If Holland is a signer to the ACTA treaty, or if their membership in the EU forces them to comply wit the ACTA- then they didn't have much choice in the matter.




They actually don't need to. All they have to do is target a few big players and break them financially. This will scare the other sites out of the business. Few companies or people will want to be the next one grabbed out of their house by SWAT in the middle of the night, and then thrown in jail for the duration of some long drawn out legal process. This is already happening; a plethora of smaller sites doing the same type of file hosting as MU have since been scared out of the business.

If things continue to go down this path the only companies that will exist similar to megaupload will be housing their servers in countries that ignore US internet law like Nigeria, and have citizenship in, and permanently reside in countries without extradition treaties with us. This is a continously shrinking list of countries as we edge closer to some variant of a "one world government" albeit one not at all like the NWO conspiracy theory delusions.

Anyone notice that some of the charges are for money laundering? Clearly that was to trigger RICO [the inspiration for the PATRIOT act] so that they can go after them as if they were an organized crime syndicate. This gives them more power insofar as how easily they can confiscate property, throw people in jail, or extradite people without having the same bar of evidence normally required. I bet they will eventually drop the money laundering charges and were only throwing them in there so that they could get away with more nonsense. Knd of like accusing someone of being a terrorist so that they can be illegally grabbed out of a foreign country & sent onto a clandestine CIA prison/torture ship in international waters without having to go through the courts. Only not to such an extreme.

Don't forget their other tactic: going after ISPs.

As far as I know, Holland has yet to ratify ACTA even though it's the intention of the EU that it will be ratified by every member state. Very little about ACTA has been officially communicated to us, the people whom it will affect and who have to decide how well we've been represented by our politicians in the next elections. What I did learn, did not make me a happy nachtvlinder.

I think this arrest might have to do with pleasing the US, and maybe showing how seriouos the fight against theft of copyrighted materials is taken here. Two weeks ago, two ISPs were ordered by a court to block access to a couple of sites that (also) offer copyrighted materials. Also, they were ordered to shut down access to sites that the organisation that fights against stolen work asks them to shut down in the future (without a court needing to check that).


I guess I was suffering from a sudden attack of internet naivety or something earlier today. Also, see above.

This bill is all about control. The entertainment industry wants to stiffle all competition, and most of that comes from the web. Why? because Hollywood is dying, and they know it, this is a desperate action by media moguls to save face and keep their power and influence. Who goes to the movies anymore? I can't remember the last time I did since I can download anything I want, fewer and fewer people are turning to t.v. now that it's all avaialble online, free-of-charge and adverts (if you know where to look).

Hollywood has failed miserably, they can't stifle the growing rate of technology. However, one can not exist without the other. Seriously, who would even go online if the porn industry didn't exist? And we'd still be watching old black and white silent films (porn) if technology never advanced. The only thing Hollywood and the entertainment industry is going to have to do to survive is to adapt to changing trends, make all movies release to be downloaded from the web, no more DVD's, this doesn't stop people recording new films directly on camera in theatres though, unless you make people pass through a metal detector to prevent it.

Regardless, history was made last week after the first massive online protest ever, by millions of people and companies around the world censoring their websites. PIPA and SOPA were ultimatley shelved, but megaupload.com was still seized even without the bills, proving they aren't nescessary. Anonymous reaction to that was all but futile, shutting down government websites via DDoS attacks is one thing, but do they have the power to completly seize them back?

I grew up on the internet when it was still budding, being a 90's kid, me and those like me don't want to see it all taken away, but like the big industries, we too are powerless to stop change from taking place, and internet culture and cybersecurity is something in a state of constant, perpetual change.

The real battle will be over the ACTA. The Obama Administration has flat out refused to have any transparency relating to ACTA negotiations and has been illegally ignoring ACTA-related FOIAs from the start by claiming "national security."

In Oct Obama signed the treaty while claiming that the treaty isn't a treaty but an "executive agreement" and using that argument Obama is intentionally trying to keep congress out of the adoption & enforcement of the treaty [in spite of the Constitution].

Numerous other countries have followed suit, particularly in Europe where [like in the US] every effort has been made to keep their people out of the process until it's too late [Poland for example] reeking of a corporate-fascist coup d'etat.

Yesterday the House went and rushed CISPA to a vote, a day earlier than they had promised everyone, and then passed it.

The "Small government" Republicans made up the vast majority of the 248 to 168 vote.

But not before Congress added an amendment that made CISPA even worse than it already was. In a nut shell: the House version of CISPA will make it so the 4th amendment will no longer apply to the internet. They can look at whatever data they want, without a search warrant or court order as long as:

1. It involves cybersecurity [think lolzsec]

2. National security [wikileaks]

3. Cybercrimes [this includes piracy]

4. Protection of individuals

5. Protection of children [i.e. porn, etc]

One of the concerns is that this will open the internet up to federal obscenity laws, to say nothing of being used to monitor data of dissidents & political activists [think OWS].

Bare in mind the feds could already do any of this already provided they go through the courts for search warrants or court orders. CISPA simply gets rid of that oversight in all cases where the feds can claim one of the 5 issues listed above.

Are you aware that...
just when we thought this was killed or at least neutralized, they've introduced another bill that would require YouTube to vet every clip submitted for "copyright infringing" material.
which would either kill online video sites or render them useless.

And if you are aware - what are you doing about it? What meaningful protests/legal actions are going on to try to stop it? Hack attacks are not enough in themselves.

The only thing people can do at this point is take notice of which politicians vote for these things, and refuse to vote for them.

Case in point Darrell Issa, a representative in the House of Representatives from the state of California did an AMA on reddit some time ago when everyone was still talking about SOPA instead of CISPA. This so-called "small government" Republican listened to what the people were saying online on various social media sites and promised that he would not support this type of legislation, ever, because of how important an uncensored internet is.

He then turned around and voted for CISPA, deleted everything he could pertaining to his earlier comments to the public about SOPA and disabled public comments on places like facebook when people started to realize they were lied to & betrayed.

People like Darrell Issa simply don't care about serving their constituents and are blatantly owned body & soul by the special interests that are demanding these oppressive internet policies. They aren't going to care about things like protests, and are only going to see more aggressive tactics like OWS or lolzsec as examples of why their over reaching policies are needed instead of seeing them as evidence of how the public doesn't want these ideas enacted.

I think it is also safe to say that on things like SOPA and CISPA these politicians have recieved a far greater amount of commentary from the public against such things than in support of them. Yet they still vote for them: clear evidence that they're not actually there to represent the people, and care more about special interests, partisan bickering, or their own personal agendas. I don't think a single person can claim with a straight face that any of these 248 representatives had more correspondence from the public in support of CISPA than against it.

Sgath92 - the politicians who make these decisions are the ones who are NOT voted for. That's why direct action is essential.

Go here and do what it says.

Screw you Amerikuh!