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Home News and Opinion Opinion Homeland Security goes mad for the holiday season
Homeland Security goes mad for the holiday season PDF Print E-mail
Monday, 29 November 2010 23:53

ICE SeizedI'm surprised you found us. We remain one of the few sites still accessible within the United States following a recent and ongoing spate of seizure of domains by two U.S. government agencies. The Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have shutdown a total of 82 sites. That figure is sure to rise over the coming days as both agencies work hard to ensure that sites they don't like don't contaminate the ordinary citizen with their filth.

With all the furore over the COICA bill recently, presumably these agencies decided to get the finger out and demonstrate how powerful they are. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), lets the Attorney General petition the courts to blacklist any website on which copyright infringement was a central activity. But as demonstrated by Homeland security and ICE, no such bill is needed. You simply need to link to couterfeit material and BAM! Your site is no longer online.

Torrent-finder.com, DVDscollection.com, Sunglasses-mall.com, and NFLjerseysupply.com have all had the privilege of falling under the snare of ICE. Their pages have been replaced with a snazzy, if sinister, looking graphic declaring that counterfeiting is a series crime.

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ICE

Image left on domains seized by ICE

And we agree. Counterfeiting is serious. But what's more serious is that if you link to such content, you too can be smashed like the pawn that you are. And COICA will ensure that the powers for shutting down websites are even more far ranging.

For example, Torrent-finder.com, a search engine for BitTorrent files, was shut down today. Torrent-finder.com doesn't actually host any content, but operates more like a regular search engine. Think of it as shutting down the yellow pages for having an illegal business listed within its pages. On that basis, why was Google left out of the clampdown? It listed all of the sites, and in the interests of fairness shouldn't it too have been shutdown? After all, if the law isn't applied fairly then it's..., what's that word again? Oh yeah, corrupt.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was on show today to proudly display his ignorance of how the internet actually works. "With today's seizures, we are disrupting the sale of thousands of counterfeit items," he announced. "We are cutting off funds to those looking to profit from the sale of illegal goods and exploit the ingenuity of others. And, as the holiday shopping season gets underway, we are also reminding consumers to exercise caution when looking for deals and discounts online. To put it simply: If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is."

We're not sure how long we'll survive this clampdown. This could be our last post. Somewhere within our sites, there's bound to be a link to illegal content, probably posted by a user somewhere that our moderators have missed. Despite our best efforts, we're preparing for the worst. Don't send any beans or cola. We already have two days supply which should tide us over the worst until we manage to replicate any offending site hundreds of times to demonstrate to the Senators supporting this and the COICA Bill their complete and utter ignorance, not to mention the unconstitutionality, of taking action without allowing accused parties the right to defend themselves in a court of law. Yeah, COICA doesn't allow any representations from accused parties either. The Police State is alive and well.

 

Last Updated on Tuesday, 30 November 2010 00:16
 

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