That's just plain wrong. Under what rational reason have they seized these without notice, and without declaration of wrongdoing? Is it part of a sting operation, or are they being labeled as terrorists?

If not, it's simply impeding justice, and seems to me to probably be motivated by the desire to have this go through smoothly; if they can wait out the initial surge of internet-interest, and then make weak claims, there won't be as many people scrutinizing them. Plus, this sort of event might just drive a few of the sites out of existence anyway, so their goals are served regardless, just by keeping their mouths shut.

http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-shuts-down-29-bittorrent-and-nz...

No, they don't.

Joking aside, I guess this is part of the problem with naming departments cutesy Orwellian names like "Homeland Security".

... on this deep thread,

... that you started,

... ever claimed this?

I'm really glad to see a possible explanation for why Homeland Security would be cracking down on music blogs. While I don't agree with the DoHSs actions, I now have a foothold in understanding the situation. It may or may not be correct, but as a fairly logical interpretation of the scenario, it'll suffice.

I'm disappointed to see your fairly dramatic response (though I like the elipses and poetic linebreaks :) ) and 'yummyfajitas's pat response earn collectively more upvotes for delivering far less information (no offense).

Tptacek focuses on only the first question and righteously refuses to look at the latter question. He "prefer not to be baited into discussing" the substantial question here. What I consider an important and disturbing development: the US government effectively taking up the authority to censor websites sans any conviction of web master for anything (sure they "file a lawsuit" but they do NOT have to actually convict or even serve the webmaster in question. It's the effective negation of free speech whatever the ostensible argument).

I thus think the various responses are appropriate. I've disagreed with Yummy on plenty of other issues but he decodes the misdirection in the GP well here.

Of course the US government is acting badly here, and if someone is making a strawman argument it is right to call it out as misdirection, but to my mind, tptacek was simply providing a useful fact.

...how some intellectual property, that owned by large corporations, is so important that other intellectual property should be confiscated by fiat to protect it!

If anything, ICE is probably the only department that administratively is capable of combatting piracy, since they have been doing it for so long under their own banner. They now get to do it under the Homeland Security banner.

The first part of your statement actually points towards "crazy overreach".

But you could interpret this action using all permutations of the imaginable adjectives and nouns:

    {crazy, calculated} X {overreach, legal action} 
    >> 
    {"crazy overreach", "crazy legal action", 
     "calculated overreach", "calculated legal action"}

What I don't understand is why / how someone has re-classified good old fashioned copyright infringement as "counterfeiting."

This sort of stuff used to be an FBI matter. What is the justification for changing that, I wonder?

For me the internet has always been a wild-west kind of place, one of the last places where politics and government and all of the paranoia-driven American madness didn't have a hold. No matter what crazy shit was going on in the "real world," it probably wouldn't touch the fabric of the internet. And today I wake up to find the RIAA using the government as hired hitmen to shut down seemingly harmless sites without any kind of warning or due process.

I know it was bound to happen sometime, and it would be naive to think the government was never involved in the dealings of the internet, but this truly saddens me. Our bought-and-paid-for government is finally making itself known in our last haven.

Has it really come time to move our domains to China, of all places?! And if we move them to a foreign power, who's to say that power won't tomorrow start doing what we're doing now?

I wish I had the money to donate to the EFF; but I don't, and I feel completely powerless.

Whois'ing the domain shows the nameservers are with GoDaddy. Is it so simple that they are just asking GoDaddy to change the site to this image?

I was going to assume that the government used ICANN to point it to their own name servers. Anyway, I'm just curious and would love if someone could shine some light on this.

More details can be found here: http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/the-background-d...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Property_Rights_I...

   Domain Name: SEIZEDSERVERS.COM

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
      Solutions, IT                
      ATTN SEIZEDSERVERS.COM
      care of Network Solutions
      PO Box 459
      Drums, PA 18222
      US
      570-708-8780
      
   Record expires on 24-Nov-2011.
   Record created on 24-Nov-2010.

   Domain servers in listed order:

   NS1.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM        74.81.170.109
   NS2.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM        74.81.170.108

I never understood why GoDaddy has some form of monopolly in the US. Personally I use Domaindiscount24 (based in Germany) for my domains.

How does the system decide who gets domain-X in cases of conflicts? And there will be conflicts, and malicious ones at that, so there must be a resolution technique, and it must not be decided in each case by end-users - they have no way of knowing quickly / accurately enough, and it would prevent the average person from being able to use it. Plus, it could simply be spammed with billions+ of claims, shutting down the usefulness of the entire system, especially if it's first-come first-served.

Meanwhile, if there are any higher-priority deciders, they can be manipulated similar to how DNS hosts are in this circumstance (or certificate authorities, in the https world). So it must be distributed... it strikes me as a paradox.

edit: the only way out being that a distributed DNS could be a mirror of official ones... but what happens when domain-X gets seized, and then sold to another, assuming it's a legitimate purchase for non-phishing reasons? And how do you resolve domain ownership transfers - they look the same as seizures, from a data standpoint, except they don't have a big "Your Gov't Wuz Heer" stamp on them.

The link structure of the web is almost completely based on domain urls, but I wonder if there's not some way to work around that in a DNS-less/P2P system.

The obvious problem is that, to my knowledge, you can't embed a HOST: header in a URL to fetch that resource from an arbitrary IP address (something like http://HOST:www.example.com@192.0.2.144/).

Like HTTP, SMTP servers will gladly accept messages for domains it is configured to handle. But it also depends on DNS to get MX (or A) records to deliver to domains it doesn't handle. It's trivial to support email addresses that use IPs instead of domains (like bob@192.0.2.144), but such addresses are less portable than using domains and also create conflicts because two users cannot have the same name, even if they operate in different realms. Besides, they're butt-ugly and harder to remember than domains.

tl;dr: Using IPs only creates problems and DNS is a HUGE part of the solution. Any replacement will have to solve the same problems.

When the user types http://www.example.com into the address bar, it's the web browser that figures out what to do next. Which is: realize it needs to to a HTTP request. Where to? Not an IP, ask DNS. Now connect to the IP address. But an HTTP server can host multiple domains, so include the host name in the request (that's the Host header). The web server then looks in its configuration, and sends the right page back. Note that the HTTP headers are specific to the application protocol, and are irrelevant both at the DNS and URL level. It just happens to be the same string :)

You could most definitely change your links to go to IP addresses. But they're more fragile.

Ironically the DNS actually provides a layer of resilience against being forced offline by targeting your provider, but that moves the vulnerability up one level, now you rely on the DNS to do its thing, and it too is under the control of a single institution.

The bar is a bit higher than a C&D to your provider but apparently not nearly high enough.

E.g. the system could have the following components:

1) A centralised issuer (CI) of time-stamped certificates for a TLD, which certify someone is the owner of a domain. Certificates are only issued for domains that don't exist yet. The public key is in the certificate, and the private key is kept by the owner.

2) A network of TLD nameserver operators (TLDNSO) for the TLD. TLDNSOs have stable IP addresses which are distributed to client software in advance - and there is a centrally agreed on list. TLDNSOs are geographically dispersed, and spread across many different legal jurisdictions.

3) All certificates from the CI are sent to all TLDNSOs. Certificates without a timestamp that corresponds within a limited threshold to the time the certificate was received are rejected, as are certificates for domains when another certificate for the same domain is held by the TLDNSO.

4) TLDNSOs accept domain resource record (RR) updates - e.g. nameserver records - from anyone, provide they are signed with the private key that only the domain owner has. Likewise for the equivalent of WHOIS details.

5) Domain owners can sign a transfer certificate, which includes the public key of the new owner, and is signed with their private key, and sending the transfer certificate to the new owner. The new owner sends it to all TLDNSOs, who will from then on accept requests with the new owner's key, rather than the old one.

6) Clients can query TLDNSOs using DNS or DNSSEC, or using a new protocol which lets them inspect the certificates from the CI and any ownership changes. Clients using the new protocol query several TLDNSOs in several jurisdictions - there could be a fairly complex set of conflict resolution rules, but one of the most important would be that if two CI certificates were received, more TLDNSOs get queried, and the most frequent answer is the one that is accepted.

This makes most kinds of attacks on existing domains difficult:

1) The CI can be compelled by authorities in its jurisdiction to issue certificates, possibly backdated, but they won't be accepted by TLDNSOs except the ones that can be compelled to accept them (a minority in the case of unilateral government action), because they already have a certificate for the domain. The new CI certificate will be rejected by clients if only a minority of TLDNSOs present it.

2) TLDNSOs can be compelled to remove CI certificates for individual domains, but if only a minority are in any one jurisdiction, clients will get the record from other TLDNSOs.

3) Only the domain name owner has the private key needed to revoke or transfer a domain name. Obviously, the domain name owner can be compelled to reveal they private key (if they have it in that jurisdiction anyway), but that is outside the scope of this document. They could encrypt the key with a secure password and refuse to disclose it - that would be legal in some jurisdictions and illegal in others. By this point, authorities would probably focus on taking down the servers hosting the website rather than the DNS.

I like it - it can be implemented along-side DNS, mirroring DNS entries where the owners will agree to create a key. A progressive take-over is possible, layered on top of existing services.

It's not really "p2p" in that it needs hosts that must still be large and unmovable, thus a target, but a definite improvement. I'd still like to see/find/come up with a way to make something as totally host-free as possible, but no doubt it'd be incredibly slow compared to a more centralized solution.

Basically just use something like Bitcoin's block chain, but store domain registrations instead of only transactions.

So you only get a domain if you can prove that you've send some computational power of your computer. In addition, once you've registered a domain and the registration is sufficiently far in the past, it is infeasible for an attacker to manipulate your domain due to the block chain (and the computational power required to attack or delete it).

In fact, the simplest would be "mirror + backtrack".

If a given site had an earlier dns entry, the alternative dns would point to that earlier entry as the second alternative. If you think the second alternative is "really it", you can make that permanent for you.

It wouldn't solve everything but it would make a variety seizure approach not work well in the short term.

You'd still have trouble if you lost your ip address(es) but this would mean seizure would need multiple points of failure.

Moreover, this would need only a minimum of centralization. A browser plugin to "find hidden/seized sites" might actually be trivial to produce. Name it something catchy. Anyone would to work on this?

The average person will not understand this and will simply use whatever comes through automatically. If it doesn't lead them where they expected, they simply turn back. Leaving us back where we started.

Heck, you can already do this: you have a hosts file. Just map www.seized.com to the original IP. As long as the servers are running, it'll still work. The problem comes when traffic drops to zero, ad revenue drops to zero, and the reason for the site's existence is lost. Which is precisely the same problem with running alternatives; the average person, who accounts for most of most site's traffic, will take whatever is served to them and not manage it on their own.

Any system like this would eventually bloat to unmanageable levels, as again, ownership transfers look the same as seizures (or the reverse can be made to be true, with the intent to trick people). Eventually, loads of sites would have tons of alternatives. People could nab the servers / IP addresses of the old ones, and run phishing sites that look like the originals, further degrading the use of any alternative addresses...

... so people will use what's already decided for them. Which is what we have now. The fraction of a fraction of 1% of people who will visit the alternatives will not prevent their eventual death. Only the most popular seized pages will have any chance of continuing to exist... at which point their servers are simply seized along with their domains (where possible. governments cooperating in this is only increasing, and if the ACTA goes through it'll likely become the standard, done automatically, instead of the exception).

---

All of this also relies completely on the internet backbone routers not being manipulated. All it would take is a re-write rule, and any attempts to reach the address are taken out entirely. If a distributed DNS gains traction, do you honestly think this won't become a government's weapon of choice? Those routers exist somewhere.

"But what that means is that the Internet goes from being a www.com => globally-identifiable site to everyone having their own version. Links, URIs, Universal Resource Identifiers are no longer universal, and can't be used to reliably direct people around."

Yeah, it suck the state is breaking the Internet. I don't like it.

We should be clear. We shouldn't claim consider this to be an improvement. We should consider this a counter-measure to something like an act of war on the Internet, which it is.

"The average person will not understand this and will simply use whatever comes through automatically. If it doesn't lead them where they expected, they simply turn back. Leaving us back where we started."

The average user is smarter and smarter. This is something like a war. Normally fat, dumb and happy humans can often sudden exhibit more intelligence in this kind of situation.

Only the most popular seized pages will have any chance of continuing to exist...

The state cares most about these sites too. The state doesn't like actions which dilute it's power. Even when they don't really work, they also make it look bad, which should not be underestimated. Basically, this an electronic form of civil disobedience. And I believe things have come to the point that this might matter.

And relying on more and more complicated tools that run more and more automatically. For example: it seems to me that one of the major reasons password managers (and thus better passwords) are gaining ground is because they're better in every way - you don't need to remember anything. It makes things easier and more automatic, so people use it.

My basic theory on humanity is that people aren't stupid, we're just lazy. And I mean that in a good way; laziness often leads to efficiency. Especially when taken to a global scale, things change when they become easier, not necessarily better.

I don't think we'll agree here though, so I won't debate that point further.

>We should consider this a counter-measure to something like an act of war on the Internet, which it is.

Sadly, yeah, it does seem to legitimately be under attack. From all sides. Something along these lines might work to make a parallel internet, which could be useful, but I don't see it as a solution, so something still needs to be done, and the sooner the better. Why not now?

Something needs to be done, I agree...

Aside from my web plugin proposal, what would you imagine happening?

(not to discount your other points...)

Browser plugins might be the eventual solution's first steps, though they're more and more becoming sandboxed websites (which I like. Fewer security issues, easier programming, etc), so you'd have to go with something lower-level, which means it's harder to do cross-platform. But that's likely to be the case regardless, unless a single platform wins or virtualized, standard OS APIs become the norm.

All that said, I'm not sure there is a best solution, nor one which I'd actually be happy with. Much less something which works efficiently on a global scale. But I'm essentially a communication-anarchist: I generally think it would be best if anyone, anywhere could privately, anonymously communicate with anyone else. And I realize just what a can of worms that would be.

edit: Just for clarification, as I sometimes come off this way: this is meant in no way to be an attack on the idea / goal / you. And if I'm missing something, I'd love to know. Discussions like these often lead to solutions though, so I enjoy them and end up saying a lot :) I think some of it comes from having both of my siblings in debate teams, and having judged at a few debate competitions; I tend to come off more certain / forceful than I intend.

The thing is, the dns-backtracking-browser-plugin sounds like a simpler and more doable approach compared to anything else I've heard of. Any more elaborate approach would have to settle who owns a domain and that's not any easy thing for the present system.

It would certainly need to be system/browser specific but otherwise doesn't sound hard. Indeed, I could do it in a couple weeks and a really smart person could do it in a day.

Obviously it's a stop-gap. The distributed peer-to-peer client featured here a couple of weeks ago is a far more robust solution. (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1985431). That would include a system fairly similar to what you describe.

But yeah, trackerless-torrents are about the epitome of such a system, though I think it'd have to be changed drastically to support a fast query architecture like DNS-like services need.

All my domains are at Godaddy (with private registration) right now. (Nothing involving sharing of IP products, but I fear this slippery slope won't end well.)

What I find most scary, though, is the very limited reaction this gets.

Step 3: Profit?

Give http://bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com a try.

edit: people don't like bugmenot links? It has been immensely useful to me for asinine sign-up-walls.

Know if they're one of the ones which do Google referrals? I can never remember who does and who doesn't.

Can someone provide an explanation of why it's beneficial for them to exempt Google but not other links?

So Google effectively laid down the law -- If you want to show up in Search Results -- then users who have found you via Search need to be able to read what you are showing..