 25% of the 200 countries on the planet, so even being last of the Western World may not seem all that bad.
But then again, the USA now qualifies as a tyranny thanks to the government repeatedly violating the Constitution and Human Rights of it's citizens: (It is rarely referred to as a tyranny publicly in politics and in the media, but it fits the definition of the word). As for the International scene, the behavior of the US government will make the entire country be considered as a rogue state by even Europe. Europe just needs a bit of time to realize how bad the USA has become and get over the shock, but soon it will.
Just have Google return IP addresses instead of domain names and I bet you'd eliminate 90% of the DNS traffic in the world today. Perhaps we should just move past it...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How can an international system like the Internet allow one country to enforce its IP laws on a company in another country? No matter where a DNS registrar is located these domains are meant to be international resources and should be beyond any one country's grasp. It would be one thing if it were an in country company, even then there should be a right of due process, but this is insane. If I were the country with this company, I would file an international grievance. Beyond that, I highly agree we need an alternative to the current DNS system.
Dont you mean the government is the lapdog of the media...it sure has seemed that way over the last decade or so.
dont excuse the language - i cant find any stronger words to stress the travesty thats going on here :
.com .net .org domains. can you imagine what the impact of this will be ? they will also be moving away from american outlets for hosting, dedicated servers, vpses and cloud, because the place which will register their NON american controlled extension, will naturally be offering deals to them during their domain purchase.
america is whoring itself out to a particular industry, while killing another. the internet which was associated so closely with '.com' extension, will not be associated with it anymore. in web hosting industry, customers are already moving away from
way to kill an entire industry that de facto built internet, in order to whore yourself out to a fading out one, america.
troll ? no. appalled to oblivion maybe. i cant any stronger words to stress the travesty of the situation, really. other than 'whoring' or 'morondom'. really.
Read radical news here
http://www.rojadirecta.com/. Tell me what you see.
(For the lazy, it's quite similar to the image from TFS.)
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
> Why do so many stupid people post on /.?
Because it inspires responses of high technical prowess, such as yours.
You're my hero.
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Most of my favorite websites that are frowned upon by certain government agencies have already begun their transition to other domains such as .me just like Rogadirecta. I hope the others quickly start doing the same.
... "Ads Disabled. Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!" box that you get for spending far to much time here without subscribing.
I get that.
But I also still get "Slow Down, Cowboy!"
Seems odd. I'd expect the "disable ads" option to be intended to encourage people whose postings are considered valuable and well-considered to post more of them. But the one-per-five-minutes limit for such people (who can often compose postings quickly) seems to work at cross-purposes to the option. So I'd have expected the limit to go away with the offering of the option.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Unfortunately this is becoming the next wave of Internet and the law in America. In the works are laws that will give our government the power to "cut off the Internet", limit what you can say on it, what you can see on it. It already has the "right" to monitor every cell phone conversation from every citizen with out a warrant or reason. Obama is speaking out of the other side of his mouth when chastising the Egyptian government for doing what he and his congress is trying to do right now to Americans Internet and communication services.
> What Egypt and the US have in common is a complete lack of due process and the right of appeal in regards to Internet censorship. This is appalling. The entire Western legal code is built on the idea that if you cannot be penalized for something without the right to defend yourself in court. I realize that the seizures are of property and not people, but it's not hard to argue, hey, maybe seizing someone's business and wrongly broadcasting that the owner is a criminal* might negatively impact the owner.
Wrong. The US has both due process and a right to appeal. Comparing the situation in the US to that in Egypt is overgeneralizing in a way which is both incorrect and insultingly trivializing the troubles in those parts of the world that do not have US rights.
In the US, in terms of due process, the warrants are seized based on a warrant, as they say on the "well-known" graphic. That means someone in a judicial capacity has approved the seizure.
If that power was misused and the warrant is bad, you have a very strong case for a lawsuit against the government for violating your constitutional rights. (Google "section 1983 lawsuits")
In terms of a right to appeal, you are perfectly entitled to defend yourself in court. You are entitled to appeal if the court gets it wrong--or even if they get it right.
And you are entitled to petition Congress. And the Supreme Court. And the President.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Excuse me, you stupid fucking anonymous coward, but you might want to google the name "Judith Miller" and after that "the run-up to the Iraq War + media".
Then never come back here until you've spent some time thinking about what a dumb clown you are.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Seriously? You really had to post that link. What a dick. GTFO.
This keeps the US safe from the terrorists how exactly?
Change the name to 'The Department of Homeland Security and Corporate Enforcement' guys
canada? iran?
warning pointless sig
Didn't the same thing happen to torrent-finder not long ago.
Link is a goatse site
"I will make it legal."
--Darth Sidious
ICE hosts The National IPR Coordination Center. The vast majority of their work is related to tracking down counterfeit goods that come in from other countries. Thus the reason why ICE hosts the coordination center. However, a variety of law enforcement agencies participate.
http://www.ice.gov/iprcenter/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intellectual_Property_Rights_Coordination_Center
That's relative. In quite a few tyrannies you could call it that. That's not really an issue. As long as you don't want to change it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They didn't even do that. Or did they size the .us domain too?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The DNS isn't free of political interference. So it is time to fracture the DNS away from the current regime.
It would seem that entire countries are on the verge of locking the entire system down anyway (Australian monitoring and NBN, Egypt, US Kill Switch) so why not anticipate it and use IPv6 as the ultimate mass obfuscation tool.
Build 90,000,000 "registers". Each machine or Ethernet card gets 16.9 bazzillion IPv6s allocated to it. "Register" X-gazillion of them with each of the Tor-like registers. The original registration is "deemed" to be authoritative and given a super huge uber crypto key with which to package up all the others for propagation and allow updates. Change of an arbitrary and previously "registered" domain, like example.com is propagated out and lives, essentially, forever. If a "register" is removed, or the example.com deleted, it loves on as a permanent undead/ghost.
As you can see, it is just the first off the cuff/top of head, but it permanently gets rid of registrars, governments, tripup-abilitiy, etc. The only way to take it out is to get the machine. Cloud it out to N-thousand cloud providers and make it indestructible.
Please free to critique. We need more and better ways to defeat a government who is no longer FOR THE PEOPLE.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
What the hell does the Department of Homeland Security have to do with copyright infringement anyway? Or is the department of fatherland homeland security allowed to do whatever it likes?
Never mind legal, how is it even technically possible to seize a domain without forcing the registrar?
A quick bit of research indicates that Afilias, an Ireland-based company with offices in Pennsylvania, is the top-level operator of the .org domain. They would be able to take over any .org domain they choose (or are forced to).
This never happened under the Bush administration.
So you're saying no website ever had their domain name seized under the Bush administration?
Seriously?
Nevermind that something like this pales in comparison to the Patriot act...
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Right now, both sites have been seized (I just tested) and the term rojadirecta on Google links to the IP in it's second result.
There's a message in the webpage that reads:
"Authorities from US "steal" our domain names rojadirecta.org and also rojadirecta.com!
We are currently in: www.rojadirecta.me, www.rojadirecta.es, www.rojadirecta.in.
Don't email the new .com, the new mail ends with .in.
Spread our new uncontroled (by the US gov) addresses."
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
When they hijack a domain like that, I presume they could then read the cookies of the visitors and from that potentially identify users? All this without any judicial oversight at all? Scary stuff.
I wonder if that "well known image" is copyrighted?
So if I put it on *my* site, I'd be infringing their copyright.
And then they might take over my site.
And replace it with the same thing.
Hmmmmmmm.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWweqP_ZWbg
It's funny that the site is just an image and not section 508 compliant. Can something be done about that? Can they be sued for not following the law?
Also, I'd like to see the warrants for all this but I don't have the time or money to follow through with a FOIA.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Wrong again, the government and mainstream media are both arms of the corporatocracy.
Yes.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
Probably not, but what repercussions will happen to the ones who violated the law?
Since there aren't any, it's being illegal is of no import.
P.S.: Is there even any effective way to challenge it? If so, I haven't heard of it. (And notice that I didn't say successfully challenge.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I figured this wasn't worth posting as a whole new story, so I figured I'd add a follow-up comment on this one.
The US government has seized several more domain names since I posted this story. A list:
* HQ-streams.com
* HQ-streams.net
* Atdhe.net
* Rojadirecta.com
* Rojadirecta.org
* Firstrow.net
* Ilemi.com
* Iilemi.com
* Iilemii.com
* Channelsurfing.net
These sites appear to be related to sporting event streaming, and by a marvelous coincidence, the Super Bowl is this weekend.
Source: http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-seizes-sports-streaming-sites-in-super-bowl-crackdown-110202
A site dedicated to providing access to stolen goods is and should be illegal. Imagine if what you did in your career was suddenly stolen and distributed by thieves. Your company would no longer hire and be forced to downsize and cut costs. In my company 20,000 people would lose their jobs if thieves opened shop and provided our stolen goods. That is 20,000 families being wiped out or impacted - lower salaries, fewer career opportunities, layoffs, and stagnant growth or declines. It is really a horrible thing to do when you think of the millions of unemployed today.
This isn't about royalties for some pansy singer or hollywood sodomite. This is about FOOTBALL - real American stuff. These sports-is-just-for-enjoyment evil-doers need to be stopped before they destroy all that is great about America. If you can't see that, well maybe your demonic nickname should be seized too.
Actually, http://rojadirecta.us/ is a completely different site! (Based in Uruguay, according to whois.)
And you, in turn, are my hero. I come to slashdot for the wit and class.
As to your original question... I see on InterNIC's web site that three players are discussed: VeriSign Global Registry Services, Public Interest Registry, and Afilias. I don't really understand their roles, but I believe that verisign is responsible for .com, .net, and .edu domains while Public Interest Registry is in charge of .org. This is what I discern when I run whois queries on (for instance) rojadirecta.com and rojadirecta.org, respectively. However, what I also notice is that the two domains have godaddy.com as registrar.
I cannot tell from these articles if the DHS is approaching the registrar (GoDaddy) or the authorities (VeriSign & Public Interest Registry). Or maybe they are approaching InterNIC, who has oversight over these companies, or even ICANN itself. Maybe this has been covered somewhere else. I'm sure that if the warrants were made public, it would be clearer. Thing is, I recall (when this domain seizure trend first appeared) that GoDaddy was mentioned, and I think it would be very interesting to see a list of the various registrars for all the domains which have been seized up to this point.
Hum. Just looked a little harder, and it seems that none of the domains in this story were GoDaddy. But it still seems reasonable to me that the DHS might go to the registrar rather than some higher authority.
I don't know how much of that you already knew. Some of it is new research, for me. Food for thought.
How long before someone nails the server hosting the banner, leaving Homeland Security with a fat bill for bandwidth?
Thanks.
I guess the lesson is to diversify - get a .com or .org, but also get a national domain or two, and mention each domain somewhere on your webpages. Not a big mention, but just something so that if one gets seized, enough readers will know to just change s/\.org/\.ie/ in each domain.
[Ciaran checks this strategy....]
Actually, that might not work so good either. RojaDirecta also had a .me, .in, and .es. The last two aren't working :-/ The .me still is.
I wonder if the US govt has control over all domains by some way, or if the USA had to send take down requests to the local authorities in India and Spain.
When their .org and .com disappeared, they focussed on their .in. They must have thought that was the surest one. I'll check again in a few weeks to see if .me is good or if it also disappears in the near future.
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