Slashdot Mirror
FBI Shuts Down Website
An AC sent in this Village Voice story - "In a highly unusual move last week, FBI agents called mike zieper, an independent artist who goes by the name Mike Z., and "requested" that he remove his site from the Internet. When he declined, the FBI worked in tandem with the U.S. Attorney's office to persuade his Web host and its server to pull Zieper's site--18 days after it went up--without having a subpoena or court order of any kind." The site was apparently crowdedtheater.com. What annoyed the FBI? Apparently the site had a video about rioting on New Year's Eve. Will the FBI shut down every site mentioning disruption on 2000-01-01?
Update: 11/24 08:11 by michael : One of our alert /. readers apparently saw and saved the video while the site was up, and has put up a mirror.
... so this can't be true!
In USA everybody has freedom!
;-)
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
This is a HORRIBLE precedent. This needs mirroring.
:P)
I'm extremely curious about how it got taken down though. I'm assuming a vhost? What happens if you run your own server (like I do)? Do guys in trenchcoats who talk to their watches show up at your door? (good luck at MY door
I think that, given the recent "Y2K: The Movie" from NBC, this is pretty frickin' ridiculous. I read the article; the local sheriff's department called him to intimidate him? Give me a break. I don't know where I really come down on the political spectrum, but I can only shake my head when someone confuses "safety" with "free-speech" in this way.
I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who originally wrote the Supreme Court opinion about "clear and present danger" being a rationale for restricting speech, especially in wartime. I think that the "crying 'fire' in a crowded theater" is the classical example. But this is not *nearly* the same thing.
"The horse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum does not vary."
Similarly, the FBI (or anyone else) does not have to get any sort of legal document to tell an ISP to wipe out your web site. All they have to do is ask nicely, and get the ISP to agree that they shouldn't be supporting this. Then, subject to the agreement that you have with your ISP (which almost ALWAYS protect the ISP, and practically never gives you any say in anything at all), your pages get trashed. End of story. Nobody's constitutional rights were stomped on at all.
So what's the moral of the story? Find yourself a medium that you control, don't depend on renting space from other companies. How you do that is up to you.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
Since his ISP shut him down, does that mean they couldn't be considered a common carrier and should be held responsible for all content their users are supplying? That could be a sticky legal situation to be in...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It seems to me that if the FBI haven't taken any official legal action then it isn't illegal to put up a mirror. Particularly if it is out of US jurisdiction.
It seems very odd to me that the FBI would take a step like this just to prevent further Y2K paranoia. Very suspicious indeed, but then their actions have brought even more attention to the matter.
I am always greatly disturbed when I hear of an ISP dropping content because of threats and lawsuits or in this case, the request of law enforcement. Are there ISP's out there that guarantee the placement of content until a court forces removal?
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Video about rioting on NewYears?
So when does NBC go off the air?
-sh
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
Now, I know the Constitution isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than the system we've got.
-- $SIGNATURE
This is something I do know. You readers of Slashdot know, and I know, that life will go on, despite computer downtime. Computer downtime is a fact of life to us. But you do not understand the complete sheep-like fear of the unknown that non-computer-savvy people have.
Computers are the magic that glues their lives together. They don't know, nor do they want to know, how computers really work. And, in this ignorance, they see the movie industry hyping doom, countless 20/20 type interviews hyping doom, commercials hyping doom, so what else are they to believe? Computers are as much as magic to these people as quantum physics are to me. (Hey, C and java, no problem. Schrodinger? Whatever :) )
The combined panic of thousands of people could cause a breakdown, when no other conditions for breakdown exist. Want proof? Look no further than the riots in L.A. after the Rodney King trial. Bank runs could destroy our current fractional banking system. So the real question here is, is the FBI trying to protect their interests, or everyone's? Are they removing the equivelent of a man screaming "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre?
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
...isn't this exactly what the "artist" intended? By the FBI's apparent unconstitutional censorship, he ends up with far more press than he would have gotten if his poor-taste stunt had been left to be ignored.
This does not excuse the FBI's behavior, but points to a lack of intelligent leadership in the Bureau as well as lack of common sense by the artist.
It also is a sad reflection on any media outlet that would have covered this "artist" before his rights were violated -- his domain name says it all.
If everyone had ignored him, he probably would have gone his way toward ignominy that is every American's God-given right -- the US Gov't took that away from him, and US taxpayers will likely end up paying him a hefty settlement.
Hmmph!
A Google search turns up nothing for "crowdedtheater" (all one word), and nothing related for the phrase separated into its component words.
You do, however, get a page on watchtower.org, the official website of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Lousy spooks! They've gotten to the search engines!
_____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
We'd all probably be surprised by how often various agencies quench the fires of free speech on the Net--many people would probably have given in without a struggle and given up their sites quietly if paid a visit by the Hoovers. Then, there are probably many cases like this one which we simply never hear about due to media apathy/siding with the J. Edgars. Plus, a tactic which is even subtler: if you can't beat them, buy them out.
This is what very likely recently happened to Decadentcity.com and a related site, grokthis.com/decadent. I can't be 100% on this, but all evidence points to its verity. This isn't meant to be off-topic, it's meant to express something which probably has become a commonplace tactic by law enforcement. See, decadentcity.com and the related site were dedicated to message boards discussing "escorts"--like, the Heidi Fleiss type. It started out local to D.C. back in '96 and soon every major city had a message board and ads and reviews and "ripoff warnings" sections. Maybe a year ago a cryptic message about "new ownership" appeared on the site and then disappeared--and yet everything remained the same. The "new ownership" never revealed itself to the board--not so much as a single message or change to the site. The old owner had always dropped in, but he suddenly disappeared. The site was left untouched. The ads section--principal source of revenue--expired, and for about a year no advertisements were added or deleted even though the women themselves expressed interest on the boards. The boards chattered away, most of the escorts in the D.C. area (and, I'm told, in others) who'd been there for years left the board and several left the business without warning. Rumours circulated about the FBI buying the board as part of an investigation into the "organized crime" involved in escorting and message parlors nationally. Perhaps coincidentally, and perhaps not, the sites have been shut down ever since the very day a week or two ago when the national investigation the FBI had made into the spa/massage/escort business was revealed on the news nationally. I doubt it's coincidence, and I'm furious that either our federal tax dollars went to buy a legal message board (it's legal to *discuss* escorts/"gray market spas", first amendment and all) in order to use it to investigate a local crime like prostitution, or that the owner was possibly coerced into handing a discussion area to the government. What's the FBI doing investigating escorting/spas, anyway? Their excuse given to the media was that they were focusing on "a nationwide network of slavery and indentured servitude in Asian spas"--and yet, in three years on the Decadent City board, I never came across even the mere mention of such a thing. In all likelihood, the operation was mostly about getting a media victory and about using a major national discussion forum about escorts as a clearinghouse to help local law enforcement fight a moral battle about something most people think should be legalized--street prostitution is something most people abhor, but quiet out-of-the-way escorting is seen by 67% (Gallup? poll) of Americans as something which should be legal.
In reality, websites are probably censored or removed by the American government all the time. We need to start to hold the FBI and others accountable, and the mainstream media has to stop seeing the Feds as a purely benevolent force and realize that it's bad when they deep-fry Davidians or shut down a site for having video of a riot or try to accuse some hacker kid of being responsible for hundreds of millions of $$$ in damages for copying but not destroying corporate data purely for fun and challenge.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I think this states fairly clearly that the FBI stepped waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of bounds. But will they be held accountable? Or will the only Western country not to sign the Geneva Convention ignore human rights, once again?
OFTC: By the community, for the community
So what's the moral of the story? Find yourself a medium that you control, don't depend on renting space from other companies. How you do that is up to you.
So what do you do when all mediums are controlled by large corporations?
You see, people always think that government is the sole threat to free speech on the Internet, and it is a threat, but it's not the only one. Industry could, conceivably and very possibly, create a barrier-to-entry so high (the reason the internet is so free and inspiring is that the barrier to entry is so low) that the few who can afford to run a website are the ones who control the majority opinion.
You've already seen that happen with television, radio, and newspapers. They're all controlled by conglomerates who create economic barriers to competition. And since it's usually an oligopoly, and not a monopoly, and since it's not technically holding people back (by force of law) from free press, people claim that this is still a free country.
I say, stop bothering to get up and arms when the government claims it can censor or control the internet. They can't, they don't know how. But industry does, because they've been censoring and controlling mediums for years. It's nothing new to them. It's not oppression, they say, it's economics. But whatever they call it, the end result is the same.
So how do we combat this? We need to do all we can to keep the cost of the Internet down. At times like this, Free Beer can equal Free Speech. Linux, and the cooperative in San Francisco which sells T1 lines at cost is a fantastic example, and I wish I could see more situations like this crop up. It would also be nice to see the computer industry unionise but that's a whole different post.
In the end, if you don't want to see the Internet get gobbled up into the stomachs of the bloated plutocrats, it is up to you to make sure it doesn't happen. Keep the internet cheap and open to anybody, and you'll insure that the internet will be cheap and open for your own needs.
Michael Chisari
Welcome to Your Rights Online. This is a seperate section from the normal slashdot, and the colours are there to let you know that. Try clicking on the other sections in the little box labelled "Sections" at the left-top of the page and you will see what I mean.
http://www.rumormillnews.com The video is up there. Let's all make sites with the video on it. Though I am beginning to wonder if this is just a publicity stunt and the FBI never really did anything.
I would have to agree - the following statement at the end of the article really caught my eye:
:-)
"For Z., blurring the line between truth and fiction is what makes his work unique".
I think we might all be becoming part of his work; the video clip (the truth of which the site apparently left in doubt), followed by a story (in a well known media source) of federal agents behaving in a manner that sounds more like what was apparently portrayed in the video than real life, followed by our real reaction to it.
If this was his intent, for the fictional video with a faint suggestion of truth to produce several layers of apparent reality arount itself, I admire his creation
Or, I could be half alseep, and my normal paranoia overrun by fatigue, with an inexplicable flashback to an art history class I attended several years ago.
If this is true, it is a career-ending move for the agents and officers involved. Period. Which is why I think it's a hoax intended to garner publicity for the artist's work. Your local yokel in B.F.E. might be this stupid; the FBI are not.
If this is a hoax, then I hereby nominate that the artist actually lose his 'net access for 90 days. In my view, we cannot afford to have people crying 'Wolf!' over issues like this, especially when the underlying motive is self-promotion. We need to discourage this kind of thing... If it's a hoax...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
That if it was on Google it would be archived. Then at the very least we could read the text and get some sense of context about the page.
It seemed odd but I did a search for "crowdedtheater" and got no results, but when I searched "crowdedtheater" and "mike" I got results containing just the results "mike". I was under the impression that Google only returned results containing all search terms.
Kind of odd.........probably not some kind of conspiracy.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
I think the kicker is "find a medium you control". Sure he could put up his own webserver, but then what's to stop the FBI from contacting his ISP to deny him DNS services or disable routing or whatever it takes. I'm not liking this at all.
Where was the FBI when NBC showed that lame ass Y2K movie the other night? Many more people were likely to see it than some guys website. Of course going after NBC would've been a national story and a big hassle. On the upside maybe it would've distracted Jesse Jackson from whatever he thinks he's doing in Illinois, but I digress.
... but the feet deal under the table, as an old Russian saying goes. The trick here is that no Government wishes to have Internet listed as a freedom of speech issue.
.) (And please read everything criticaly, especialy this article.)
In Sweden there is a constitutional legislation about protecting the freedom to publish and distribute your views. And yet a recent (quite controversial) jugement decided that the internet is not a valid print media, and as such not protected by the free speech act.
This is happening all around the globe. And why? Because it's very easy to publish something on the net. No special resources are needed, you don't even need a computer as you can walk down to your local library and borrow one. All you need is a little bit of knowledge and something to say. And that's dangerous to any government.
I could just as easily be describing how to destroy the US (or any other) government, telling people that one race or religion is superior to another or that abortion is murder and should be punished by death. All of these are statements that are easy to find on the web. All of these are available in print, if you know where to look. So why would anyone care if these (or any other) opinion are also available on the net?
First of, the net is accessible to anyone and there is no (practical) way to check on who accesses what. Therefore there is no way to catalogue 'dangerous elements', however security agencies choose to define the term. It's very easy to check who's going to a meeting or ordering a book, it's much harder to check who's looking at a webpage and even harder to check who's there because of conviction and who just surfed on in.
Secondly, news on the net spread like fire on the steppe. Just think about the case of Mahir, the turkish man who's (stolen) page became the focus of millions of viewers overnight (why? don't ask me, I find it all rather strange). The same could be possible of the White America Movements webpage, or any other extremist groups. And that would lead to media panic. Just think of the headlines 'Nazi party attracts millions of followers', 'Fourth Reich founded in Illonois'. Heck the possibities for bad titles, bad reporting and free exposure for any obscure extremists are humongous.
Third, the Internet is not (yet) protected by any cohesive freedom of media act. Therefore anything published on the net does not benefit from the same rights as a 'normal' publication. For example, in Sweden it's illegal to force vendors to stop selling a certain book, but it's quite legal to force an ISP to stop hosting a certain page. I immagine it's the same in most of the western world.
So there you have four points (yeah, I did number only three, mea culpa) about why censoring the web is so attractive. It's easy to publish on it, it's hard to check the spread of publications, it's easy to spread the widely, which makes undesirable (from an government policy standpoint) websites classed as 'dangerous' and it's easy to do something about it, which makes govenment agencies more likely to intervene. And I'd like to point out that they did not pull Mike Z.s' page until it started to attract attention (security trough obscurity and all that *grin*). Until Mike Z. became famous (however little fame he got) he was just another coock (sic?) ranting away on the net.
For the wrap up then; first to repeat Garins comment:
Find yourself a medium that you control, don't depend on renting space from other companies.
Very true, just as you can't depend on finding a printing house that is willing to publish your essay on why 'Mein Kampf' is the greatest literary work of all times, you can't expect that ISPs will be throwing themselves at your feet to host your 'International Terrorism for Dummies' website. And if an ISP does host it, don't expect them to fight for it. That's your job. If you feel that your views are worth fighting for, you're the one that has to do all the fighting.
Secondly, assuming that you share my brand of political pessimism, governments will do pretty much anything to force their version of 'goodness' on the world. But anyone with a conviction will do that, even if it's a politico whos conviction is that pushing a certain matter will gain him more votes.
If still in doubt, see how the German government managed to ban 'Mein Kampf' in the western world (I'll give you a hint: they claimed that they had the copyright to it and then refused to allow anyone to publish or distribute it, they even managed to get it banned from libraries, except for research reasons) or how the Swedish government managed to claim that the Swedish people wanted to ban nuclear power (by calling a referendum where the choices to vote on were 'ban now', 'ban by year 2000' and 'ban by year 2015'. The 2015 won with a large majority).
So, without further ado, have a nice and very optimistic life
Phase 1: Where do you want to go today? Phase 2: This is where you want to go today. Phase 3: You're not going any
The magazine::authorISP::mike z analogy of the previous poster is faulty. Mike Z. is arguably the equivalent of the magazine/publisher, not the freelance magazine writer. He is publishing his own materials on his own site. By analogy, the ISP is closer to lumber mill that supplies the paper the print magazine is published on or the shipping company that delivers the printed magazines.
And of course, in the U.S., the people have certain rights to freely express themselves in public spaces, in the mass media (e.g. the web), etc. without being subject to government agency intimidation tactics.
"Find yourself a medium that you control, don't depend on renting space from other companies" is pretty poor advice. How do you define control of the medium? Is it enough to co-locate a server? Get my own T3? Start my own ISP? Buy my own island, create a new independent country, bury cable under the sea floor, start my own ISP, then start my own web site?
A new nation-state for every legal (but controversial) web site, hurrah!
It's very arrogant to pass the judgment "End of story. Nobody's constitutional rights were stomped on at all." when that's precisely what's in question here. The discussion is hardly at an end.
It seems to me that anybody who took US History in high school should understand the irony of the domain name "crowdedtheater.com" being censored.
Even if this site was a "clear and present danger," which I doubt, the Feds needed to go through more official circles than just harassing the ISP.
Been a while since I took J110, but here are the court cases that I believe established the "fire in a crowded theater" precident: Debs Vs. United States and Schenck Vs. United States. The government won both of these cases, but that was during WWI and it's a heck of a lot harder to prove clear and present danger during peacetime. There's no doubt that this was a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
Each time they shut down 1 bend, don't break, let them do it, but raise a stink on the net 5 more will spring in their place
PS: trolling the public is an honorable profession - Orson Wells would be proud :-)
How many of you are tired of ISPs just shutting people down because they've gotten threatened by someone else ( whether it be with a lawsuit or whatever just hollow threats ). I think there needs to be something done about this, like something that says that internet providers can not be liable for their customer's content. Ok.. so are landlords responsible for everything that goes on in a apartment ? No... and neither are ISPs. Sure, a landlord has to report any injustices seen, just as any other person, just like an ISP. An ISP can not possibly monitor clients content. All this shouldn't even come into consideration though.. the ISP should just say 'No sorry, not untill we're ordered by a court to do so.' If an ISP did this, I would be impressed and I would use their services over others. AOL sickens me with their giving away client's information at the bat of an eye. Getting back to the liability thing with ISPs.. I thought I remember hearing a trial about that where they were figuring out whether or not a ISP is liable for the content it's clients upload. What was the outcome ? I'll do a quick search for it, I know it was on /.
later
rm -rf ~/.signature
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You're missing the point. The FBI is not a group of concerned citizens. The are an agency of the Federal government. Therefore, they are NOT permitted to use their power to intimidate. Regardless of the paperwork, the ISP thought the FBI was coming after them.
That has what is known as a chilling affect. Speach that would be protected can be silenced by the government even if the law is on the citizen's side. Even if it isn't close, the government can intimidate, clearly an abuse of the citizen's rights.
One must remember something extremely important: free speech is protected.... HOWEVER.... Nothing says that anyone else must support your message with their resources. For example, you have the right to publish and distribute your own magazine, but you do NOT have the right to demand that an arbitrary magazine publishes your essays.
Similarly, the FBI (or anyone else) does not have to get any sort of legal document to tell an ISP to wipe out your web site. All they have to do is ask nicely, and get the ISP to agree that they shouldn't be supporting this. Then, subject to the agreement that you have with your ISP (which almost ALWAYS protect the ISP, and practically never gives you any say in anything at all), your pages get trashed. End of story. Nobody's constitutional rights were stomped on at all.
So what's the moral of the story? Find yourself a medium that you control, don't depend on renting space from other companies. How you do that is up to you.
Ahhh! Excellent, that means I can put that big 'No Blacks Allowed' Sign back outside of my resteraunt! If they want to eat freely they should do so in a medium they control, right?
This guy was paying for his website, no one was being forced to look at it, support it, or even acknowledge it. but he DID pay money for the service he was recieving which should count for something even in this country. Would you be equally as complacent if the FBI had asked your ISP to pull your site? What if they decided to go one step further and yank your 'net access? Maybe decide you were a rabbel rousing dissident who needed to be jailed? After all, if what this man has to say is SO dangerous that the FBI doesn't want it said then he must be 'Evil' right?
You seem to be implying that the person who owns the brick and mortar structure you are using has unlimited authority over who uses that structure. You're wrong. This man is being discrimnated against on the basis of his political beliefs if nothing else. This is shameful and your atitude towards it is equally shameful.
'When they came for the Jews I did not speak up, because I was not a Jew. When they came for the Unions I did not speak up, because I was not in a union. When they came for me no one spoke up, because there was no one left.' Badly Paraphrased, but you get the point.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Our firearms are gradually being taken from us, leaving only government with any real power. Now, our speech is being taken from us, gradually, just like the guns, and we won't be able to do anything about it, even if we wanted to.
Everything now is done in the name of "safety." Liberty means nothing to the average Joe. We now live in an oppressive quasi-matriarchy, where freedom means "the freedom to not do unsafe things."
I'm sure a lot of people will object to what I say, but I don't care. That's how I feel about it. I think we need to get back to trying to preserve our Liberty, instead of trying to deny our humanity.
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page.
... on the Microsoft Monopoly board game, an article entitled "No, the ISP gets the lawsuit - they give in faster".
--
Xenu loves you!
considering what chaos goes on during any other ney year's, i think i have to side with the FBI on this one. The last time we had a turn of the century, people thought the world was commming to an end. Lucikly back then the average smoe didn't have access to firearms.
What the HELL are you talking about? At the turn of the last century (1900 over to 1901) fire arms where in abundant supply all over the country, shooting was a gentlemans sport, and almost every man in the country owned a rifle. Of course, at the turn of the last MILLENIUM there weren't quite so many firearms ya know....
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Domain is registered to a Mike in NJ and DNS data is correct for the ISP. Doubt that this is a hoax as many have claimed.
h ois/?STRING=crowdedtheatre.com
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/w
The ACLU Cyberliberties page shows what the ACLU is doing about net censorship, encryption regulations, and digital wiretapping. The ACLU has been in the forefront of the fight against net censorship.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
it took me a bit to get it so here is another mirror:
http://bell-2216.cheg.uark.edu/ ~jmh3/stuff/timesq.ram
john
john
-- john
I think its generally accepted that threatening behavior is behavior that a reasonable person would find threatening. Thus, if a motorcycle gang crowds around you brandishing knives, it would be considered threatening behavior even if they weren't pointing the knife at you.
Receiving a call from the US attorney's office and FBI saying they had a problem with a web site you are hosting is going to send a chill down the spine of any ISP. Because the threat is subtle is no reason we should not proscribe this behavior from our law enforcement officials.
What the hell do they think they're doing anyway? If its against the law, enforce the law. If it's not against the law they have no business making "friendly" calls to ISPs with editorial comments.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
One more thing - according to the article, the ACLU is considering a lawsuit against the FBI over this. So they are on the ball, and my membership money is well spent.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If the FBI wants to try to surpress this then lets make shure that they can not. We need more mirrors in other countries and we need to let Mike Z. put his whole site up, not just the flick. We can spread this thing without the artists help, but then the FBI has been at least partially successful since the artist recieves less benifit from his work. If someone knows the artist please incurage him to take advantage of some the new hosting opertunities.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You have given a prime example of the need for education on the relationship between rights and responsibilities.
As a semi-fascist, I truly believe that everyone should ask how their actions could affect the country and their countrymen. You seem to be only interested in what your rights are, and how you can interpret your rights to interfere with the rights of others. This person wanted to cause a scare. He wanted to walk into a crowded theater and yell "Fire". I have no doubt of that.
The FBI probably asked the site to take a gander at the site and determine whether or not this broke the agreement the site maintainer signed. I would be surprised if it didn't.
Now, having given 6 years of my life to defending the rights you enjoy, I think you need to consider what affect this person's perceived rights might have on others. If I ran around saying that everything you posted contained an HTML exploit, I would look as silly as this "artist" did. You would also be inconvenienced.
"Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." - JFK
We all need to live by those words. The needs of the few do not outweigh the needs of the many, except in the minds of children and romantics.
Ah, excellent, then since there are more of us than there are of you, and we find you to be taking up resources that would be better spent in purchasing us large screen TVs and T1 lines, you won't mind turning over all of your posessions to us for the benefit of the many, eh?
I suggest you rethink your beliefs in the sanctity of the majority as there are FAR more idiots in the world than intelligent folks. Maybe sometime the whim of the majority and 'what's best for society' isn't always what's RIGHT? After all, it would be GREAT for society if we took the 10 richest people on earth and divided their assets among the rest of the population....
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
That is not an exageration. If I saw one person torturing another, and I was armed, the torturer would cease immediately or would be shot. I think most of us would agree that this would be a justified use of force to defend another; the fact that the torturer was wearing a badge should not affect this.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Can you contact the artist and get us permission to mirror it? There are bunches of people ready to go.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
All they have to do is ask nicely, and get the ISP to agree that they shouldn't be supporting this.
The problem is, it doesn't sound like they asked very nicely. The ISP didn't say they agreed that the content shouldn't be supported, they said that they were fearful of loosing their business. It sounds like the FBI asked nicely the same way organized crime asks nicely for 'insurance premiums'.
So what's the moral of the story? Find yourself a medium that you control, don't depend on renting space from other companies. How you do that is up to you.
So THAT's what I should do with the $5,000,000,000 that's laying around on my coffee table! If you're not a backbone provider, you're susceptable to the tactics reported here.
As a note, the FBI placed the ISP in a really serious position, and will no doubt be FAR away if it ever becomes an issue. ISPs usually depend on a common carrier status to protect them from lawsuits over customer content. If they cut just one site for reasons of content that isn't somehow illegal, they become a 'publisher'. Publishers CAN be sued over what they publish.
This could go two ways, the FBI could either desert the ISP like rats, and let the ISP suffer for helping them, or it could protect them, and be guilty of running a protection racket.
Erm, sure. It's been done -- Nader versus, well, just about all the Big Three, and he's still around, right? Ask random people what they think about when they hear "Ford Pinto".
Rachel Carson definitely made an *impact* with "Silent Spring"...
Philip Agee worked with the KGB in publicly, repeatedly betraying his former employers -- the CIA -- and believe it or not, no hit teams were sent after him; the KGB has had its share of defectors (who sometimes *did* have to avoid kidnapping/assassination) as well.
A pair of reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, broke the Watergate story and explored the malfeasance of the Nixonian CRP.
If you rant and rave, you'll probably be largely ignored corner like "Redmond Rose"; if you start by documenting actual _hard evidence_ and articulate a cogent argument, perhaps starting with Letters to the Editor and such, then you will be heard. It's easy to ignore the bizarre (those that still espouse the _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, say), and the shrill (those that rely on entirely emotional arguments), but it's tough for most large targets to dodge facts.
That's why groups like the Sierra Club have better reputations than "Earth First!" -- discussion being considered better than sabotage -- and folks like Sam Nunn and Phil Gramm are more respected than Lyndon LaRouche or Vladimir Zhironovsky.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You're thinking of a recent (in my view...) CNN report, in which a couple of reporters conveyed the impression that US forces used chemical weapons to spray defectors in 'Nam. As it turns out, they didn't have hard evidence, did a goodly bit of selective quoting (with their interviewees repudiating the conclusions), and both got canned. CNN had at least (some) reputation to keep, and there had been a rash of reporters found to have twisted or sometimes completely made up "facts" to write sometimes-Pulitzer-prize-winning articles.
I don't recall any suit, however, and given how often the Gov't *is* libelled, they may not actually have the power to do more than call a press conference.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
it's not THINK what your country can do for you. it's ASK. Ted Kazinsky THOUGHT he could blow people up for the good of society. I'm sure that if he ASKED, people would have told him otherwise.
As well, the rights of the few do sometimes in fact outweigh the needs of the many. I have the right to say quite a few things that wou and other people would rather not hear. you could indeed claim, if it were upsetting enough, that you need not to hear it. however, that cannot override my right to say it (pendant of course on a few conditions that have more to do with your nose than my fist), at least in the US of A.
it is a tricky thing to determine the "needs of the many". who do you trust to do it? the president? the dictator? are they more the "many" than you or I? on the other hand, it is also hard to determine what rights an individual should have -- but it is far safer, in my opinion.
Lea
If you were to break into my house, you would be met with force, but only with appropriate force. If you are a threat to me, my housemate, or my dogs, I may use lethal force. If you are damaging my property, I will use sufficient force to stop you - but no more. If you are chained to my front door, I may have to hold you down while they cut your chains (or I might just leave you there and use the back door until hunger weakens you enough to deal with), but there's no way I would be justified in using chemical torture, or beating you, or electric shock, or anything similar. Yes, I will use reasonable force to defend myself or others; but I will not torture, nor will I sanction the use of torture, but will oppose it by any means necessary.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The bottom line IMHO is a matter of trust. People who support bans on firearms just don't trust those who do have them, and those who do have firearms don't trust those who don't to some extent.