you should be very afraid…there’s no need to pass any cyber security bill.
“do we not already have de homeland security in place…good…then start the process…nooone will stand in ze way”.
Take action, sign a petition
Pfff… won’t help
Not really. If things get too bad, you can always change your proxy and use OpenDNS instead. Or, if the court order regards a specific IP address, the domain owner can switch to Tor. Or they can run a mirror in a different jurisdiction. There are so many ways to defend against this tactic at almost no expense.
If anything, this makes me less afraid. Just seeing how out of step they are with reality makes me laugh. Look at the background… it says “SEIZED SEIZED SEIZED …” If they want to seize the server, why not just seize the damn thing and get it over with? It’s just a publicity stunt to try to scare the file-sharing kiddies.
Clayton -
“It’s just a publicity stunt to try to scare the file-sharing kiddies.”
Regardless, they have now conditioned us to accept DHS having the power to shut down any website they want without any paper warrant or trial. That’s a pretty big leap in power.
This should scare everyone.
Compared to Guantanamo Bay? Compared to indefinite detention of individuals in secret military bases without even so much as an acknowledgement that those persons exist, let alone that they have been kidnapped and secreted away? You need to read some Glenn Greenwald if you think this constitutes a scary power-grab.
But the fact remains that the internet is inherently uncontrollable. Unlike any technology we have invented before, the computer is alive. It can act without supervision. It can conceal our secrets in ridiculously hard-to-break ciphers with as much ease as it can add 2 and 2 or check our email. The internet in itself is just a big communications network. So what? The computers hooked to the internet… now, those are dangerous.
Clayton -
What if they just ban physical personal computers?
I hate this. I’m all paranoid and I can’t tell what’s going to happen.
“But the fact remains that the internet is inherently uncontrollable. Unlike any technology we have invented before, the computer is alive. It can act without supervision. It can conceal our secrets in ridiculously hard-to-break ciphers with as much ease as it can add 2 and 2 or check our email. The internet in itself is just a big communications network. So what? The computers hooked to the internet… now, those are dangerous.”
what in the world are you talking about?
if they were to go after lewrockwell.com and shut it down…and then shut down naturalnews.com and then shutdown alex jone’s stuff…and then shut down rense.com and continue to shut down all freedom loving websites…and putting those people in jail…
others will shut down their websites for fear of being thrown in jail…and others will simply stop posting anti-state stuff for the same reason…
they have the power to shut down the alternative media…
you can give me your brief history of what the internet is…but that won’t change their ability to take down the alternative emdia…
I’m a bit scared… the internet is everything to me 
But I don’t think they would dare, at least not without a false flag of sorts first.
Naw, TPTB have finally learnt their lesson after nearly six centuries of fighting copying technology - there’s no point banning things, it just gives it more publicity. The best way to shut down the opposition is to make their audience pay (through taxes, along with everyone else) for the propagation of the Establishment point-of-view in schools, universities, and through legal/regulatory subsidy of trash media that keeps the masses distracted and largely misinformed. Sure, there will always be the pesky diehards but if any one of them gets too pesky, they can be dealt with directly… with a high-velocity projectile to the skull.
Consider that it would be far easier to effectively shut down the independent presses that were popular prior to the advent of the Internet than it is to shut down internet servers since there can be mirrors of those servers and they can be located in any jurisdiction. Yet, the independent media survived just fine, by and large. Why? Because they’re just too small of a target.
Clayton -
“Consider that it would be far easier to effectively shut down the independent presses that were popular prior to the advent of the Internet than it is to shut down internet servers since there can be mirrors of those servers and they can be located in any jurisdiction. Yet, the independent media survived just fine, by and large. Why? Because they’re just too small of a target.”
I wish I was that opptimistic. The US could go after any server here in the US. And usually Europe/Australia are on the same page as the US. So I could forsee europe australia going after any server there as well. Then they just need to get South America and Russia to do the same.
Yeah, cuz Vladimir Putin is a lap-dog of the MPAA/RIAA establishment. rolling eyes
Clayton -
No, they’re not going to shut down the Internet. They see the Internet as a “hole” in their perfect control of the media where they believe they can engineer news events and control all public discussion through this process. Just the other day, we had an attempted “terror” attack right here in little old Portland, OR. I laughed when I saw it on the news. It’s became so formulaic that even the sheeple are barely spooked by it, anymore. FBI agents locate a disaffected, alienated, emotionally vulnerable young Muslim man, plant all sorts of ideas in his head about committing a “terror” attack, provide all the means to him to carry out the attack, and then splash it across the news when they “get their man.” We should expect to see this happening more and more frequently as mid-level bureaucrats all across the intelligence agencies begin cooking up their own plots for promotion. Surely, there are many future cabinet members to be made out of these “operations.”
Meanwhile, CIAleaks - erm, I mean, Wikileaks - continues its three-ring circus of “leaks” in which, miraculously, not one substantially damning piece of evidence can be found amongst libraries-worth of documents. And this counts as “whistleblowing.” Please, this is giving me a headache. The US media is Pravda 2.0. You can look at rt.com or al-Jazeera or any of a dozen adversarial sources and quickly find out that everywhere in the world except in the United States, it is well known that the primary motivation of Muslim terrorists is retaliation against the United States for its many crimes in Muslim lands. How can it be that the supposed bastion of “free markets” - the United States - can suffer from such a media blackout? The only plausible explanation is that our media is, by and large, owned and operated by CIA or DHS or whatever the hell alphabet soup agency it is that manages our media.
The problem with the Internet is that international news (competitive news) is too easily available to the common man. This makes it extremely quick and easy to go online and verify that, in fact, you are being lied to and your daily news diet is carefully managed by long-faced bureaucrats in DC.
Shutting down the Internet, except as a brief “shock and awe” measure, is no good since the Internet is an even bigger distraction than the television (this is good from the PoV of the Establishment). The Internet fulfills the bread-and-circuses role far better than the television ever could have - you’re too busy whacking off to porn, sending your money to (onshore) Internet gambling sites and wasting your entire adult life on Evercrack to notice or care how the inheritance you were to receive from your grandparents is being plundered by the white-collar Day Mafia in NYC and DC. All things considered, the Internet is more of a profit than a loss. However, I think the CFR-orbiting crowd in DC had long been planning (4+ decades?) a media-based “virtual political reality” which they are just now implementing and they are finding that the Internet is the gaping hole in their media air-mattress. No matter how much hype they pump into CNN+FOX+MSNBC, it all just dissipates out Facebook and Twitter. People just don’t give a damn and they were supposed to be giving a damn. That’s what’s got Jay Rockefeller’s panties in a wad about the Internet.
Make no mistake, the Internet is staying right where it is.
Clayton -