Now This is Scary: DHS Slams 84,000 Websites
TorrentFreak reports that the US Department of Homeland Security did a little sting on child pornography websites–but in addition to the 10 actual perpetrators they shut down, they managed to shut down 84,000 sites that were completely innocent! They all happened to use the same free webhost.
I have never been an advocate of free webhosts, and one of the many reasons I’ve often cited is that spammers, etc. can contaminate a server and bring you down on a blacklist. But even I never imagined that sites would greet visitors witha very official-looking graphic bearing this text:
Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution.
I’m also a long-time advocate of open Internet. We’ve seen in countries from Egypt to Iran to China what happens when governments interfere with Internet access, and how shutting the Internet has been used to protect totalitarianism.
Mind you, I’m not saying the US government is totalitarian, but it certainly overreached this time (and not the first time, by a long shot). If you haven’t yet signed Free Press’s petition against the “Internet kill switch,” I suggest you go there right now and add your name.
(Thanks to Michelle Shaeffer for alerting me to this.)
Shel Horowitz’s latest book is Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson)
