Thread US Gov seizing the crap out of the internet

OzSTEEZ

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Nov 11, 2008
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All your domains are belong to US!

http://bonzerwolf.squarespace.com/today/2011/3/7/ice-escapades.html

Last month ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) shut down thousands of domain names. The Department of Justice and HSI office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. HSI failed to mention that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes.

ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized.

The domain in question is mooo.com, which belongs to the DNS provider FreeDNS. It is the most popular shared domain at afraid.org and as a result of the authorities’ actions a massive 84,000 subdomains were wrongfully seized as well. All sites were redirected to the banner below.

When it comes to foreign sites the US govt can only seize the domain name pointers of domains under its jurisdiction. ICE is not actually “seizing” any servers or forcing hosting companies to remove web content from their servers; what they are doing is using immixGroup IT Solutions to switch the authoritative name servers for these “seized domains.”

“What gives the US ‘jurisdiction’ is that it’s nominally controlled by VeriSign and thence ICANN, which is a US quango, so owners of .com domains are in a legal relationship with a US entity,” notes an unnamed source. “Outside the US, people have been known to get quite worked up about this arrangement, and there have been serious suggestions that ICANN should cede control (or transfer directly) to a UN body. Whether interference as in this case is legal in international law is, as far as I know, untested.”

If the US continues to seize the domain name pointers of foreign sites, especially those considered legal in their respective country, that may very well change. The cyberlocker RapidShare comes to mind. A German appeals court already ruled the site isn’t liable for user uploads, but the US could very well argue that it is a facilitator of copyright infringement, and therefore convince a US court that it needs to seize the domain name. If this were to happen then it’s likely the international community would more aggressively push for the US to cede control of ICANN to a neutral body, and put an end to its .com meddling ways.

Imagine if Iran or China had seized the domain names of Google, Twitter, or Faecbook because they help “facilitate” social unrest?
 
Hey I don't trust the government all that much either.

This just goes to show you how much I can't trust corporations.
 
Yea, this was originally driven by the nfl, power was given to the government to do it by the moral right wingers, and most importantly the people once again get fucked.