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Government Domain Seizures Get Even More Futile
Firefox add on Redirects Users To Seized Sites' New Home
Over the last few months the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office of the Department of Homeland Security has launched a new campaign that involves seizing the domains used by websites involved in copyright infringement, the sale of counterfeit goods or child pornography. The problem is that the program has been borderline incompetent, taking legitimate foreign businesses offline, as well as earlier this year causing the outage of 84,000 largely legal websites after seizing the domain of a free DNS service operator. All of this effort, mess and taxpayer expense doesn't seem to be accomplishing much of anything, with most sites simply popping right back up at alternative domains. To make the government game of whac-a-mole a little more silly, there's now a new Firefox extension that simply redirects users to the new homes of sites whose domains have been frozen by ICE.
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N3OGH
Yo Soy Col. "Bat" Guano
Premium Member
join:2003-11-11
Philly burbs

N3OGH

Premium Member

Totally incompetent..

"The problem is that the program has been borderline TOTALLY incompetent"

Taking down 84,000 largely legal web sites isn't exactly making a spelling mistake in an criminal complaint or giving the wrong guy a speeding ticket.

One could argue it's criminally incompetent.

It's crap like this that gives law enforcement a black eye...
gorehound
join:2009-06-19
Portland, ME

gorehound

Member

Re: Totally incompetent..

yes this government is full of BS.
1984 coming your way soon

jester121
Premium Member
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL

jester121 to N3OGH

Premium Member

to N3OGH
said by N3OGH:

It's crap like this that gives law enforcement a black eye...

Nothing about this has anything to do with law enforcement. This is bureaucrats and statists run amok.

Thaler
Premium Member
join:2004-02-02
Los Angeles, CA

Thaler to N3OGH

Premium Member

to N3OGH
Just give it time, things will get even better. The next move might just be to declare Mozilla a terrorist organization and take that freedom-hating redirection add-on completely out of the market.
Expand your moderator at work

coldmoon
Premium Member
join:2002-02-04
Fulton, NY

coldmoon

Premium Member

The show must go on...

The effort appears as fruitless as rounding up the drug dealers in the parks at night in a large city as far as lasting results are concerned; but it does appear to make for good news copy...

JMHO
Mike

cdru
Go Colts
MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN

cdru

MVM

Re: The show must go on...

said by coldmoon:

The effort appears as fruitless as rounding up the drug dealers in the parks at night in a large city as far as lasting results are concerned;

A better analogy would be rounding up all the dealers cars while they were parked. It did nothing to the actual site's infringing activity (if there was any) buy just how people got there.
shades
join:2001-06-26
Williamstown, NJ

shades

Member

Re: The show must go on...

so the government will just tell firefox to get rid of it

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

FFH5

Premium Member

Re: The show must go on...

said by shades:

so the government will just tell firefox to get rid of it

As they should. Mozilla should not be assisting illegal operations.
Gami00
join:2010-03-11
Mississauga, ON

Gami00

Member

Re: The show must go on...

said by FFH5:

As they should. Mozilla should not be assisting illegal operations.

but they should be assisting Legal sites, that were taken down by incompetent authorities
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

Kearnstd to FFH5

Premium Member

to FFH5
said by FFH5:

said by shades:

so the government will just tell firefox to get rid of it

As they should. Mozilla should not be assisting illegal operations.

actually they are not assisting illegal operations, they are fighting the illegal seizure of websites by the US government thinking it can play Team America World Copyright Police.

the problem is the DOJ is using the Bazooka to kill a fly method, who cares if we destroy a whole building our MAFIAA overloads will give us more "donations" for shutting down a single torrent file.
swattz101
join:2003-12-22
Tucson, AZ

swattz101 to FFH5

Member

to FFH5
FYI - AFAIK, Mozilla did not right this. It's a plugin by an outside author.

ArrayList
DevOps
Premium Member
join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

ArrayList to shades

Premium Member

to shades
can just get the .xpi file from the torrent sites.

L337
Premium Member
join:2005-03-10
Chicago, IL

L337

Premium Member

The Government

The government is not practical. There's really no excuse for shutting down over 80,000 websites, especially when those are legal ones. Companies can easily team up and sue their asses.
talz13
join:2006-03-15
Avon, OH

talz13

Member

Re: The Government

I thought the federal government was immune from lawsuits?

hayabusa3303
Over 200 mph
Premium Member
join:2005-06-29
Florence, SC

hayabusa3303

Premium Member

what are you thinking.

Its the good old USA government hard at work AGAIN..

Transmaster
Don't Blame Me I Voted For Bill and Opus
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY

1 recommendation

Transmaster

Member

Re: what are you thinking.

I went and downloaded this extension just to poke Big Sis and Homeland Security in the eye.

This was, and is, my worry about the Department of Homeland Security, if it is being run by somebody that is competent and has integrity things will be ok, if you have an incompetent like Janet Napolitano things will be bad. When you have a single person who controls such a large and powerful department they will abuse that power. Combine that with a rudderless President who has shown little if any leadership and apparently would rather golf then do his job his Cabinet sectaries are left to do their own thing. And it would seem incompetent Presidents hire incompetent people which only compounds the problem. So far the Department of Homeland Security has not been administered by anyone I would trust.

disconnected
@snet.net

disconnected

Anon

Re: what are you thinking.

The bad truth is that most every government official is a sociopath--it's that character defect that attracts them to positions of power. They want to dominate others and a government position fulfills their mania.
The only thing we citizens can do is knock them down by Starving the Monkeys. Going on strike. Leaving them with nothing to tax, steal or rule. Google the term 'starving the monkeys' and discover that we the People still have one option left.

cork1958
Cork
Premium Member
join:2000-02-26

1 recommendation

cork1958

Premium Member

Always nice

It's always nice to see out government HARDLY at it!!

Just start doing something and let it run totally a muck!!

Our government is mostly an embarrassment anymore.

ARGONAUT
Have a nice day.
Premium Member
join:2006-01-24
New Albany, IN

ARGONAUT

Premium Member

Doesn't sound legal

#1: No charges filed.
#2: Conviction without trial.
#3: Punishment without a charge.

Judge, Jury and Site Executioner.

Cito
join:2008-09-22
Quitman, GA

Cito

Member

This is why I've moved all my hosting overseas

I know it's not perfect or even fool proof

but just like torrent sites that have moved to the .me or .ph domains like demonoid.me etc.

even though I don't have a torrent tracker, but I do occasionally post links to music or videos that I just don't want to be bothered searching to make sure the legalities and crap. Since in my opinion links aren't illegal, but ICE sure wants them to be, they seized one website that was only links, it was just a host with nothing but links to sites like megaupload. They seized the linking site, but guess what Megaupload has never been touched.

So I've moved my site and all my hosting overseas. To countries and providers that promise they ignore all US notices and DMCA. Now even though my sites are 99.9% mundane blogging on odd news, and strange stuff around the world and online, as said before I may occasionally link to music or video that may be copyrighted and I'm tired of dealing with red tape.

So I highly recommend people following suit and stop hosting your domains and sites in the US or in countries that kowtow to US requests and Do not use and US based domain registrar.

shades
join:2001-06-26
Williamstown, NJ

shades

Member

Re: This is why I've moved all my hosting overseas

what countries are good like that

DataRiker
Premium Member
join:2002-05-19
00000

DataRiker

Premium Member

Re: This is why I've moved all my hosting overseas

Pretty much any country overseas besides Japan, South Korea, UK, France, Germany, or Australia.

Most other countries won't even respond to requests that are not in their native language, or they will respond rather slowly.

bob22
@182.232.197.x

bob22 to shades

Anon

to shades
Indonesia and Malaysia are good overseas hosts
vinnie97
Premium Member
join:2003-12-05
US

vinnie97

Premium Member

Where'd all the 0bama fans go?

I guess they're comforting one another in the Blue Room. This is the second disturbing Big Brother IT article I've read in as many minutes.