There are a few people who think I'm paranoid about things. Well a little paranoia can be healthy. Trust me it saves headaches later down the road.
So with the latest article from Torrent Freak it looks like the US Government is trying the "let's stop shoplifting by arresting bus drivers and shutting down the transit system, so shoplifters can't get to the store" trick. They don't seem to care that it will leave millions of legal citizens stranded. To me this seems like the US Government is trying to play both ends against the middle. By pissing off enough law biding citizens they will get them into the fight to save the archaic and draconian type business models of the entertainment industry.
How does this apply to the average user. Think about it. They just targeted a BLOG site which has a DMCA take-down strategy, and was co-operating with the law. This shutdown has left about 73,000 legal blogs homeless with NO hope of every seeing their blog entries again. So google has a DMCA take-down strategy and co-operates with the law. How are they any different? What about facebook.com, livejournal.com, openstreetmap.org, or other sites? Any of us who use a cloud base system could be indirectly targeted by the US Government! I've already had my "legal" linux LiveDVD targeted and taken off-line by anti-piracy groups. As a result I've switch to Canadian server as the US government and anti-piracy are, in my opinion, implementing cyber terrorist tactics.
Another thing... ask yourself this. They are targeting news groups, torrent sites, search engine, blogs sites, cyber lockers (aka http://docs.google.com). They take the entire site down because of a few users, regardless if the owner is co-operating with the law. How far is the US government willing to go? What's next? If a blog site is being taken down, which only links to, and talks about content. Is hotmail.com, or gmail.com next on the target list? How long before they are? Most would say... they'd never do that... but then those same people said they'd never go after news groups or search engines, and they have. Their targeting not only technology that shares the content, but also the technology that talks about it too! That's what e-mail is! That's what e-mail distribution lists are! A method to share the idea. So if I post to a list where you can get a free copy of "Garmin MapSource" on talk-list@hotmail.com. Will they take hotmail.com off-line? The did with a BLOG site.
So my ULTIMATE suggestion for everyone. KEEP YOUR OWN LOCAL BACKUPS! The US government is trying to force everyone into this war, to find the weapons of mass destruction. --still no proof that any of these sites actually cause harm I might add! Just like did they ever find the weapons of mass destruction?-- ACTA, pressure behind creating Bill-C32, and the reason take downs are all examples of the storm that is coming.
