US Gov't Orders 73,000 Private Websites Offline 536
joeszilagyi sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"... according to the owner of a free WordPress platform which hosts more than 73,000 blogs, his network of sites has been completely shut down on the orders of the authorities. Blogetery.com has been with host BurstNet for 7 months, but on Friday July 9th the site disappeared. ... Due to the fact that the authorities aren't sharing information and BurstNet are sworn to secrecy, it is proving almost impossible to confirm the exact reason why Blogetery has been completely taken down. The owner does, however, admit to handling many copyright-related cease and desists in the past, albeit in a timely manner as the DMCA requires."
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:4, Informative)
Just putting this out there, but helping prop up failing businesses is not, at least in my opinion, as bad as oppressing your population's "right" to have access to otherwise publicly available information.
I see where you are trying to equate the two, but they really are in two different leagues.
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This is just the beginning. (Score:5, Informative)
"A government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested that the websites in question may have had links to child porn, utility hacking guides, and terrorist activity. They could not say exactly due to the ongoing investigation."
Re:This is just the beginning. (Score:2, Informative)
Even if you disagree with shutting down the entire blog host over that, "major blog host shut down over possible child pornography connections" is a *completely* different story then "73,000 private websites shut down over copyright complaints".
Too Slow, Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
The authorities ordered BurstNet to take the server offline for what appeared to be very, very serious violations. Based on BurstNet's demeanor and seriousness when asked about the issue, it could be anything from national security to child porn. BurstNet also appears to have been hit with a gag order, as they've only made one (perhaps two) public comments on the situation, and absolutely refuse to make any more announcements.
Don't take my word for it - read up on the situation at the original WHT thread [webhostingtalk.com] (which is now closed).
Re:Fascism is coming (Score:3, Informative)
"Banned" is a bit of a stretch.
"The Federal Mafia is a book written in prison[18] by Schiff. In the book, Schiff contended that the income tax system and Internal Revenue Service were illegal. On August 9, 2004, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction issued by a U.S. District Court in Nevada under 26 U.S.C. 7408 against Irwin Schiff and associates Cynthia Neun and Lawrence Cohen, against the sale of this book by those persons.[19] This prohibition does not extend to other sellers of the book. The court rejected Schiff's contention on appeal that the First Amendment protects sales of the book, as the court found that the information it contains is fraudulent.[20]
Schiff, Neun and Cohen are currently barred under the preliminary injunction from selling or advertising material advocating nonpayment of tax, preparing a tax return for others, and from otherwise providing assistance or encouragement to others in violating tax law. Schiff and his associates are additionally required to provide a copy of the injunction to each of their customers, to post it on their website, and to provide the government with a customer list.[21]
Schiff and his associates have responded by giving the book for free on their website.[22]"
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:5, Informative)
> Who said US doesn't pull stunts like China?
>> China is *bad*. The U.S. is *bad*. But to say that the U.S. is "just as bad" is ridiculous and obviously false
Hey look, data!
http://report.globalintegrity.org/China/2009 [globalintegrity.org]
http://report.globalintegrity.org/United%20States/2009 [globalintegrity.org]
Or does that ruin it?
Here's the article, there are three (Score:3, Informative)
From the wikipedia article, there are three Americans that were held at Guantanamo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay [wikipedia.org]
Fascism may be coming, But your examples are BS (Score:3, Informative)
Claims of parent to support "Fascism is coming"...
- Books like The Federal Mafia have been banned: No. [amazon.com]
- NYT reporters have been silenced [...] in jail: "reporters" == Judith Miller [wikipedia.org], who got to do a couple months in the can to ponder the meaning of "contempt of court". She's not the first, and won't be the last.
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:3, Informative)
GITMO, that name ring any bells for you?
was in response to this statement:
For starters, in China, this guy would stand a good chance of being disappeared or shot.
Do you really think that Gitmo is an example of how the US government behaves toward citizens? I don't. Does it mean that the US isn't perfect? Well, yes. Of course it's not. But we don't have desaparecidos, and I think that's a big difference.
Also, to the pussies who modded me troll for my original response to h4rr4r (and whoever modded h4rr4r flamebait, too), I'm pleased to know we pissed you off. Whatever will I do now? This might cost me a tiny fraction of the enormous mountain of karma I've got.
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:4, Informative)
In a sane society, the criteria for an obligating bond such as marriage would be "informed consent" and nothing else.
Some cultures, such as our own, also use marriage as an institution to shore up child rearing efforts. Ergo tax benefits for married couples and for merely having children. You're painting it with entirely too simple a brush, probably simply to support your position, but there it is.
Next, juxtapose:
Informed itself is limited by the capacity to be informed, and so creates natural age, intelligence and species limits
with
We live in a society guided by rank superstition and goat-age desert morality, a condition exacerbated by a legal system that tries to solve very grey problems with black and white lines in the sand such as "age."
So you reject the laws made by anyone that used to subsist off of goats outright. Strange, but okay. Next you assert 'natural limits' and yet deny the law the right to arbitrarily define them. Also very odd. Would you advocate a one-time assessment, or merely an ad-hock application of the law at the whim of the arbiter? I think the age 'line' works as sort of a compromise. You know once you've hit it, and everyone else does also. I think it sort of 'just works'. Why don't you?
On a more positive note, you can live together with any number of consenting adults you choose to and there are very few restrictions on that anywhere in the country
In the United States this is largely false. You cannot live together with more than a handful of people from different families in basically any area with zoning laws. Check your statutes for the exact details, but around my home town, the limit is five people and only two of which may be adults. Otherwise, people would be turning residential neighborhoods into frat houses, etc...
Re:Too Slow, Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:3, Informative)
"blocked from receiving information" is a really, extremely loose standard.
Have you seen the full JFK assassination file? Because I haven't. Their website says the last of it can be held until 2017, so I'm guessing (unless you're Barrack Obama) that you are blocked from receiving information by your government as well.
No, but I've seen countless documentaries on it blaming everyone from the CIA to Castro. How many Tienanmen Square documentaries do think are aired on China TV?
As far as dissidents being shot by the government, well, in recent US history we have Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. It is sort of rare, but it does happen.
Ruby Ridge was bad. But Waco? This guy was holding hundreds hostage and attempted to burn down the building around them. The US Gov't screwed it up pretty bad, but they did have a court order that allowed them to enter. They should have just tried knocking first instead of kicking the door in.
When it comes to 'relatively', and once you factor billions vs millions, I do wonder which government has actually killed more people, as a ratio. I'm not confident what the result would be, but it would be interesting to see someone actually do the math.
Unless you are considering the Civil War, the US gov't has not killed millions. Besides, the GP was comparing Gitmo to China. For starters, there are no US Citizens at Gitmo. Next, those at Gitmo are accused of terrorism. Those in China have not been accused of anything except living in China.
Please do let us know once you have that completed.
Again, the GP was comparing Gitmo to China. Please explain to me how the population of Gitmo is greater than the population of China. Also, see my paragraph above where I explain how those are Gitmo are accused of being terrorist vs the "crimes" the population of China has committed.
Seriously? Do honestly believe that those in the US are as oppressed as those in China? Before you answer, consider I am in the US, reading and replying on an open forum accusing the US government of doing something bad. I think that alone should prove my point.
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:3, Informative)
I object to the use of the term 'battlefield'. Italy, for example, was not at any time within the scope of any legal operation[1] [wikipedia.org]. I think that this term romanticizes things a tad, don't you?
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:3, Informative)
No, but I've seen countless documentaries on it blaming everyone from the CIA to Castro. How many Tienanmen Square documentaries do think are aired on China TV?
So as long as any information is divulged, your standard is met? Because that's still way too biased for my tastes. You are, however, tacitly acknowledging the point that both governments withhold information deemed prudent. Your only objection then, would be to the degree.
That's fine, but you'll have to go back up and redefine your position...
Ruby Ridge was bad. But Waco? This guy was holding hundreds hostage and attempted to burn down the building around them. The US Gov't screwed it up pretty bad, but they did have a court order that allowed them to enter. They should have just tried knocking first instead of kicking the door in.
Yeah, most people don't really know the true story either, so don't feel too bad.
The real sequence of events was that the ATF did knock first, and there was a conversation in front of the house. We'll never know who shot first, but somehow those trained government agents went from a tax stamp violation to shooting people in a matter of minutes.
Look into it. It was almost certainly worse than you realize.
Unless you are considering the Civil War, the US gov't has not killed millions.
Well that is an interesting point, but no I don't think that this would be appropriate in a discussion of recent history. Neither would the Chinese culture revolution, but I don't think you've brought that up specifically.
No, what I meant was, a ratio of three million people would net a MUCH larger sample once factored against two billion people. 'Guantanamo and Tienanmen Square' itself may indeed be 'apples and oranges' but 'Chinese oppression and US oppression' is 'apples and crab apples'.
Again, the GP was comparing Gitmo to China.
That's nice. There's a greater topic, though, with more posts in it than only the one that supports your point. Take, for example:
Twist it how you want to, but the fact remains that both countries act like assholes and US is in the same level.
That's comparing countries, of which Guantanamo would be only one isolated example. So depending on how far up the conversation you're willing to go, one of us is off topic.
Re:It's a culture thing (Score:3, Informative)
Puritan ideas? The Puritans didn't believe anything from the waist up was off-limits. The nipple thing is not an outgrowth of puritanism.
The anti-sex attitude of the Puritans is also described by historian John Demos. He reports that throughout the seventeenth century, the Puritans in Plymouth Colony had "a steady succession of trials and convictions for sexual offenses involving single persons. 'Fornication,' in particular, was a familiar problem." Demos says the punishment for fornication was "a fine of ten pounds or a public whipping - and applied equally to both parties."
Although the Puritans had serious and even pathological hang-ups about pleasure, they were into violence. Calvin's Geneva beheaded adulterers. Religious dissenters were hanged, decapitated, or burned at the stake. Christopher Hitchens describes Calvin as "a sadist and torturer and killer, who burned Servetus (one of the great thinkers and questioners of the day) while the man was still alive."
http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/Puritans_dark_Side.htm [humanismbyjoe.com]
Obviously, we haven't kept all the Puritan ideals. But anti-sex and pro-violence attitudes remain.
And saying our main moral metric is profit is blatantly flaming. It's absurd.
What other value system do you governs the vast majority of our actions? Feel free to give examples.
Re:The fact is, US is just as bad as China (Score:2, Informative)
That's right. We don't keep citizens at Gitmo, we lock them up in the Charleston Navel Station or the Bagrum air base. Or we ship them to helpful eastern European countries where they mysteriously disappear or commit suicide.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:yeaaah (Score:3, Informative)
In China, if you say the wrong things, you can be arrested and then executed. That simply does not happen in the US. There IS a definite difference.
To play devil's advocate here, you have cases like Ruby Ridge [wikipedia.org] & the Waco Branch Dividians Seige [wikipedia.org] where you can argue that in the US they don't even bother arresting you before they execute you.
There's also been numerous cases of law enforcement breaking into the wrong house on a drug/guns/whatever bust and killing totally innocent people because of it. It's happened often enough that there's really no good way to excuse it. Yes mistakes happen, but when mistakes result in the government basically murdering innocent people, there's something seriously, seriously wrong. After it happens once there should have been changes made to make damn sure it never happened again. And yet it keeps on happening.
And of course you yourself brought up warrantless wiretaps & rendition. You also have the ultra-secret national security orders that the PATRIOT act gave us, and then this story we're posting comments on where someone's entire domain was taken down and the ISP's not allowed to tell him WHY. I'm willing to bet that whatever the reason turns out to be it won't be a national security issue, so the ultra-secret nature of the take-down will be totally unfounded.
So, execution of innocents, murder of people without even bothering to arrest them first, domestic spying, torture, refusing to even tell you what you're accused of (and not charging you for it)... it's starting to sound pretty bad isn't it? I wouldn't personally class the US up there at China levels, but there are certainly plenty of things they do wrong enough to make the comparison not totally unfounded. And to be perfectly frank, all the things the US does wrong worries me a lot.
Posted AC because I wasn't kidding about that worrying thing. I'm scared to criticize my government openly any more.