* I checked one of the sites they blocked at random, and they're using Google Analytics to track views. GA can be used to track a hell of a lot of things, as I'm sure every reader of this site knows, including location of views. They're also using Pikwik analytics. <speculation>Pikwik is OSS, so they could have modified the code to do some thing GA doesn't.</speculation>
* Torrent-Finder.com had about 1.7million page views a day[0], so I suppose it seemed like a good target. However, many of the other sites blocked don't even register. In fact, they all seem like those extremely shady sites that very few people would ever actually visit. Torrent-Finder.com seems to have been the only properly popular site on the list (onsmash.com has rather high pageviews also, ~610,000 pv/d) <speculation>My question is why the hell did they hit torrent-finder.com when virtually every other site on the list probably couldn't have kicked up a media storm?</speculation>
* Every site is now hosted in Charlotte, North Carolina. DHS ICE seem to have some sort of facility there, but I've not been able to find much info on it at all. <speculation>Torrent-finder.com seems to have been hosted in Egypt beforehand. Does this affect the legality at all?</speculation>
* The two (as far I as i saw) most popular sites, onsmash.com and torrent-finder.com, had their traffic peaks during the second half of 2009[1]. Furthermore, the majority of traffic for Torrent-Finder.com was well outside the USA - eastern Europe, mostly[2].
* The sites that have been seized seem to mostly have been sites to buy knockoffs of designer clothing/accessories/what have you. Not as many seemed to be file-sharing websites.
The government is censoring our means of communications, end of story. If they see it as their role to control my information, it doesn't matter if we find a new DNS system, their agenda is set. My DNS server is not broke, the government is. Lets fix the problem, not the internet.
"My DNS server is not broke, the government is. Lets fix the problem, not the internet."
Yes, the government is broken in this regard, but I would contend that your DNS is broken, too, and here's why. Your DNS provides your computer with directions to the next point of interest. Right now, it's pointing you to where you don't want to go because it's been told to, or the government has illegally seized the final location, etc. In this way, the DNS server is ~broken~. Not in its ability to look up map values, but in its ability to provide the correct ones.
If your GPS only told you where govn't controlled gas stations are, and you wanted to use Non-Govn't-Standard, you'd change GPSes, finding the current one unsatisfactory, or perhaps broken. (where broken in this context means "not doing what you want").
Wikileaks did have their name seized in the US, it happened as part of the "Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit" - but it was overturned with the judge citing First Amendment concerns (ACLU and EFF filed motions in Wikileaks defence).
Pretty shocking. Then again, people get the government they vote for and the USA has clearly been decline to being a banana republic for a long time.
But I don't agree that this is a case of forcing anything on the world, com/org/net are US domain extensions, so I guess they have the right to control those. We're free to not use US domain names.
On the other hand, with ACTA the USA will force its view on the world.
The DNS root servers are already decentralized. The issue here is that the domains in question are registered with registrars (and/or utilizing name servers) that are under US legal jurisdiction.
If you want to do something that you don't want US authorities having control over, then move it to a jurisdiction that does not care what the US says (and good luck finding such a place, unless it was Iran or DPRK).
At a basic level - a court order from the US (whatever level of court) issued directly to, say, a registrar in the UK would have absolutely no legal standing as far as the registrar was concerned.
The US may have a heck of a lot of swing when it comes to overall global policy, but that doesn't mean foreign entities just, like, obey their court orders - that would be absurd.
Right on. Notice thepiratebay.org is still up and running. the registrar: Key-Systems GmbH (R51-LROR).
I tried running whois's on some of the banned names to see what registrars were cooperating, if it was all (for example) GoDaddy, but any pertinent info has been stripped out from the entries.
Anyone know how I can get the original registration info?
Sites like these are the scum of the internet, run by the scum of the earth. I'm not familiar with every site personally, but I have little doubt that they were all involved in flagrant copyright infringement.
And looking at torrent-finder.info, I have no doubt that 99.99% of the people going to that site were going there for the purpose of stealing stuff, not finding linux distros. The cheeky incredulity with which fans of these sites say "it's not their fault that everyone that uses their site is using it to traffic stolen goods!" is laughably transparent.
The western world is moving away from manufacturing physical goods, and these idiots using file sharing are making damn sure that nobody produces content either. What's going to be left? Finance?
There's a totally legitimate slippery slope argument to made for not blocking websites, and this story does smell bad in terms of legal due process, but I have a really hard time feeling sorry for the degenerates who ran theses sites.
these idiots using file sharing are making damn sure that nobody produces content either
We've had widespread unauthorized sharing of audio for over 10 years now. Is less new music being produced today? Or is more?
We've had widespread unauthorized sharing of video and movies for nearly as long. Are fewer TV series being created, fewer channels being launched, fewer movies made today? Or more?
There may be issues that arise if most people receive their entertainment via no-fee digital copying -- but underproduction of content does not, from the evidence so far, seem to be one of them.
good riddance... Sites like these are the scum of the internet, run by the scum of the earth.
First they came for the domains of the scum of the earth, and I said 'good riddance', because I'm not scum.
Then...
Put aside for a moment the allegations or apparent uses of these domains. Is it a good idea to enable punitive seizure of property without any legal hearing?
Are you saying that if we stop paying for content, more is going to be produced? For music, it's possible that it could be true (though I don't completely buy it) because of concerts and the fact that music is pretty low-budget, but if nobody pays for TV shows and films, they're not going to be made, at least those that require huge budgets and crews.
And either way, it's not our place to break the law because we're convinced we know better than the people we're stealing from. If musicians decide to give away their music and make money from concerts, fine, but for the most part they haven't, at least not yet.
And yes, I agree that this incident is problematic, but I think that they've probably done the right thing for the wrong reasons. The law is slowly evolving to meet these 21st century problems, but things take time. I personally don't see a huge difference between a website selling counterfeit goods and a physical store selling counterfeit goods, and I wouldn't have much of a problem with a store being shut down the moment it was caught openly selling counterfeit goods rather than after the trial.
I'm sure I'm missing a lot of details here, and I'm not at all well-versed on this stuff, but I think people tend to be way to quick to defend individual scumbags who are openly and knowingly distributing stolen and counterfeit goods whenever the internet is involved.
Fees paid per copy are only one traditional way to compensate creators. Copy fees don't work so well once digital technology becomes ubiquitous, and may be viewed by future generations as barbaric, because such fees may deny minds the education and culture they crave based on an arbitrary monopolistic price, unrelated to the cost of either original production or reproduction.
If per-copy fees were the only way to get necessary creative production, as you seem to suggest, that would be one thing. But your theory doesn't yet seem to be playing out. Rising piracy has loosely correlated, over the past decade-plus, with even more creation of the pirated types of content.
So the siege and retribution mentality -- "never mind due process, line the scum up against the wall and let 'em have it!" -- doesn't make any sense.
Again, this isn't your decision to make. These companies may be acting in a way that you consider counter-productive (and you may be right), but that doesn't give you the right to take their content in a way that they haven't allowed.
It's our decision as a society how much of a monopoly we grant copyright holders, and whether we also grant them the ability to seize property, like domain names, without due process.
Our society is richer because Jobs and Wozniak, before they founded Apple, helped people steal telecommunications services. The world is more connected because Zennstrom and Friis, before they made Skype, behaved like 'scum' in your eyes with file-sharing Kazaa. Our culture is richer because whole genres of music and other creative arts have at times ignored the rules against sampling, collage, and other reuse.
The simple 'always defer to all prior rules' argument isn't welfare-maximizing for either individuals or the world.
And even as we enforce current laws, which I accept as a general necessity, the accused deserve a chance to make their case, and the standards for enforcement need to be clear and applied evenly. A surprise domain-name seizure without notice only makes sense in emergency situations.
> A surprise domain-name seizure without notice only makes sense in emergency situations.
Do you think that the police give the owner of a store filled with pirated DVDs a chance to make their case? No, they seize the stolen property and close the store.
> Our culture is richer because whole genres of music and other creative arts have at times ignored the rules against sampling, collage, and other reuse.
You seem to be picking and choosing here. The subjects of these domain name seizures weren't using this stuff in a fair use manner, they were straight up distributing (and profiting from, through ads) stolen goods and selling counterfeit goods. Our culture isn't being made richer by someone selling counterfeit purses or helping people steal movies, TV shows, and video games.
It's easy to make these statements in vague terms, but imagine if you were an iPhone game developer whose $2 game was being distributed to tens of thousands of people by piracy networks, hurting your already lower-middle-class income. Do you think that's making our culture richer?
Disabling an entire domain name remotely is different from seizing physical counterfeits or evidence -- in its impact on speech rights and other legal activities, for example. We know what was alleged against these sites, but not their possible defenses -- that they were selling designer lookalikes without intent to deceive, for example, or providing DMCA-compliant search and user-contributed content services.
How do you know IP violations don't make our society and culture richer? The USA's greatest period of growth -- over 100 years ago -- and China's more recently were both characterized by lax IP enforcement compared to slower-growing areas.
In your scenario about software piracy, it really depends on whether the pirated copies primarily displaced sales, or went to young/poor/loosely-attached users who wouldn't have purchased at the actual price, anyway. It is not the case that if a wand could be waved and all piracy prevented, every pirated copy would be replaced with a paid copy. Given that, some piracy in OS, office, and even game software is thought to help top publishers by making their titles/franchises more popular. It's not at all the same as 1 copy made, 1 sale lost, someone loses more than the 'pirate' gained. Sometimes it's a boon for the pirate and neutral-to-mildly-beneficial outcome for the rightsholder.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but I don't see how you can say Apple and Skype exist because of Blue Boxes and Kazaa. That's like saying "The Pianist" exists because Roman Polanski raped some 13 year old...
"The Pianist" was not a more advanced expression of Polanski's sexual predilections. Those entrepreneurs' later tech ventures were more advanced expressions of the same causes that led to their early ones. Cutting off theif technical and entrepreneurial careers early might very well have created a different world today.
Of course not every crime enables, nor is excused by, later creative output.
But for Jobs/Wozniak, and Zennstrom/Friis, their legally-dubious earlier activities were closely related to the later more-famous and above-board collaborations. They were each hacking together, for fun or profit and arguably against the law, in hardware/software domains similar to their later successes.
You also shouldn't underestimate the effectiveness of conspiring with someone on something a little naughty to establish a strong trusting working relationship. Perhaps you've heard the expression, 'thick as thieves'?
We've had widespread unauthorized sharing of video and movies for nearly as long. Are fewer TV series being created, fewer channels being launched, fewer movies made today? Or more?
Post ho ergo propter hoc fallacy, there. The technology of making a film/video has become vastly cheaper than it used to be. This has been a far bigger influence on the economics of production than the ability to get copies via unauthorized sharing. On the other hand, it's a lot harder to make your money back than it used to be. File-sharing is partly responsible, but is only one factor among several.
First they came for the domains of the scum of the earth, and I said 'good riddance', because I'm not scum.
Yes, losing your domain is just like being sent to a concentration camp. I'm not asking you to support this (I don't) but let's keep a little sense of perspective here, shall we?
The Niemoller snowclone isn't meant suggest the endgame here is like a concentration camp. (If you complete it in your mind, that's not the last line.)
Rather, that if you cheer this tactic on now, simply because now it's used against 'scum', you shouldn't be surprised if this tactic gets abused more broadly against disfavored groups in the future. Did you fail to file your proper FEC election-expenditure reports for candidate advocacy blogging? Away with your domain name! In a back-tax dispute? Away with your domain name! Are you a troublemaker who's publishing unauthorized video of a TSA checkpoint? Away with your domain name!
The authorities should have to win a case, rather than just allege wrongdoing, to wipe a website completely from the net.
The authorities should have to win a case, rather than just allege wrongdoing, to wipe a website completely from the net.
Leaving aside the fact the website hasn't been wiped, as such, in what sense is ICE's procedure insufficient? They've obtained a valid court order, supposedly, so it's been approved by a judge. And like it not, dealing in certain kinds of merchandise makes both merchandise and assets subject to seizure, using laws which have been on the books a long time (and were thus known to the domain owners). The idea that customs officers have in rem jurisdiction (over things rather than people) in certain circumstances is a very old one.
The standards for issuing such a warrant should be higher, and the accused should have a right to dispute the allegations before being blocked from worldwide communication via those domain names.
A domain name is more than just a storefront; it's also the equivalent of a printing press and mailbox. Seizing all those at once, without a hearing where both sides had representation, is the problematic precedent.
Higher than what? From your remarks, It's not clear that you read the second link provided, which addresses such topics. This thread's dead, so my question is rhetorical more than anything else, but you can reach me at gee mail should you so desire.
I hate to say it, but looking at the list of sites that were blocked, good riddance
The problem is not never who blocked but how and why they were blocked.
Freedom speech only means something if it's freedom for those whose speech we dislike.
It's natural that those who are angling for wide-ranging control would start by attacking "the scum of the Internet". In this instance, being able to take down website essentially without due-process means that ICE has a tool which can be used on many other targets.
I downvoted it for the uncivil language. Surely it is possible make a contrarian point without peppering one's rant with "scumbags", "idiots", "degenerates", etc.? Maybe that would be acceptable language if we were talking about serial killers or people engaging in torture, but surely we can have a more rational, level-headed debate about file-sharing on all sides?
I consider people who live their lives leeching off the work of others degenerates and scumbags, and those who defend them idiots (especially because, in the long run, they're not acting in their best interest). I use civil language talking to people who I respect.
Advertising for what? Other content that's also supported by advertising? Someone has to be paying for something at some point in the chain for advertising to make sense.
with sites like "handbagcom.com" I can see your point
But w.r.t content, sites like DaJaz1 or OnSmash were more or less embraced by the industry (industry relevant to their product). Labels would submit content and bloggers would voluntarily with hold music from their reader even with a leak. It was a (relatively) good relationship. It demonstrates how these sites /can/ be embraced.
I'll play a bit of a contrarian and say that I'm not the least concerned about this.
The Internet is a grossly complicated system, and the ability to have nfljerseysupply.com resolve to your website is far from a given right. ISPs, web hosts, search engines, ICANN, governments, browser vendors, OS vendors, and more all have to cooperate for a domain to work. Each player has to cooperate to make your website reachable, therefore each player has the ability to make your website hard or impossible to reach.
It's scary if the US government has powerful legal tools to take down any website (see: China), but the US govt. has a track record of going after only a few criminals, not performing political censorship. So do all the players. Also, COICA, which would make this act easier, got gummed up in the Senate.
I don't know any details, but would you expect counterfeit websites to remain humming along while DHS raids warehouses involved with illegal manufacturing, importing or exporting of counterfeit goods?
The torrent search engine is a different beast, and by following legal precedent I'd expect the owner to be cleared of wrongdoing if and when it goes to trial. I also suspect the owner is being disingenuous, and was operating the site under a shell, making it difficult to find him and serve him warnings or legal papers.
I also interpret this as a sign that the media corporations are fucked. This is the best they can do with their global power, influence and money? Take out some counterfeiters and one lowly search engine?
Yes, we must be diligent against the government and corporations, but if this is all they have then it's nothing I'm going to get worked up over.
Actually it's not. The Internet that we know today is really NSFNet that was created because the DoD was sick of freeloaders riding on ARPANET. The DoD had very little input on the creation of NSFNet. What was ARPANET is now NIPRNet.
This is one of the many things that I learned by reading Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet. It's a fascinating look at how the Internet was created and focuses mainly on the financial and management side of the creation from about 1965-85.
I don't understand why so many people on this site defend intellectual property theft. I own a small software company that suffers from piracy every day. I worked day and night without pay for more than a year to write the software that I now make my living from. And after all that hard work the thugs and criminals at The Pirate Bay and elsewhere just steal it and make money off the ads or subscriptions. IP is a central and essential part of the world order and no single thinker in the piracy movement has advanced any serious alternative - and yes, I include Lessig in this.
Maybe the loud voices in this forum just enjoy stealing other peoples work without having their own work stolen, but bogus free speech arguments and hysterics about jack boots do not justify what is at it's core an immoral act.
I think it's because we believe that once we pay for something, it's our right to do whatever we want with it... and that includes giving it to friends. The problem with the Internet is that it makes it possible to bypass original sales in an unprecedented way because the cost of giving it to strangers comes at no cost to us.
Any solutions necessarily involves infringing on free speech (this) or infringing on an individual's right to do what they want with their purchases (DRM), so yes, I do support torrenting.
Most software is not sold but licensed and those licenses restrict the kind of sharing you are talking about. If what you suggested were allowed then one book publisher would only have to buy a single copy of a competing publisher's most popular book and then reproduce and sell it themselves but without paying royalties to the author.
Are you really suggesting that creators of IP should not be able to profit from their work? Where do you work such that such a world would not directly impoverish you? Not to mention destroy the entire US economy.
While I understand that there are serious due process questions raised by this story, the tone in this forum seems to go beyond that to outright support of intellectual property theft. That is worrisome to me.
I think it's because we believe that once we pay for something, it's our right to do whatever we want with it...
So, if you rent a car, does that mean its OK to drive it around the corner and sell it to someone else? you paid to get hold of the car, so it's yours, yes?
Oh, wait, no it isn't. You paid to rent it for a finite period under certain conditions, and signed a contract to that effect. the same is usually the case where software is concerned, but since you don't like the terms of the software contract too much, you feel free to ignore it, and redefine your licensing of the software as a purchase, granting yourself all kinds of new rights which the original creator never intended to give to end users. Now, you're welcome to say that software is way overpriced or those terms are so onerous you refuse to comply with them, a point of view I have some sympathy with. But at least be honest about the fact that you're choosing to ignore the contractual terms offered by the licensor and agreed to by the licensee.
edit: I don't mind being downvoted, but at least point out why you think the argument is flawed. Otherwise you're just blaming the weatherman for telling you that its raining.
Ah, but I'm not. I'm distinguishing between a purchase and a limited license.
I used the analogy of the car because we're familiar with it - we all understand you can buy a car, and also that you can rent one on a temporary basis. The kind of transactions you can perform on an object are not a function of the object itself.
So with software (or a movie or book etc. etc.) I could sell you all the rights: not just to use/watch/read it as a consumer, but to exploit it for commercial gain as a publisher. This is like the purchase of a car; you can do whatever you want with the property you now own. Or I could just grant you a limited license, reserving other rights for myself, as with the rental situation. This is what happens now when you 'buy' a piece of software or media - you're really buying the rights to a single copy of it. You can still do whatever you want with that single copy, but as soon as you start making your own copies - even if you're giving them away for free, or simply making them available via bittorrent - then you've gone into the publishing business. Now I don't necessarily approve of this approach, but that's how things are. You're getting into a contract with a publisher when you buy their wares, just as surely as if you had rented a car. That it's trivially easy to circumvent the terms of that contract doesn't alter the fact that you're a party to it.
Look at it this way: suppose you owned a printing company, and you happen to have all the technology you need to make books of any kind. And let's say you can also easily get them into bookstores. You get a hardback copy of Harry Potter's Secret Diary, a supplement to the popular series of books that is sure to sell millions. Since you have a book-style printing press on hand, you spend a busy week making plates and then rush out a paperback edition, on which you make a handsome profit. You've used your own paper, ink etc., so the original publisher is no worse off and hasn't lost a single copy of their stock.
Economically it does not matter how hard you worked, only what value others put on it.
And secondly, but far more importantly, I for one am not willing to give up my freedom of speech and right of due process to protect your monopoly on a few specific bit patterns. We give murderers, rapists, even child molesters their day in court and the right to question the evidence brought against them, to question and examine witnesses, to be judge by a jury of their peers and to petition the government for redress of grievencess but if they help others find places where they can search for specific bit patterns and make a copy of those, we give them none of these rights?
At this point all that is left is realize that I have been trolled.
You don't need to think what TorrentFinder is doing is justifiable or constitutionally protected to think that government shouldn't have the power to interfere with DNS systems without due process.
I agree completely that due process is essential and that this action doesn't pass the sniff test in that department.
But while Voltaire was willing to defend the speech (and presumably the due process rights) of those with whom he strongly disagreed, he did take the time to point out his disagreement while doing so.
I would just like to hear more voices in this forum express their distaste for IP theft when they are forced by the foolish actions of the government to speak out in defense of pirates.
I just get the sense that some people here might have pirated material and defend the pirates and second guess the business decisions of IP holders as a sort of sub-conscious defense mechanism. No one wants to think of oneself as a bad person but surely software piracy is wrong.
I do not think the debate is about theft. The important matter is who decides that it was theft.
We have an independent judiciary and that is there for a reason. Whether terrorism or copyright infringement, the government has no right whatever to decide on individual cases and facts. That is the job of the judges.
I hear you on this point and should have been clear that I do not approve of actions taken without due process.
But I also wish the rest of the posters here would state their opposition to piracy while they defend the pirates on procedural grounds.
It's like when skin heads march. All sensible people defend their right to hold a peaceful demonstration but it is good taste to also point out ones disapproval of the ideas those skinheads espouse.
The lack of voices making such clarifications has been notable.
And it sounds like typical apologist arguments.
To those lamenting this action: do you pirate music, movies, or software?
I'm sad to hear that you've been on the wrong end of software piracy. I guess it's easy to feel that the whole continuum of torrent sites and copyright infringement can be boiled down to one group, motive and morality, but unfortunately reality is a little more complex than that.
I haven't seen anyone in this thread defending intellectual property theft (though there are certainly people out there who do so) or the activities of these particular sites. Rather, what disturbs many of us, myself included, is government censorship without due process of law. We are concerned that once the precedent is laid, its use will inevitably expand to cover sites whose activities make the government uncomfortable for different reasons (WikiLeaks being a good example).
As a software author myself, I sympathize with your situation, but the risks here are much bigger than the loss of income to piracy.
Lots of people here sell software through subscription, or get revenue from ads. Others are satisfied with profits from various mobile app stores. Although there is piracy there, there are enough buyers because prices are cheap.
So the definite culprits of piracy are not "thieves" but bad pricing and inconvenient installation. The absence of "thieves" would not translate into more sales.
Subscriptions are great and we offer one as one of our products. Obviously we have no piracy problems there. But our software is arguably more sensibly delivered as desktop software due to it's cpu and file size considerations.
So while we started with an online offering, users demanded a desktop version and we delivered.
It is easy to assume that because your business is not a victim that those business that have suffered are just not as good at delivery, but I think you are wrong and I would argue that even businesses that make bad decisions deserve to have their IP protected by government action.
Maybe they do deserve protection, but that's not how the real world works. Right and wrong are decided by groups of people, not moral absolutes.
Here more people seem to care about freeing knowledge than profiting from it. They see large entities like old IBM, current Microsoft as impediments to progress, overcharging for software, making large profits from business customers and not spreading the benefits of that software or making software poorly suited to the less well off. That's a vague description of the sentiment.
Eventually these groups face off in arenas where arguments don't count and someone comes out ahead.
It's impossible to stop piracy technologically, lawyers can only threaten or fight little skirmishes for publicity to discourage the general populace from it. Ultimately struggling businesses need to put up more than arguments. It took music companies a long time to get around to that, could have been much smoother with less lawyers and more service.
Governments have always used their power to try to further special interests. Indeed, the only reason for political parties is to have places where various special interests can line up against each other.
In the past there has always been enough time to create a narrative so that the parties can "make sense" to the voters. One party doesn't say it's supporting trial lawyers: instead it's "looking out for the little people". Another party doesn't support the military-industrial complex, instead it's providing for the defense of the nation. In other words, its possible to spin these special interests in such a fashion as to appeal to the little guy. This makes people buy into what the government is doing -- the consent of the governed.
But the wheels seem to be coming off the trolley -- it's becoming apparent that technology is changing so fast that the political parties can't catch their narratives up with reality. When you had communists threatening to conquer the world for thirty years, there was plenty of time to make a strong case for a defense industry. When you had super-huge corporations threatening the citizenry with pollution and such, it was easy to make a case for environmental laws and enormous lawsuits.
But file-sharing? Photo-realistic-capable naked body scans? Imposing total data visibility into the world's financial systems? Declaring that Americans still owe taxes even if they leave the country for tax reasons?
There may be very valid and reasonable arguments to be made for each of these things, but in my opinion nobody has made them yet. Instead, we just have a fear of one thing trotted out -- terrorism, big corporations, whatever -- and then we're told that these things we have lost were for a good reason.
Making matters worse is that some special interests, such as the movie, music, and software guys, (and the security guys) have effectively bought off both parties. So it doesn't matter who you vote for, you're stuck with doing whatever these interests want. And its becoming more and more apparent that these interests will use the full force of law to go after anybody they see as an enemy to their cause.
Even though I'm emotional about this, I see no reason to rant and rave. It's not going to change anything, and getting emotional just gives other people something to make fun of. In my opinion this current trajectory cannot continue for many decades longer. That's just the way it is, no matter what each individual's opinion on each of these issues may be.
I'm reminded of Ronald Reagan, when asked why he left the Democrat party, said, "I didn't leave the party. The party left me."
I certainly hope the same thing doesn't happen to the consent of the governed in most of the world's major democracies.
EDIT: If you'd like a startup/technology angle to this, then my advice is not to go into business in any area that one of these interests might be involved -- unless you have strong political connections (or are willing to develop them). If you're able to develop those connections, however, it should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Governments have always used their power to try to further special interests.
The US as a constitutional republic was designed to frustrate that tendency. Recent calls for the repeal of the 17th amendment (senators used to be selected by state legislatures; that amendment made it popular vote instead) are based on that argument.
Under the original arrangement, senators had strong
incentives to protect federalism. They recognized that
their reelection depended on pleasing state legislators
who preferred that power be kept close to home. Whereas
House members were considered representatives of the
people, senators were considered ambassadors of their
state governments to the federal government and, like
national ambassadors to foreign countries, were subject
to instruction by the parties they represented (although
not to recall if they refused to follow instructions).
And they tended to act accordingly, ceding to the
national government only the power necessary to perform
its enumerated functions, such as fighting wars and
building interstate infrastructure. Moreover, when the
federal government expanded to address a crisis (such as
war), it quickly retreated to its intended modest level
after the crisis had passed. Today, as historian Robert
Higgs has observed, federal expansion creates a “ratchet
effect.”
Just as important as its role in securing federalism, the
Senate as originally conceived was essential to the
system of separation of powers. Bicameralism — the
division of the legislature into two houses elected by
different constituencies — was designed to frustrate
special-interest factions. Madison noted in Federalist 62
that basing the House and Senate on different constituent
foundations would provide an “additional impediment . . .
against improper acts of legislation” by requiring the
concurrence of a majority of the people with a majority
of the state governments before a law could enacted. By
resting both houses of Congress on the same constituency
base — the people — the Seventeenth Amendment
substantially watered down bicameralism as a check on
interest-group rent-seeking, laying the foundation for
the modern special-interest state.
While this "repeal the 17th amendment" stuff is a pet cause among some on the right, there is very little evidence that it would have the effects its proponents claim. Here is one rebuttal: http://volokh.com/2010/06/11/would-repealing-the-seventeenth...
When people argue for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, they're really arguing for doing away with the direct election of senators. The only solid arguments in that article assert that the former wouldn't lead to the latter, which is beside the point.
Also, this is more about federalism than conservatism or libertarianism. There's a strong progressive case for allowing states to be "laboratories of democracy".
There's no clear argument for why direct-election became so popular. There were mostly vague arguments given such as direct-election would somehow fight against the cozy relationships between industry and the Senate, or end bribery in Senatorial politics.[1]
It seems that what was behind the movement to the popular vote was a strong populist sentiment without clear reason; or at least without a reason that made sense.[1]
Last I checked, bribery and cozy industry relationships in the Senate were not stopped by the 17th amendment. I doubt they will ever stop. Power and money tend to mingle, and that part of human nature will probably never go away.
There are some strong arguments that a senate operating behind closed doors would be more effective at ignoring special interests and working together than otherwise. The writers of the constitution did just this (they swore secrecy of anything they talked about in the convention to avoid voter backlash) [1] This is why they initially wanted health care debates behind closed doors - the lobbyists can make much more use of transparency than the uninterested voter can. Fareed Zakaria wrote a lot about this in The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.
[A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution by Carol Berkin]
This shouldn't be downvoted just because it's disagreed with: it's a cogent and well-sourced argument, which should be met with a rebuttal rather than silent disapproval.
In Canada, our upper house (also called the Senate), is not directly elected. The members are selected by the Prime Minister (formally the Governor General, but this is done on "advice" of the PM, meaning in practice the PM makes the call). These positions are usually filled with party cronies or other such favoured individuals.
The current government, when they were the opposition, had called for Senate reforms, including direct elections. Once they got into power, they continued the status quo once they saw how beneficial it would be to them to do so. Funny how that works.
I'm no expert on the history (or the topic), though I did find the article I linked persuasive. The author did get into an argument over the history, though. You can read what he had to say about it here:
If the Congress is corrupt, than the state legislatures are a corpulent sewer of corruption and graft. Anything that takes power from them is generally a good thing.
The upside of direct election is that at least there's a chance that good Senators, not subject to the petty whims of the state houses might make better policy. State legislatures were/are generally the products of political machines and tended to appoint Senators who would advance their aims.
In the 21st century, the power of the corporations, unions and trade associations to manipulate the electorate via mass media is at least as powerful as the political machinery that the 17th amendment attempted to fight.
Even though I'm emotional about this, I see no reason to rant and rave.
There actually is some value to showing one's emotion's here. It seems clear that a lot of this does involve ICE 'testing the waters' to see much people will push back. It's good indicate an "irrational" need to fight this, it will give them pause (I'd imagine evolutionary game theory would say that this is a kind of situation where anger serves an important strategic purpose - premature commitment is an important strategy for making an opponent back down).
If you'd like a startup/technology angle to this, then my advice is not to go into business in any area that one of these interests might be involved -- unless you have strong political connections (or are willing to develop them). If you're able to develop those connections, however, it should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Investment advice simply becomes mute, really. There is no limit to what could conceivably fall under the rubric "intellectual property".
Totally agreed. A couple more things that complicate it are that most of the people in power don't have a good understanding of the technology and its implications -- and that the media is one of the special interests here, and so is very selective in its coverage.
And as somebody who's thinking of doing social network startup, this kind of discussion is very very relevant to my technology and entrepreneurial worlds. Do I need to plan from the beginning to host outside the US -- and if so what countries make sense? what level of business risk are investors willing to tolerate, and is that changing? and so on.
That's true for the short tail of big issues, but for the vast majority of smaller issues it's completely false. There are many issues where the government is willing to listen to grassroots activists, but there just aren't enough of them. A good example of this is drug law reform. State politicians have been generally willing to implement well written medical marijuana laws from grass roots organizations, but the problem is that there are probably less than 100 competent people working on this full time. Over 60% of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, but all of the drug law reform organizations combined get only 10k or so donations per year, and the vast majority of these donations are for only five dollars. (Despite the fact that roughly 85% of Americans under age 55 have smoked weed.) And this is an issue that's harder than most because of all the interference from the federal government. Anyway my point is that for most issues you actually can get the law rewritten in your state if you're actually willing to go out and put in the effort.
Governments have always used their power to try to further special interests.
One might as easily argue special interests have always used their power to try to corrupt governments. After all, government is not in the content-production-for-profit business, and legislation like the DMCA is designed to benefit established publishers and manufacturers whose business model is threatened by unlicensed distribution.
So we might as well ask what is the fundamental problem with business, that makes it preferable to enlist law enforcement in defense of its interests than to do well by offering consumers a value they can't get from content piracy? I think there is some merit to the argument that leaders in the content industry have bought off political interests, but if they were somehow restricted from doing so, wouldn't that be a violation of free speech too? That whole Citizens United case in front of the Supreme Court last year was based on the idea that spending $$$ to influence an election is just as much free speech as any other kind of political activity.
Even though I'm emotional about this, I see no reason to rant and rave.
No offense meant here Daniel, but that's exactly what you do. On almost any thread involving regulation or government intervention, it's become very predictable to see a mini-essay from you at the top of the thread, and it's almost always general in nature rather than addressing any specific of the story itself. You always aim to be non-partisan by mentioning both aprties, but in practice it's very obvious you're conservative: in the blog post you mentioned elsewhere (http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/11/im-done-here....) you spent 5 paragraphs castigating the left for their dislike of big corporations, before going on to say: 'Of course, the same can be said of the right and the "long war". Both sides -- in fact all sides -- have plans that are not working.[...]'
Now, I have no problem with your holding and expressing conservative views - indeed, I quite enjoy reading your posts. But this pretense of being above the fray and speaking from a position of neutrality just insults my intelligence.
Regardless of the current conundrum, this is akin to testing the waters, without using the normal legal process. A global registrar that controls address's with very little "real" insight by any citizens or international community? Sounds like a problem that has been waiting to happen for a long time now, this decision was no mistake.
At first I was angered, but then I realized this is a good thing, they are shooting themselves in the foot. We don't need ICANN at all, there are already alternative DNS systems out there waiting for an opportunity for a mass exodus..
They do not control the internet and they will find that out very fast if they feel like making this common place.
ps. I wrote this after reading another post about a godaddy site that was "supposedly" on this and blamed on ICAAN. I had not read the about the homeland security warrant.
Weird political rant at the end there. Nobody at ICE has even said that they are responsible for this; it could be a rogue employee at ICANN for all we know. Eventually someone will have to answer for this, and the answer might result in trouble for ICE.
The body scanners and patdowns are similar; while they are in use right now, it's far from certain that they will exist forever. There is just too much backlash.
So I wouldn't say that we are a police state yet. Some renegades have made decisions, and the wheels of justice turn slowly. Sometimes it looks like nothing is being done, but that's just because the machinery of the government is slow.
Hell, 19 prominent senators couldn't even get their "censor the Internet" bill through Congress, even though they really wanted it. The system works!
Now it's time to wait to see what the legal response is. I am sure the EFF and ACLU are more than a little upset about officially-sanctioned censorship. I am sure the courts are interested in determining whether or not domain names are property that can be seized by Customs.
(It would be especially interesting to see what would happen if the DNS server would only service requests from areas in the US that are more than 200 miles away from the border; territory that ICE admits they have no jurisdiction over.)
If the US government becomes the agent of whoever has money and claims intellectual property, there really is no limit to how far this can go.
All any company-with-influence has to do is patent some things, put a claim against a competitor and shut them down long to put them out of business. It's not just that it lets companies dominate industries. It is that it makes such domination more profitable than anything else - thereby sucking up all available investment funds. What would you invest once the state start "picking winners".
It's really the same old story - corruption destroys enterprise.
End to end DNSSEC deployment would prevent an attack like this once clients are rejecting any unsigned records. At least in addition to the root name servers the seizing party would need to convince the TLD maintainer and the customer's registrar to sign the new zone files.
All the more reason for you to sign your current zones (including .org, .info, .us and .eu) or pressure your registrar and TLD maintainers to implement DNSSEC yesterday.
what i find most disturbing is not the action against IP infringement on US territory. what i find disturbing is:
1)
the announcement that "suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world." They say "American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates", sure this is true, but why should the US care that this happens outside of their country?
2)
the freedom of a modern democracy is completely underminded by this measure. one should be innocent until proven guitly (by a court case -- in this case there was no trial), and secondly one has the right to free speach. both of these rights have been compromised by the measure. this --in my opinion-- voids the moral supriority of a modern democracy, and puts the US on a list of countries that cannot guarantee basic freedom for its citizens (like China).
I imagine part of the reason for them choosing these sites was simply to test the public reaction. I'm sure there are thousands of other "shady" sites out there that they could've chosen in addition to these.
a couple of questions to those who are complaining about too many political stories here -- and i'm not being disingenuous , i really want to to know.
- do you see this as a political story? why or why not?
- some people here may be considering starting businesses where some of user-provided content they host might fall afoul of this policy. do you think this story meets the bar of being interest to the HN community?
Political is a vague term. I do not think anyone really knows or can define it without some decade long argument and a final consensus.
That the government can decide who is guilty however is not a matter of politics, but, fundamental principles.
As to your second question, this is something which effects some of the HN community, whether genuine original content producers or otherwise. Thus, I do think it is news related to technology of a relatively new nature, thus, I would say, yes it is or has the potential to be of interest to the HN community.
* I checked one of the sites they blocked at random, and they're using Google Analytics to track views. GA can be used to track a hell of a lot of things, as I'm sure every reader of this site knows, including location of views. They're also using Pikwik analytics. <speculation>Pikwik is OSS, so they could have modified the code to do some thing GA doesn't.</speculation>
* Torrent-Finder.com had about 1.7million page views a day[0], so I suppose it seemed like a good target. However, many of the other sites blocked don't even register. In fact, they all seem like those extremely shady sites that very few people would ever actually visit. Torrent-Finder.com seems to have been the only properly popular site on the list (onsmash.com has rather high pageviews also, ~610,000 pv/d) <speculation>My question is why the hell did they hit torrent-finder.com when virtually every other site on the list probably couldn't have kicked up a media storm?</speculation>
* Every site is now hosted in Charlotte, North Carolina. DHS ICE seem to have some sort of facility there, but I've not been able to find much info on it at all. <speculation>Torrent-finder.com seems to have been hosted in Egypt beforehand. Does this affect the legality at all?</speculation>
* The two (as far I as i saw) most popular sites, onsmash.com and torrent-finder.com, had their traffic peaks during the second half of 2009[1]. Furthermore, the majority of traffic for Torrent-Finder.com was well outside the USA - eastern Europe, mostly[2].
* The sites that have been seized seem to mostly have been sites to buy knockoffs of designer clothing/accessories/what have you. Not as many seemed to be file-sharing websites.
[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=torrent-finder.com [1] http://www.google.com/trends?q=torrent-finder.com%2C+onsmash... [2] http://www.google.com/trends?q=torrent-finder.com&ctab=0...
<hyperbole><opinion>To me, it seems the only real answer is to use alternate DNS roots. This one's been compromised.</opinion></hyperbole>