On 10/11/2011 7:04 AM, Alex Gakuru wrote:
> No court order necessary
> By Kevin Murphy
> 11th October 2011
>
> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/11/verisign_asks_for_web_takedown_powers/>
>

Thanks for the heads up Alex. I have some mixed feeling about this as I 
am someone who wears two hats. So I'll throw the delema out there and 
see what you all think.

First - as the founder of the Church of Reality and a former employee of 
the Electronic Frontier Foundation (sys admin - not lawyer) I and a 
fierce defender of free speech and due process, keeping the hands of 
governments off the Internet. The Internet is actually considered a holy 
object in the Church of Reality as it is the central factor driving 
human evolution allowing us to evolve into something that increases our 
chances of long term survival, so we can continue to exist. If you fail 
to continue to exist then you are no longer part of reality.

Then there's my second hat. I also own a spam filtering company where 
every day I block millions of emails from people pretending to be banks 
and trying to trick you into giving up your login so that criminals can 
steal your money. It is a private sector business and I can instantly 
block a domain that is clearly committing fraud. So a domain like 
wellssfargo.com (note the double S) pretending to be Wells Fargo Bank is 
immediately blocked by me - and every other server on the planet who 
uses my blacklist.

Then there's Wikileaks which I support and which most every government 
out there wants shut down.

Just wondering if it would be useful to have some sort of discussion 
about this for the sake of clarity.