Editorial
Real Reason for Prosecutions of Bodog.com and Megaupload?
With the attacks on Internet websites Megaupload and Bodog we find what we call the Internet Reformation is providing us with a good look at the evolving face of Western-style civil and criminal justice.
Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, a file-sharing facility, and Calvin Ayre, the founder of 'Net gambling operation Bodog, have both been indicted by US federal prosecutors.
There are other prosecutions on the way, apparently, that are even more tenuous than the ones leveled at Megaupload and Bodog. But no doubt they will be pushed forward as well.
The attack on Bodog is sad for me personally as I know Calvin Ayre and have admired him as a courageous entrepreneur – someone who has created new business models using the power of the 'Net.
Sure, his businesses involved gaming and sports contests but he didn't coerce anyone into participating. He offered a service – as a technology pioneer – and people spent their money willingly. This is not the mark of a criminal enterprise. And yet US officials want to arrest him.
We've predicted this for a long time, here at the Daily Bell. As the Internet Reformation gathers force (as it is, in my opinion), those who oppose it and want to sustain the status quo are using increasingly obvious methods of repression.
They are being forced to show their collective hand, in other words, because technology is overwhelming their previous methodologies of control. One of the basic methods of control has to do with what we call elite dominant social themes, the fear-based promotions that frighten people into giving up wealth and power to global enterprises.
But these promotions are seemingly foundering now as the Internet exposes them one by one. Global warming, the European Union, central banking, mass vaccination campaigns, "Peak Oil," electric cars – one by one the themes and sub themes of the power elite have come under serious attack.
The result has been a forcible return to authoritarianism. If people cannot be scared into willingly complying with a New World Order, then they will be FORCED into compliance.
This is just what happened after the Gutenberg Press began to have an impact in Europe. People began to find out the way THEIR world Really Worked and the result was the emergent Renaissance.
Now, people can make the argument that the Renaissance and the Gutenberg Press were two entirely distinct and separate evolutions but I would argue that to view them discretely is a mistake.
There may have been certain evolutions leading to the Renaissance that were not directly involved with the dissemination of mass-produced information but obviously, the one was influenced by the other. The result was two-fold. People became aware, increasingly, of their manipulation, and the power elite of the day – uncomfortable with this growing knowledge base – struck back as best it could.
Two of the tools that the elites used at the time were wars and legal maneuvers. There were so many wars, in fact, that eventually the Treaty of Westphalia was convened to try to stop them.
At the same time, the doctrine of copyright was developed and propagated. Copyright, especially, was intended to stop the free-flow of information and to make both books and periodicals more expensive and thus less apt to be purchased by the "masses."
Now, granted, this is a particular point of view. Another one is that the past 1,000 years have simply marked the ascension of one ethnic type at the expense of others – the Dark Forces, so to speak, at the expense of the Good.
But that seems a bit simplistic to me – blaming one group alone for history's complexity and leaving aside other equally important forces. To be clear: It seems the Gutenberg Press threatened the elites of the day, and, partially anyway, they responded as best they could.
The Reformation and Glorious Revolution did not arise in a vacuum. No matter how manipulated they were initially by a power elite desperate to retain its influence, the ramifications ultimately seem to have outrun the intentions of the founders.
In other words, once launched, these socio-political occurrences had ramifications far beyond what was perhaps planned. And in my view they were likely launched to help blunt the impacts of the Gutenberg Press itself.
We can arrive at this conclusion simply by asking if those who may have been behind the Reformation intended that the schism create the New World (and eventually the United States) with a thousand thriving, separate sects.
The answer is, of course, no. The elites did not foresee all that came from their maneuverings – nor do they ever.
It may be argued that they are "in charge." But anyone following what has occurred in the past ten years would have to come to a different conclusion. There are distinctly "reactive" elements involved. Anyone with an open mind can see them.
As it is today, so it likely was then. Whatever the reasons for the Reformation and events like the Glorious Revolution, one can see from today's vantage point that they were probably a reaction, at least in part, to the advent of increasingly available information via books and periodicals, courtesy of the Gutenberg Press.
And the reaction is continuing. Watch as the Motion Picture Association of America, having successfully targeted Megaupload, is now taking aim at a company called Hotfile. In fact, the MPAA has filed a lawsuit against Hotfile and recently filed for summary judgment as well. Here's how Techdirt described the argument:
The more you read, the more you shake your head. The MPAA's circular arguments can basically be summarized as "We shall prove that this tool is illegal. Exhibit A: People use this illegal tool." Very large segments of the motion are basically this tautology over and over again. "Oh my goodness, this is illegal, and our proof is that it's designed so people use it!"
For example, the motion focuses on Hotfile's affiliate program for uploaders, which is quite similar to Megaupload's. However, the MPAA interprets this in a bizarre way suggesting that it was designed to encourage infringement. Why? Because it was designed to encourage usage. Really. The affiliate program pays people more if more of their content is downloaded. According to the MPAA that alone is evidence of encouraging infringement.
That seems crazy. As we pointed out, plenty of artists used such services themselves to distribute their own works free to consumers, while still getting paid for it at the same time. This is a business model that cuts out the legacy gatekeepers ... but does that make it against the law? In the eyes of the MPAA, absolutely.
It is this sort of abuse of power and legal authority that marks the second stage of the elites' battle against the Internet Reformation. But history tells us that this stage, generally, was not especially successful.
It might, in fact, be compared to the migration of Protestant sects to the New World to escape prejudice and oppression. Migration need not be merely physical; it can be electronic, too. ABC News tells us that after the "take down [of] Megaupload, other file sharing sites will look for countries where they can base their websites and remain safely exempt from U.S. prosecution. A new file sharing site titled Anonyupload.com is purportedly based in Russia and the Ukraine. It is soliciting donations to buy servers and other equipment."
I don't know what will happen to my friend Calvin but I do know that what he's done is NOT illegal in many countries and that his business continues to operate outside the US – as do others of the same kind.
Such actions are surely not winning the US any friends and may eventually cause a backlash. That's something the MPAA ought to be worried about, even if it isn't.
It took the elites a number of centuries to control the damage done by the Gutenberg Press. These massive technological changes are not merely dealt with by flicking a "kill switch."
The Internet, as we often point out, is a process not an episode. Many of its ramifications are yet to unfold. Simply making up new criminal law and trying to arrest people will not likely stem the tide, or not in the short run.
In the long run, technology will evolve along with "law." The idea that the elites can simply shut down the free-flow of information now that they've put their collective mind to it is doubtful, from my point of view, and perhaps even simplistic.
So what's the "real reason" for this outright attack on business and entrepreneurial freedom? The elites want to control information and make sure that gambling, which is a most prosperous business, is kept as much as possible under government purview.
The power elite isn't using legal force on a whim. I would argue the escalations they have made recently provide us with insights into their collective psyche. And I would argue what we can see there is ... fear.
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Posted by SwifterMan on 03/14/12 03:38 PM
. . .
waking up to the truth has in earnest begun, and the more the power-elite uses violence to stop the spreading of the facts - the more they will discredit themselves . . .
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In simple words:
The CIA has fallen victim to the 1.600 Nazi-scientists they imported from Germany after WW2 secretely & illegally, based on psychiotic paranoia, that otherwise the russians would do the same . . . (operation paperclip)
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In it's 64 years, the CIA has turned into a secret, criminal world-government, that uses mass-murder and other atrocities to control every aspect of our lives around the globe - in total contradiction to all american values.
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These FACTS - and nothing else - creates ennemies to America around the globe.
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MK-ULTRA and other criminal activities that were once kept ULTRA-SECRET have completely corrupted science on a global scale, the people have started to find out . . . ("foia" allows a glimpse on the crimes of America - although 99,99 percent of the real crimes are blacked out, whitened out, or not even mentioned at all!!!)
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Politicians will be held responsible, and will be seen more and more as parasitic, and will run away and hide.
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SECRECY for governments will end - once and for all!
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For a while, the government-criminals will try to call almost everybody else a terrorist - but the ghost is out of the bottle - the golden age will begin, once we have liberated ourselves of 80 or 90 percent of our polit-charlatans.
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Small government that manages it's core-dutys needs only 10 or 20 percent of people and funds !
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Thus taxes will come down dramatically - destructive activities as war, psychiatry or the spiritual softkilling of people with medical drugs will end - this alone will heal most of the problems of earth.
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To make money and to survive - people will have to engage in ETHICAL AND PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES, that benefit all of us.
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Posted by amanfromMars on 03/13/12 09:14 AM
How very strange that you do not see it currently happening, spiritsplice.
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Posted by spiritsplice on 03/13/12 08:07 AM
This has been said since the reformation. Keep dreaming. It ain't gonna happen.
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Posted by spiritsplice on 03/13/12 08:04 AM
You didn't contradict what I said, in fact you supported it. Violence against each other? Sure, but using guns to defend against government? Never.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 03/13/12 03:38 AM
And you said fear... Slovakia 3.9.2012 22 years after The Wall got down. Click to view link
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Posted by amanfromMars on 03/12/12 11:51 PM
Well, I would have called it most definitely more an advanced intelligence game rather than a confidence game, B-B-B-B, but it is nothing to disagree about.
There is no doubt that the old systems administrations, which rely on ignorance and only a few being privilege to insider information, have lost the future and any battles they may have been planning to exercise repressive power and inequitable control, to the simple art of others sharing and learning/sharing to learn.
Daily Bell ringers may find more than they ever imagined and might need or like to know about such matters spelt out clearly here ... ... . Click to view link
The ruling class may want mindless battles in the street, but that is not what they are going to get, for will not knowledge and information instead ensure that they are to be personally and specifically targeted for removal from the playing field, with probably millions/tens of millions of potential, legitimately aggrieved and foreclosed on individuals, easily groomed for the task? Or are they too stupid to realise that they are to change everything fundamentally to survive in this new age of instant limitless information and no place to hide dirty little secrets?
And whilst old systems controllers may think that brutalising force and military might is going to keep them safe and is a sound investment, there is nothing they can do to stop their rapid decline, and inevitable ignominious defeat at the hands of the newly informed and better educated mob who know how the old game works/worked and who got mad as hell and decided they were not gonna take it any more ... ... ... . http://youtu.be/q_qgVn-Op7Q
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Posted by marty on 03/12/12 10:47 PM
The US aggression against the web culture has been limited to such peripheral activities as file sharing, gambling, unauthorized access to other peoples machines, and child pornography.
The first two impact governmental and corporate revenues, although not to the degree the propaganda states. The last two, are arguably real crimes, although the third is one that the government itself regularly does, without bothering to get a warrant, not even 72 hours after the fact, as the secret courts allow. The last, the worst of the lot, pales in comparison, compared to the crimes against humanity, and other assorted war crimes, regularly committed by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations.
All this is an attempt to rationalize the suppression of what really endangers the political class's, and presumably the power elite's power as well. This is the telling of truth, regarding governmental misbehavior in so many venues, and it's connivance with evildoers in others. If only there were a way to copyright, trademark, or patent Ron Paul.
Alternatively, statutes could be passed to declare his speeches "Truth Porn", so as to prosecute not only the creator, but the audience for this depraved entertainment. There is precedent.
Perhaps ISPs, and other owners of the physical layer of the internet, could be required by law, to make transmitting only lies a condition of service. There is precedent for arresting, convicting, and imprisoning people for the crime of "gaining unauthorized access to a computer system".
This happened, despite the fact they acted in a Bona Fide manner, while applying for an account, and were granted access by the owners, as a result of violating the terms of service agreement. This happened even though the terms of service themselves stated, that the penalty for violation, was the loss of one's access to the system.
You may find this humorous, but is it any more outrageous than administration lawyers legislating via secret memo that, torture is not illegal, if POTUS does not want it to be, that initiating wars of aggression, is not a crime against humanity, and a war crime, despite the fact that multiple German Officials were hung or imprisoned for it under the Nuremberg conventions, that were instituted at US insistence, that US officials have sovereign immunity despite the precedent of the aforementioned Nuremberg tribunal, or finally, that despite the fact that Japanese Soldiers were hung for it, by the US Army, that water-boarding is not torture.
Hmmm. Now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't be writing this. Never mind. Nothing to see here.
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Posted by B-B-B-B on 03/12/12 08:04 PM
I believe it is quite different. The ruling class wants battles in the street.
1) It uses violence to discredit opposition. It will push people to violence and if that fails it will simply stage the violence itself.
2) Violence grows the state. It will use the aftermath of violence to increase it's size and power.
3) A condition of widespread violence results in poverty for the masses. The ruling class fears the middle class. Widespread violence will destroy the middle class.
4) Profit. War, no matter the form is a racket.
5) Violence results in damaged infrastructure and stifles the flow of information.
As to fearing physical resistance, through conditioning of the schools, the media, and so forth plus the way individuals are isolated in the society from each other it is easy for government to portray anyone who fights back as some sort of isolated kook. This means it will not meet organized resistance or even mass resistence. It may have to kill thousands or millions but it will do it just a few at time in a manageable manner.
The millions of gun owners simply don't pose a credible threat. Sure they can make this country look like Iraq, but the ruling class is likely just fine with that. They won't be dying, it will be cops and military.
What matters is informing people. Too many people informed and they won't have occupiers to prevent the violence from hitting them directly. Leaving them naked without instututions, police forces, and military and other muscle to hide behind. There is why the internet is a theat. It's all a confidence game and falls apart with knowledge.
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Posted by spekulatn on 03/12/12 05:44 PM
From today's Drudge Report,
Click to view link
Click to view link
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Posted by spiritsplice on 03/12/12 04:02 PM
Please. Armed Americans aren't going to do anything but complain. If TSA wasn't enoigh reason to act, nothing will ever be. This is why they haven't moved on gun confiscation, theu figured out that Americans are big mouthed babies who wouldn't dare use force against their own government. They literally cannot even fathom the idea.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 03/11/12 07:02 PM
'Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country,' Rosenstein said in a statement.
THE BRUSSELS AGREEMENT MAKES ALL EU BANK ACCOUNTS AN OPEN BOOK TO THE US AUTHORITIES
Needless to say, the Brussels Agreement grants US authorities much more scope to consult our bank accounts than that granted to domestic law enforcement agencies in Europe. In the UK and most of Europe a judge must authorise a specific search after receiving a sworn statement from a police officer. In the case of requests from the USA, this due process is completely bypassed.
This 2 things contradicts each other.
New web page is www.bovada.lv.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 03/11/12 02:16 PM
The success of the Emilian model challenges the political dualisms of the U.S. left. For us, political power and left principles are mutually exclusive. So the point is to stay away from mass politics. Stay fragmented; focus on single issues; just write about how bad everything is; organize only in emergency coalitions to defend the status quo you just finished denouncing yesterday. Yet the pillars of the Emilian model rest on principles that aren't so different from those that have helped define the U.S. left since the sixties -- participatory democracy and industrial democracy. Somehow this experiment got off the ground. And while it may have lost some momentum, it doesn't seem to have crashed. What's gotten the Emilian model this far?
The answer is political action. Some observers lament the decline of the old Bolognese political passions. Yet even in the mid-nineties Bologna's political participation is off any scale Americans are used to. In 1994, when Berlusconi tried to cut back the welfare state, demonstrations broke out in cities all across Italy. More than a million people protested in Rome. In Bologna 250,000 turned out. A demo of comparable size to Bo's in New York City would have to rally 5 million protesters. But far more inhumane cuts in the city budget never produced more than 20,000 demonstrators. It's not that we feel so much less compassion and outrage than the Bolognese, it's that we lack a complex and powerful political structure to engage and express our feelings.
Click to view link
This article was writen in 1996.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 03/11/12 02:09 PM
... fear. Elites acts like a dog protectin' her bone. We are the bone. We are jackpot, golden mine. We are source of their Ferraris, yachts and life in luxury. Parasites usualy ain't producin' any goods for their hosts.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 03/11/12 02:03 PM
Thumbs up!
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Posted by rossbcan on 03/11/12 09:34 AM
Who are you and what did you do with Uncle Martin? Too clear and unambiguous.
"War is peace" is THEIR definition. Uncle Martin, in his obtuse way KNOWS this.
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Posted by amanfromMars on 03/11/12 09:27 AM
Oh please, not that old piece of nonsense again, rossbcan ... [War is peace]
War is an clear and unambiguous admission that one does not have intelligence skills for peace and harmonious prosperity and all in support are is easily led by fools to conflicts which keep fools in power and control of ignorant tools easily led to conflicts which highlight a catastrophic lack of leading intelligence in all those who would imagine that war is an appropriate solution to anything even as it destroys everything around it.
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Posted by rossbcan on 03/11/12 06:52 AM
"for the curious as well as the furious"
If you are determinedly curious, you are destined for furious. Like everything else arbitrary power related, making good choices such as being intelligent and curious is dangerous. War is peace.
good play on words.
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Posted by Wrusssr on 03/11/12 12:07 AM
Good article, Anthony. Dead on. The Internet puts these bilge rats in a spot light center stage for the curious as well as the furious who've discovered them.
Which is why the so-called elite are scurrying about trying desperately to come up with a method to control the Internet and if not the Internet, its content.
Knowledge about their centuries-old schemes, scams, and cons have become public knowledge.
The tsunami awakening continues.
The bankers' goal and end game in all this is martial law in America; the only nation of any consequence (to them) whose citizenry is still armed. How they get there doesn't matter. Any old false flag (read: economic, pandemic, bombing, etc.) chaos or crisis will do. It is the weapons they're after because they stand between them and their global government. Criminals through the ages have feared an armed citizenry. Today's banksters are no different. The work of the founders' Constitution and its Second Amendment kept a stiff arm in their face, lo these many years. That's why they hate it and have poured infinite funding into congress to build a legislative wall around it-NDAA, Patriot Act, Military Commission Act, Protect America Act, denuding Posse Comitatus, Habeas Corpus, the list goes on.
America's weapons were what Fast and Furious was all about. Click to view link
If one of the hundreds of 'traceable' weapons that were handed over to Mexican drug cartels at the direction of our government happened to be used in a false flag assassination-type event on a major government official in, say, Mexico, and 'found'-like Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle-and traced back to the gun dealer that 'sold' it (at the feds' request), then the probability of that gun dealer being thrown under a boogeyman bus like Oswald, McVeigh, and Nichols was neither remote nor improbable. (One already was traced to the murder scene of a Border Patrol agent.) Click to view link
Confiscation raids on American gun shops would have followed with the simultaneous passage of prewritten laws that would have been introduced by purchased legislators-to protect Americans-whose banking accounts fatten with each false flag 'crisis.' Strict gun owner licensing and restriction of gun use identical to that found in Europe, England, and Australia would have been established; availability, attrition, and control of both ammunition and arms in America being the end game of the charade, in my opinion.
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Posted by Danny B on 03/10/12 10:25 PM
Edutainmant,,, Agent Pete 8? Try this on for size.
Click to view link
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Posted by Agent Pete 8 on 03/10/12 09:07 PM
A New Zealand perspective:
The NZ main stream media are milking this heavily, with a few memes in play as above would suggest. (Copywrong/USBuddy/E-Crime) Disposals & confiscations of assets before a verdict, mean mockingbirds visit the due dish airy.
The mainstream rags are holding the articles on the front page for several days at a time, compared to run of the mill fill, which turns over (leaves the front page) in 24-36 hours max.
The comparitive scale, volume by column-centimetre and production values suggest globo-corporate plus some co-ordination, especially as supposedly separate channels they all sing from the same sheet mostly.
They are using sentence constructions of superior quality and inceptive layering than usual are in use.
That NZG would lay itself down again for Hollywood, comes as no surprise to me, as this comic farce blast from the past would suggest.
Click to view link
NZ sees not only the sun before the rest of the world, but we often get the media meddling first too, as we are a polymetric microcosm of the rest of the world, and it is much cheaper to targetedly experiment and monitor discreetly on the some-suspecting cognisance of 4 million than to scatter-pun all over the US/EU.
So the moral of the story is that mercantile fascist anticompetitive cullusive conspiratorial treasons and misuse of force, are seen clearly as blamably lame and fad-fading ticket-toutish 'pyoyk' by the locals, despite high-grade mind-manipulations being used.
Competing Edutainment Model anyone?
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