SOPA bill prompts boycott of supporters (http://blogs.computerworld.com/19480/sopa_bill_prompts_boycott_of_supporters?source=CTWNLE_nlt_security_2011-12-23)


By Richi Jennings (@richi G+) - December 23, 2011.

The widely-hated Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is causing its supporters to suffer boycotts. Organizations such as GoDaddy and 3M are being targeted by serious activism. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers ponder protectionism and DNS Balkanization.


links to multiple blog posts / articles

because the Gobberment is so accurate,


ICE Domain Seizures Backfire Again (http://news.softpedia.com/news/ICE-Domain-Seizures-Backfire-Again-184729.shtml)

The domain seizures executed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has again caused controversy when it resulted in 84,000 websites being falsely accused of harboring child pornography.

The latest operation executed under ICE's banner was called "Operation Save Our Children" and targeted domains linked to abusive material involving minors.

This action affected around ten domain names, which were forcefully redirected by the registries towards a server hosting a fancy notification page.

The message displayed on it, next to the ICE and Department of Justice logos, informs visitors that the domain was seized according to a warrant issued by a court and warns that:

"Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution."

However, the list of seized domains included mooo.com, which belongs to a large DNS services provider called freedns.afraid.org.

One of the services allows users to create subdomains on a variety of domain names and point them to their own servers.

Mooo.com is the most popular FreeDNS domain and hosts a number of 84,000 websites whose webmasters had to explain to their users that they are not involved in child pornography.

Some of these sites belong to small mom and pop home businesses, whose reputation has been damaged just because someone at ICE failed to properly research who owns all of the ten domains and what are they being used for.

The Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano issued a statement about the operation saying that "DHS is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to shut down websites that promote child pornography to protect these children from further victimization."

While these actions are certainly welcomed, the ICE, which is part of the DHS, has demonstrated complete disregard for innocent people's businesses so far.

Last month it seized the domain of a Spanish company which earned the right to operate in court on two separate occasions, with no warning.

How SOPA Will Destroy The Internet (http://www.circleid.com/posts/20111222_how_sopa_will_destroy_the_internet/)


Where This Is Going.

If this becomes law, it's a short stretch from SOPA to NODA (No Online Dissent Anywhere) and if you think I'm a nutcase for saying so, I'd like to remind everybody what happened just over a year ago, when US politicians were tripping over themselves to shut down wikileaks (a royal fiasco in which this company was embroiled) (http://blog.easydns.org/tag/wikileaks) and to this day, they have not been charged with a crime anywhere.

Many of the "dirty tricks" employed against Wikileaks would be enshrined on law under SOPA (and someday, NODA):

* A requirement that service providers block access to offending domains, including that they stop resolving their DNS
* Search engines to purge search results for offending domains
* Payment processors to sever ties to offending domains

And they added an extra provision that it will be an offense to knowingly create a service or system to provide a workaround to a banned domain or host. So for example, they would no longer have to hassle Mozilla to remove that firefox plugin that let's you reach ICE blocked websites (http://torrentfreak.com/homeland-security-wants-mozilla-to-pull-domain-seizure-add-on-110505/), it would be illegal to make it or distribute it.

While this is an Online Piracy law, it already contains additional "enhancements" under Title 2: Additional Enhancements to Combat Intellectual Property Theft:, namely:

* SEC. 201. STREAMING OF COPYRIGHTED WORKS IN VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL LAW.
* SEC. 202. TRAFFICKING IN INHERENTLY DANGEROUS GOODS OR SERVICES.
* SEC. 203. PROTECTING U.S. BUSINESSES FROM FOREIGN AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE.