This T-Shirt Has Been Seized
from the the-eagles-have-landed dept
– E. F. Schumacher
– Unknown
For the feds, it’s not enough to simply seize domain names without warning or due process—they want to make sure everyone knows the website operators were breaking the law, even if that has yet to be proven in court. That’s why every domain that gets seized ends up redirecting to one of these dramatic warning pages, replete with the eagle-emblazoned badges of the federal agencies involved. You know the one I mean:
I thought eagles were solitary birds—but apparently they'll flock anywhere the RIAA points. At least that seemed to be the case with the hip-hop blog Dajaz1, which was treated to a year of Promethean pecking while the court waited patiently for the RIAA to fail to produce any evidence.
And that's just one of over 700 websites seized without due process. The first round of seizures, commencing the so-called Operation In Our Sites (which I suggest renaming to Operation Motherfucking Eagles), was announced from Disney headquarters, possibly by a tyrannical Mickey Mouse, but more likely by ICE Director John Morton sporting a dumb grin over the presence of whatever movie stars Disney managed to rustle up for the event. It's Chinatown Hollywood. The only place where eagles and mice get along.
To commemorate the fruits of this alliance, I created the Seized Tee for Techdirt's new Insider Shop. Government regulations prevent us from directly replicating agency badges, but that proved to be a plus, since I think I have drastically improved them in terms of both clarity of purpose and, more importantly, overall eagle-ness, which was clearly a prominent factor in their original design:
Buying the Seized Tee also gets you access to the Techdirt Crystal Ball for one year, two First Word/Last Word credits, and an Insider Badge on your profile and comments. Wear it with pride, and when people ask you about it, be sure to tell them that this kind of government censorship is a real thing that is happening as we speak, and it's a problem that's only going to get worse if it goes unchecked. Eagles do not beget doves.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
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–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: cwf, eagles, eagles eagles, eagles eagles eagles, forfeiture, ice, more eagles, rtb, seized, seizures, t-shirts
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Just a reminder...
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.Subscribe: RSS
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Parody
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Sorry. I found the size too large and felt it intrusive, so I element blocked it.
Despite this, enjoying this. It's fun to see this stuff. :)
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Re:
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Re: 5-10 level reply tree that can be 100+ replies
It would be very handy to be able to collapse threads at any point the "level" deepens. This would allow the reader to hide subsections of the "reply tree" to more easily follow a discussion, or at least the parts that interest the reader. You could even do some tracking about where readers collapse trees to provide some insight on how discussions are consumed and where discussions get "thread-jacked".
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Re: Re: 5-10 level reply tree that can be 100+ replies
Oh god yes please!
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Kind of Like the Shirt
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Re: Kind of Like the Shirt
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That's what got me to buy it, best part of the shirt imo
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I won't say that in the right context some profanity can't be funny but in this one...No.
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Re: Kind of Like the Shirt
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Re: Kind of Like the Shirt
you can teach the rugrats a valuable life-lesson in self-censorship; its the amerikan way, after all !
a couple inches of black electrical tape over the offensive words (sic), and you can prepare the li'l babbits for a life of degradation, humiliation, and abject helplessness that is our lot...
good luck ! ! !
hee hee hee
ho ho ho
ha ha ha
ak ak ak
(...or, maybe, i don't know, teach an infinitely more valuable life-lesson in using one's own judgment, appropriate behavior in different contexts, and how silly -you know- *some* people (not us!) are about 'bad' words...)
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Yob tvoyu mat
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Re: Kind of Like the Shirt
Perhaps a future/alternate version could replace "Motherfucking" with "[REDACTED]", or just an asterisked version of the word?
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Re: Re: Kind of Like the Shirt
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Sorry, but that's idiotic, backwards-working, Mike-won't-explain-why-piracy-is-not-OK-because-he-really-thinks-it's-great thinking.
You can't name one site--even one--where a court said due process had been violated. Nor has due process ever actually been violated in the seizures.
That's just complete idiocy, and you know it. And now you're capitalizing on your lies and manipulations? You guys are *absolutely* disgusting. Seriously.
I can say this with heart-felt certainty: You guys are disgusting opportunists.
Prove to me that even one site had it's due process rights violated. You cannot.
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Is there even one part of Techdirt that is honest? I haven't seen it. It's pandering to the dregs of the internet for profit. And it's done at the expense of the artists that you all rip off for sport.
Mike, I'm talking about you. Any place, any time. Stop running away. Stop making excuses.
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Bigot! /S
Makes about as much since as your argument. The Gov tramples due process when ever it suits them. To say otherwise makes you either a complete idiot, or a Troll.... or perhaps both...
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Easier to be a Keyboard Rambo when you have no semblance of an identity huh?
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Excuse me, but what's your URL again?
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Enough said.
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Just a reminder...
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Sorry, but that's idiotic, backwards-working, Mike-won't-explain-why-piracy-is-not-OK-because-he-really-thinks-it's-great thinking.
You can't name one site--even one--where a court said due process had been violated. Nor has due process ever actually been violated in the seizures.
That's just complete idiocy, and you know it. And now you're capitalizing on your lies and manipulations? You guys are *absolutely* disgusting. Seriously.
I can say this with heart-felt certainty: You guys are disgusting opportunists.
Prove to me that even one site had it's due process rights violated. You cannot.
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Re: Brilliant!
Also, no body == no murder! ;-P
Does it work this way in your church, or only with your lawyers?
[/troll-hunting]
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Re: Re: Brilliant!
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Re:
"You mean like dajaz1 that everyone and there brother admits was deemed a legit site a year after it was taken away and not allowed to fight it (you know that whole due process thing)...but you're right, they never explain anything on this site, or maybe you just don't know how to read..."
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On the other hand, this is a wonderful demonstration of an appeal to an "appeal to authority" fallacy as I've ever seen....
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Re: We can and have!
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The site was taken down for a year, without an opportunity to argue beforehand, and the DOJ never provided evidence nor filed charges. The claim was dismissed, but if a year's worth of censorship is considered acceptable, then something is rotten in the state of due process.
I wouldn't be surprised if MegaUpload is actually guilty, but that's another example where the feds have done a bang-up job procedurally. Also confirmed by court: http://abovethelaw.com/2012/04/megaupload-trial-may-never-happen-because-the-fbi-apparently-doesnt-u nderstand-extradition-rules/
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The site was taken down for a year, without an opportunity to argue beforehand, and the DOJ never provided evidence nor filed charges. The claim was dismissed, but if a year's worth of censorship is considered acceptable, then something is rotten in the state of due process.
Whether or not that violates due process is a legal argument. Please make an actual legal argument citing the actual law. You haven't, and I suspect, can't.
PS It's hilarious how you guys "report" any post that you don't agree with. What a bunch of nonthinking sissies.
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And this was somehow hailed as a "victory" for anti-piracy. Because if you confiscate something that had nothing criminal going on, hold onto it for years, decide after all that time it's perfectly fine, all the nothing and jack shit you did somehow means that your lack of effort gets to be counted as a victory.
Achieving, doing nothing is a victory to you guys. And you wonder why no one takes you remotely seriously.
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Is there even one part of Techdirt that is honest? I haven't seen it. It's pandering to the dregs of the internet for profit. And it's done at the expense of the artists that you all rip off for sport.
Mike, I'm talking about you. Any place, any time. Stop running away. Stop making excuses.
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Re: A puppet on both hands I see.
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Re: Re: A puppet on both hands I see.
He expanding his vocabulary. Progress?
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Yep, they can't stand it when someone says something they don't agree with. They must censor it immediately. The irony is delicious.
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Censored = unseen/doesn't exist at all/wouldn't be able to even post
Reported = still viewable/still there/still able to keep posting the same BS you and your other AC retarded friends keep posting
I swear, sometimes you're so fucking stupid it's hard to believe you're still alive. Figured you'd have forgotten how to breathe at some point and that'd be that.
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PS It's hilarious how you whine "censorship" to any post that a private party on his private property refuses to promote to your level of entitlement. What a bunch of nonthinking sissies.
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Can you really read, though? I suppose lapdogs can't.
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Kinda neat
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Tyrannical Mickey Mouse
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Clever
Quick tip to you lovely folks at Techdirt, use the article advertising sparingly unless it is an announcement :-)
Keep up the good work and fighting the good fight,
Wally
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T-shirt: Techdirt BOB no not that Bob.
Thats all I got. Must work now....
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New shirt idea...
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Who do you sue?
Who do you sue to get the site back and malicious persecution??
The RIAA/MPAA or the feds/DEA/WHO do you ASK for your rights??
Force it to trial..
Once you get a win, Then Go for the money LOST..
I still get a Interesting feeling,that SOMETHING is trying to force our gov. entities into BAD solutions, and having them get SUE'd, to make them bankrupt.
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Also sad about the language.
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Re:
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Mother Frelling
BSG
Farscape
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 17th, 2012 @ 1:48pm
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Show us your tweets!
Or get ICED!
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Pseudo LEO Badges!
> Thinks I'll keep my eyes peeled.
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Re: Pseudo LEO Badges!
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TECHDIRT
The home of Yellow Journalism
I bet you could sell a few of those.
Why did you drop the CwF thing? Was it worn out? Gone state? Another internet buzzterm buried?
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Why? How about this?
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The Last Word
“