Well, this is just the sort of thing a rogue government would not announce, and just the sort of attack on your freedom a rogue government would enact on a national holiday weekend:
The investigative arm of the Homeland Security Department appears to be shutting down websites that facilitate copyright infringement.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has seized dozens of domain names over the past few days, according to TorrentFreak.
ICE appears to be targeting sites that help Internet users download copyrighted music, as well as sites that sell bootleg goods, such as fake designer handbags.
The sites are replaced with a note from the government: "This domain named has been seized by ICE, Homeland Security Investigations."
For instance, 2009jersey.com, 51607.com, and amoyhy.com have each been seized.
One of the site owners told TorrentFreak that his site was shut down without any notice or warning.
The effort come as Congress considers the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). Critics, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) say it is too heavy-handed. He has vowed to put a formal hold on the bill.
Ah, it's a fascist classic, using heavy-handed government agencies to shut down information corridors that facilitate exchange amongst free people, all in the name of national security. Even all the more heinous, when one realizes that the Obama administration has been trying to get the legal authority to do this for some time, and failing that, has decided to work around the inconvenient barriers of the constitution and empower extra-legal government agencies to seize private property and shut down their operations with no explanations given (or apparently required).
And again, exercised over a holiday weekend, where many are out of the reach of their normal modes of information-gathering, and will walk into work on Monday and encounter a strange new world, where inconvenient websites are shuttered in the name of "national security". Reminds me of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which the Arabs launched via sneak attack on Yom Kippor, one of the holiest days of the Jewish faith. We, too, have been sucker-punched (again, by a Muslim)?
And the suckers that were just punched the hardest are the so-called "youth voters", who flocked to Obama en masse because they thought he was cool just like them. Sorry, tweeners, but Homeland Security has got your IP address right now, and is looking for anything you may have downloaded from Morpheus and LimeWire as well.
Maybe you guys can talk to him, and, you know...remind him he used to be "cool":
Chinese Guy: You pay now! Now!
Bart: What happened to you, China? You used to be cool..
Chinese Guy: Hey China's still cool! You pay later! Later !
Update: Don Surber:
What the devil are these idiots doing?
This administration refuses to shut down illegal aliens (something the Bush administration also refused to do) but the Immigration and Customs Enforcement can go after Legal Americans to protect Hollywood and the recording industry from a few people who pass around their music.
I suppose next the Department of Defense will send drones after people who record music off the radio....
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