73,000 blogs taken offline. ISP remains silent.

IPBfree just shut down all their forums under the same “gag order” circumstances. I have also been thinking “Homeland Security”, but I’ve been unable to post my comment anywhere – perhaps because I used some forbidden word when discussing it. I will attempt to post my comment here. I really hope someone researching the subject will see it.

Here is what I’ve been attempting to post in regard to IPBfree:

Some people have pointed out that the government has been on the move against DMCA offenders, and Blogetery also seemed to be under some gag order when they were shut down: http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-authorities-shut-down-wordpress-host-with-73000-blogs-100716/

I’m still skeptical that DMCA problems would cause such abrupt, drastic action – which could lead to loss and damages claims from those who weren’t involved in any misdeeds. It seems more likely that the servers must have been involved in some sort of criminal activity that had to be caught by surprise and stopped on the spot – like pornography, massive spamming, virus distribution, gambling, or snuff films. In the US, though, there is one particular category of criminal activity that is likely to draw swift action and utter disregard for anyone’s property or civil rights: terrorism.

By chance, I was reading today about the Connecticut Four. A couple of years ago the FBI sent letters to libraries, demanding patron records without any sort of court order. While libraries have been a bastion of defending privacy and free speech in the US, the Connecticut Four were the first to fight back: http://www.aclu.org/national-security/librarians-speak-out-first-time-after-being-gagged-patriot-act

The salient issue is that the librarians were gagged during the entire case. This meant they could not bring up what the FBI was doing or offer an opinion while the US Congress was discussing renewal of the Patriot Act. The FBI told Congress no such letters were being set, and the Patriot Act was renewed.

Librarians were the first to recognize that this was the slippery slope to dismantling some of the most important civil rights in the US. I’m wondering whether these sudden server shutdowns are an extension of this…some hint of terrorism permitting the utter disregard of anyone else’s civil rights. Even if the forums were “free” and only existed at the discretion of ipbfree, there was certainly no expectation of the forums suddenly vanishing. It seems to me there are abundant legal arguments about implied contracts, creative work product, and free speech that would come to bear…unless the US government had a catch-all rights-abrogation pretext like terrorism.

On the bright side, perhaps by hitting so many people’s creative endeavors and writings at once, people will finally realize that the destruction of civil rights inherent in the Patriot Act and other recent legislation affects *all of us*. People need to start fighting back before every last shred of our rights is taken away.