Is Pretending Your Domain Name Has Been Seized By ICE The New Rickroll?
from the meme-me dept
Back during the February domain seizures by ICE, before ICE had officially announced which domains had been seized, we saw some stories that named a few of the sites. So we contacted one of the administrators for one of the sites in question, which showed the "seized" graphic on it, asking about the guy's intentions and how he would respond. We got back a really bizarre answer, and I began to to suspect that the guy was messing with us. That turned out to be the case, as ICE officially listed the sites and that guy's site wasn't included. Miraculously, his site went back to being the same old blog it was before, a few days later. Then, for April Fools, we were actually inundated with sites telling us they had been seized by ICE and we didn't run any of those stories, knowing they were bogus. Recently, that's been happening more and more often. There was the story about some conspiracy theory guy claiming his site had been seized by ICE, after being hacked and having infringing works uploaded. That turned out not to be true. And now, there's a story about the hacking group LulzSecurity made their own website look like it had been seized by ICE.Both of these later stories involved bewildered ICE spokespeople trying to figure out why the press was calling them and insisting that no such domains had been seized at all.
But all of this makes me wonder if "my site's been seized by ICE" is becoming a meme, a la the rickroll, in which sites looking for attention suddenly pretend that they were seized by ICE. At best, this seems to suggest that, for all of ICE's insistence that this program has been a massive success in "informing" the public, an awful lot of people associate the ICE seizures with being a total joke, ripe for mocking. It certainly seems to detract from the message that ICE is trying to send. Separately, this does make me wonder if one of these pranks is going to get someone in trouble at some point. It's pretty silly, but the federal government gets all upset when you use their various logos and seals without permission...
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You really are sounding desperate at this point in your attempts to discredit the seizures. The fact that a few people are making a joke about being seized in no way necessarily means that the seizures haven't been a massive success in informing the public. From my perspective, you're the one looking like a "total joke, ripe for mocking." Is this the best stuff you can come up with?
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Maybe you're right.
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You have to face it: Domain seizures are a total joke.
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Do you think Public Enemy will do an update to their song "911 is a Joke?"
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"There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary. -Brendan Beehan (often mis-attributed to P.T. Barnum)
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Hahaha! HAha...oh.
Try this: head on out to your local supermarket and politely ask several random people if they've heard about this 'ICE website seizure' thing, see what they have to say on the subject.
After they ask you what the hell 'ICE' is.
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Me/You/Someone: Excuse me Sir or Madam. What are your thoughts on this 'ICE website seizure' thing?
Sir/Madam: I think that what our government is doing is just terrible. How am I going to keep my drinks fresh now?
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Actually, a lot of people probably wouldn't be surprised. You hear about ICE at least every other day on the news here.
Just adding a little perspective to the "what the hell ICE is" comment. Outside of the domain seizures.
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Thanks for the insight!
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Lately theres been an uptick in ICE/Board Patrol in Orlando in the past 6mo or so but I've seen a huge surge in the turnpike on my own over the past couple of years. Back in '09 it was a border patrol car every month and before I moved back to Orlando from Ocala it was 3-4 times a week in multiple locations.
I can see border patrol around Orlando International Airport but beyond that it doesn't make much sense to me.
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It's actually 100 miles, thus the bulk of the US population.
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"A search at the border’s functional equivalent is constitutionally valid when: (1) a reasonable
certainty exists that the person or thing crossed the border; (2) a reasonable certainty exists that
there was no change in the object of the search since it crossed the border; and (3) the search was
conducted as soon as practicable after the border crossing."
The above test pretty much eliminates the Orlando area. There is also an exception for ICE or CBP to enter private property (but not buildings) within 25 miles of the border. I had been under the delusion that Orlando was closer to the coast, but this exception also does not apply to Orlando area. Finally, ICE can question or detain individuals anywhere in the U.S. to determine, for example, if aliens have a right to be in the U.S.. It is not clear to me if this includes the ability to stop a vehicle to ask questions. Apparently, this does not allow them to search a vehicle which involves the same restrictions for all law enforcement officers.
From: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL31826.pdf
16 INA § 287(a)(3), 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(3). This statute also authorizes searches without warrant “within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States.” Reasonable distance is defined by 8 C.F.R. § 287.1(a)(2) to mean “within 100 air miles from any external boundary of the United States or any shorter distance which may be fixed by the chief patrol agent of CBP, or the special agent in charge of ICE.” External boundary is defined by 8 C.F.R. §287.1(a)(1) to mean “the land boundaries and the territorial sea of the United States extending 12 nautical miles from the baselines of the United States determined in accordance with international law
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Let me in on a little secret - The tighter you squeeze that iron hand you call copyright and IP - the more and more of us slip away... and the more people start to think (the one thing you fear)...
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―Princess Leia to Grand Moff Tarkin
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Oh great, Phillip...you want George Lucas to ask the ICE to shut down Techdirt for copyright infringement...don't you?
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ICE won this round, and the sour grapes bunch of kids is trying to act like it's a joke, even though they can't sit down because they are all butt hurt over it.
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Hurt? Yes. Though not who you think it's hurting. I'd reckon ICE and the rightsholder industry are taking more of a beating if their actions are viewed as a joke or a way to garner publicity for a website owner. How effective are those seizures now?
Don't count on changes to public perception to swing only one way, either. Public's pretty big, and not just a few will see these seizures as questionable or outright wrong, especially when a false seizure of 84,000 websites - all falsely accused of participating in child porn - is just as publicized.
Why are they bothering? At this point, I couldn't tell you, but that's just me.
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ICE's domain seizures have been a very successful advertising campaign.
And, sorry to say, not 15, and not living in a basement.
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Denial - it's not just a river in Egypt.
Actually, I find it hard to believe YOUR post mostly because the first two words "I think..." don't seem to match up to the rest of the post. People such as yourself frighten me far more than everyday criminals and terrorists, because you can't fix stupid!
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Consider the public informed that the government is happy to violate the constitution and that pre-trial punishment is now the norm in the US of A (oh wait it's even punishment *without* trial).
Yeah looks like a massive success in destroying the last remnants of trust people had in the system of government.
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Sinister
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This suggests that the seizures might not be having the effect ICE thinks they are having, if people are faking the seizures to garner extra attention.
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ISAGN for loooooooooooooooooooooooooots of T-shirts.
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Obstructing what, precisely? Obstructing the ability of people to take misused authority seriously?
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Maybe they'll be tempted to replace the fake logos with real ones.
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Might make a cool holding page for any idle domains.
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ns1.seizedservers.com
ns2.seizedservers.com
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Hmmm
ex: http://192-168-1-255.com
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Re: Hmmm
http://192.168.1.255
Which is actually shorter anyway - and avoids a trip to a DNS server at all :)
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logos and seals
It was my understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that the pranksters were setting up a redirect that pointed to ICE's actual site. If that's the case, no one is actually using the logo/seal other than ICE itself who own and operate the site.
Of course, I'm sure they'll bend the law in some way to make it work in their favor, like they always do.
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Re: logos and seals
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I don't think it's so much of a rickroll as it is a SEO.
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Protest
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Way to go Obama.
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I don't remember the details of how it was presented, but it was amusing.
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