Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a DHS sub-agency. Organized copyright infringement like DVD and fake-product piracy, as well as contraband IP like child porn, has usually been their responsibility because a lot of it was done overseas and imported. Patrolling the internet sort of fell to them by default, and not that far away from stuff like cybersecurity. They're not the only government agency interested in such things, of course, but DHS has one of the largest budget allocations in the federal government.
The notice claims that it is acting pursuant to a warrant alleging copyright infringement, similar to recent seizures by ICE of sites related to file sharing (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943928), but it's unclear of the direct connection to copyright infringement by LulzSec.
Keep in mind that it's lulzsec and that the servers that host the ICE seized page respond for any hostname. So one can just point A records at 74.81.170.110 and be `seized'.
I've always struggled to understand the mentality of hackers like these guys. The combination of the extreme intelligence required to do some of this stuff plus the stupidity to actually do it is confusing to me. I would be absolutely terrified if I were one of them right now, but they just keep on going.
How is this related to copyright infringement? Protect IP hasn't even been voted into law, and they are already overreaching and censoring any type of website they want.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 66.4 ms ] threadhttp://lulzsecurity.org/IPRC_Seized_2010_11.gif
Ideas?
A) There's a "National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center" with its own federal-agency-ish logo.
B) The logo looks like an eagle that's about to tear my face off. What is it with the lamer the mission, the tougher looking the logo?
EDIT: In reaction to hoax, I googled and the agency's actually real, complete with ridiculous logo.
Last Updated On:09-Jun-2011 09:42:00 UTC Expiration Date:09-Jun-2012 09:13:59 UTC
Is it best to delete entirely, or leave as is?