US Government Censors 70 Websites

[Plow]

I'm not sure what is so novel or surprising about this, since it's the way the justice system works everywhere else.

It's the internet man, we're supposed to be able to do whatever illegal shit we want and nobody's allowed to touch you because it's speech, duh.

[Cephius]

It's the internet man, we're supposed to be able to do whatever illegal shit we want and nobody's allowed to touch you because it's speech, duh.

More like

What everyone thought:

Oh my god the US government can tell ICANN to block any website they want without a warrant or probable cause! First torrents then Wikileaks! Remember remember the 5th of November, time to rebel!

What it actually was:

The government executing a warrant to shut down blatantly illegal websites selling rip-offs of physical goods and a shitty torrent site or two that were all based on US servers on US hosts

[Cyn]

Don't forget scarves

As a proponent of scarves I'm furious

Imagine how Wop must feel.

[Antithesis]

Imagine how Wop must feel.

Cold.

[Rocl]

Imagine how Wop must feel.

It can only compare to losing his XI account.

Also, banning scarf websites = war on terror (on our home turf) no sensationalist jihaders can buy scarves now motherfuckers

[Maguspk]

Still find it funny how people are saying the websites are banned.

[Pirian]

Still find it funny how people are saying the websites are banned.

It's only to free up IP's in the coming Y2K v2 when we run out of IP addresses next year

[Blubbartron]

Cephius, isn't the concern about that particular torrent site being lumped in there, seemingly out of place, in order to create legal precedent for future stopping of torrent sites en masse? I was under the impression that's a fairly common (shady) legal practice amongst persons trying to push their agenda. Oh, and yes, people thinking the site no longer exists simply because the DNS won't resolve the URL to an IP address is hilarious.

[Cephius]

Cephius, isn't the concern about that particular torrent site being lumped in there, seemingly out of place, in order to create legal precedent for future stopping of torrent sites en masse? I was under the impression that's a fairly common (shady) legal practice amongst persons trying to push their agenda. Oh, and yes, people thinking the site no longer exists simply because the DNS won't resolve the URL to an IP address is hilarious.

Sure, they might have thrown a torrent site or two in there to "test" if the legality of it would fly. But it seems for all these sites they had some kind of incriminating evidence against them, hence the warrant getting approved. And really, if you're dumb enough to host any kind of illegal torrent site on a US host/server then you're asking to get shut down. From a legality standpoint, yeah, there's some concern that they seized domains without notice and that a torrent site got lumped in there. But it's hardly the affront to freedom that the OP link suggested. On top of that, places like torrentfreak or simple torrent search engines are so far down the community's food chain that I'm surprised anyone cared enough to make such a big deal out of it.