While it would have been The Right Thing To Do for GoDaddy to tell the Feds to go fsck themselves, when evaluating these situations, one should look at who has the power. That is the entity with whom the primary responsibility rests. Because that's the entity that has the ability to "make an offer that can't be refused."
Yeah - if they can shut down this site like this without anything resembling due process, what's to stop them from shutting down Azure or AWS because someone says that a customer has pirated music or the plans for a WMD somewhere in those clouds?
What evidence do you offer that there were another 65K malignant accounts/forms? Or is this just speculation to support a draconian action by an increasingly intrusive and rights-oblivious government?
Furthermore, one might well argue that any sort of free and/or anonymous services should be shut down by your logic. That includes email, blogs, websites, social media accounts - after all, any and all of those could be used for unethical ends.
While carrying your passengers to an important meeting, you are pulled over. The officer takes the tires off your vehicle without telling you why, and only returns them when a large crowd of people start muttering and taking pictures.
Unfortunately, the same crowd also uses your taxi service - or used to, until they discovered that they cannot rely upon your ability to get them from point A to point B because J Random Law Enforcement Official might take your tires again, and they'd be stuck until he decided to give them back.
Without warrant, due process or subpoena - on an anonymous accusation alone - their business was probably just ruined. Because a cloud company that loses it's reputation as a stable data location is DOA.
If one has reasonable cause, the next step is to get a court order. The above linked articles indicate that it is extremely unlikely that such was done.
Furthermore, the linked articles state that the business in question has, on their own initiative, taken down 65K bad forms.
There may have been something amiss with some of their customer's data, but there is no way in hell that this was the appropriate response. There is no way that taking down this site without due process prevented a nuclear or biological attack, or any other 24-esque scenario.
And how many CIO's will say, pull our forms from them - we can't guarantee access to our data?
It just takes once to do massive damage to reputation. And for data management / cloud companies, reputation of perfect availability of a user's data is absolutely everything.
And it all may have been done without a court order....
Note the two criteria: a court order or a notification from a prosecutor. That latter category amounts to an unproven allegation—and it's what Tank believes derailed him here. "No, as far as I know, there is no judge order," he told me. "They sent a request to GoDaddy and GoDaddy complied."
Even if the owners are not guilty of negligence, which it appears they are not (65K forms removed), this sort of arbitrary, no-warrant, no-subpoena, no due-process can absolutely ruin a business.
There is no way the Feds can make up for this; CIO's will say, "Well, I guess we shouldn't use them - we might not have access to our data."
The payout is supposed to be a complete monopoly on all content of all types.
If you want to read/watch/listen to/experience anything, you've got to pay the owner for it.
That is what the whole "Ownership Society" touted by the previous administration really is about. Or to put it another way, the few owning the rest - the owned.
The logical conclusion of your premise, though, is that knowledge is a privilege.
The media (scroll, book, eBook) doesn't matter; what does matter is whether or not those who cannot afford huge fees to read are allowed access to books - or not.
Unfortunately, in the eBook world, publishers are basically saying that an instance of an eBook needs to be replaced every year (26 lends at two weeks per lend):
The thing about forcing certain goods and services into the area outside the law is that if enough people want those goods and services, it becomes socially acceptable to ignore the law. This both weakens the law in general (and thus the fabric of a government of laws) while at the same time turning the law into a tool of oppression for those in power.
It happened during prohibition. It happened during the war on drugs. And now it's going to happen in this war on piracy.
All you've done is make sure that the dark nets are... dark.
Just like the war on drugs has not had any perceptible impact on drug use, the war on piracy will simply make criminals out of people who want to read a book, but probably won't stop them from doing it.
So - I guess that physics and astronomy are also pseudoscience. Because they cannot generate a model that will tell us when the next asteroid will hit the Earth.
Get the pitchforks and torches, and burn down the science departments!
Pixie Dust scientists get no research grants, while medical doctors get buckets of money to study "medicine"!
From this, the only conclusion is that obviously a giant international conspiracy by by that relatively small and tightly knit group known as "medical doctors" to suppress the knowledge of the magical healing powers of Pixie Dust!
(Plus, those medical doctors with their socialist Hippocratic oath make my blood boil...)
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While it would have been The Right Thing To Do for GoDaddy to tell the Feds to go fsck themselves, when evaluating these situations, one should look at who has the power. That is the entity with whom the primary responsibility rests. Because that's the entity that has the ability to "make an offer that can't be refused."
Yeah - if they can shut down this site like this without anything resembling due process, what's to stop them from shutting down Azure or AWS because someone says that a customer has pirated music or the plans for a WMD somewhere in those clouds?
What evidence do you offer that there were another 65K malignant accounts/forms? Or is this just speculation to support a draconian action by an increasingly intrusive and rights-oblivious government?
Furthermore, one might well argue that any sort of free and/or anonymous services should be shut down by your logic. That includes email, blogs, websites, social media accounts - after all, any and all of those could be used for unethical ends.
You drive a taxi for a living.
While carrying your passengers to an important meeting, you are pulled over. The officer takes the tires off your vehicle without telling you why, and only returns them when a large crowd of people start muttering and taking pictures.
Unfortunately, the same crowd also uses your taxi service - or used to, until they discovered that they cannot rely upon your ability to get them from point A to point B because J Random Law Enforcement Official might take your tires again, and they'd be stuck until he decided to give them back.
SOPA/PIPA would have allowed takedowns without due process.
Which is exactly what happened here.
First they came for Julian Assange and Wikileaks. I didn't like Julian Assange or approve of Wikileaks' methods, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for MegaUpload. I'm not a computer pirate, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came after JotForm. I hadn't even heard of JotForm, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came after me and my blog. There was no one left to speak up.
And then they kicked down my front door, and I had no way to tell anyone.
Without warrant, due process or subpoena - on an anonymous accusation alone - their business was probably just ruined. Because a cloud company that loses it's reputation as a stable data location is DOA.
If one has reasonable cause, the next step is to get a court order. The above linked articles indicate that it is extremely unlikely that such was done.
Furthermore, the linked articles state that the business in question has, on their own initiative, taken down 65K bad forms.
There may have been something amiss with some of their customer's data, but there is no way in hell that this was the appropriate response. There is no way that taking down this site without due process prevented a nuclear or biological attack, or any other 24-esque scenario.
And how many CIO's will say, pull our forms from them - we can't guarantee access to our data?
It just takes once to do massive damage to reputation. And for data management / cloud companies, reputation of perfect availability of a user's data is absolutely everything.
Lose that, and you're done.
Followup: relevant paragraphs:
And it all may have been done without a court order. ...
Note the two criteria: a court order or a notification from a prosecutor. That latter category amounts to an unproven allegation—and it's what Tank believes derailed him here. "No, as far as I know, there is no judge order," he told me. "They sent a request to GoDaddy and GoDaddy complied."
Even if the owners are not guilty of negligence, which it appears they are not (65K forms removed), this sort of arbitrary, no-warrant, no-subpoena, no due-process can absolutely ruin a business.
There is no way the Feds can make up for this; CIO's will say, "Well, I guess we shouldn't use them - we might not have access to our data."
Looks like not.
Neither story covering it mentions a court order or a subpoena; one of them says that "it may have been done without a court order."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/secret-service-asks-for-shutdown-of-legit-website-over-user-content-godaddy-complies.ars
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/16/successful-online-startup-kicked-off-domain-without-stated-reason/
Just make sure you leave yourself full hidden access.
Use said electronic property to collect incriminating information about ${OTHER_PARTY}.
Then go back to court, take everything, including the dog you lost the last time around.
Or you could be civil about it, and share domain names, etc on an as needed basis.
That became, "Wow. I was an idiot when I was younger. They really were right when they said, 'Youth is wasted on the young.' Now, get off my lawn."
Why do you hate America?
What's to stop that from happening now?
Well said.
The payout is supposed to be a complete monopoly on all content of all types.
If you want to read/watch/listen to/experience anything, you've got to pay the owner for it.
That is what the whole "Ownership Society" touted by the previous administration really is about. Or to put it another way, the few owning the rest - the owned.
The logical conclusion of your premise, though, is that knowledge is a privilege.
The media (scroll, book, eBook) doesn't matter; what does matter is whether or not those who cannot afford huge fees to read are allowed access to books - or not.
Unfortunately, in the eBook world, publishers are basically saying that an instance of an eBook needs to be replaced every year (26 lends at two weeks per lend):
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889452-264/harpercollins_caps_loans_on_ebook.html.csp
That's a lot more than a few pennies per lend, to say the least.
Overlapping circles of people who share books.
The thing about forcing certain goods and services into the area outside the law is that if enough people want those goods and services, it becomes socially acceptable to ignore the law. This both weakens the law in general (and thus the fabric of a government of laws) while at the same time turning the law into a tool of oppression for those in power.
It happened during prohibition. It happened during the war on drugs. And now it's going to happen in this war on piracy.
All you've done is make sure that the dark nets are... dark.
Just like the war on drugs has not had any perceptible impact on drug use, the war on piracy will simply make criminals out of people who want to read a book, but probably won't stop them from doing it.
Read the first comment.
So - I guess that physics and astronomy are also pseudoscience. Because they cannot generate a model that will tell us when the next asteroid will hit the Earth.
Get the pitchforks and torches, and burn down the science departments!
Fair and balanced: Putting whatever propaganda lies are most useful to the monied interests on at least equal footing with provable fact.
Pixie Dust scientists get no research grants, while medical doctors get buckets of money to study "medicine"!
From this, the only conclusion is that obviously a giant international conspiracy by by that relatively small and tightly knit group known as "medical doctors" to suppress the knowledge of the magical healing powers of Pixie Dust!
(Plus, those medical doctors with their socialist Hippocratic oath make my blood boil...)