US Government Domain Seizures Failing Miserably 132
ktetch-pirate writes "Operation In Our Sites, a US Government-led domain seizure action to deal with piracy, is pretty much a failure. TorrentFreak has examined a significant number of sites that have gone on pretty much unhindered, despite the seizures. Already some questions have been asked about the constitutionality of the seizures, and the evidence used as justification, but it seems the end results weren't as good as boasted either."
Rojadirecta.es (Score:5, Interesting)
To sum it up (Score:5, Interesting)
- Violation of the right to due process: domain owners who are victim of the US government are not given explanations and they are expected to prove their innocence if they want their domain back. Not only is this unfair, but whatever country you live in you really do need to worry when your government rapes its Constitution and laws and decides it can do as it pleases. On top of this, it created a huge loophole where those seizures could be used to target specific people, businesses or websites for reasons those seizures were not made for.
- Too many errors, some very serious. Not only were innocent websites taken over, but some of them were outright falsely accused of hosting pedophile content - this damage is impossible to fix, even if a judge rules the accusation was a mistake your reputation will forever suffer from this.
- Taking over "US-owned" domains failed miserably - foreign 'illegal' websites were still doing fine (as the present article says)
- Taking over domains was inconsistent and arbitrary: some were prime targets while others were ignored for no apparent reasons. I don't know about the USA but many countries require the authorities to treat crime equally and logically. In those countries more serious offenders can get priority, but it would not be OK to seize a domain because the website hosted one song while another websites that hosts thousands of songs is ignored. Selective Justice should not happen, everyone must respect the same laws and must respect them equally.
Re:tl;dr (Score:2, Interesting)
And how'd that work out [dweebist.com] for them?
The government that tried it a couple of years ago got away with it, but the next one was overthrown, and the third one has a civil war on its hands.
Pulling the plug on the internet is a crappy way to stay in power. It just doesn't work.