"How Do You Like Us Now?"--one reason BBV.org got pulled in toto

To recap: I live in the same town as the Web host that ran blackboxvoting.org--the variant of Bev's site that got pulled because of a DMCA C&D from Diebold.

We have a free newspaper in this town; unfortunately, it's not a very good free newspaper because it's run by freepers. One of the major freepers there is Alex Lekas, Communications Director for Advanced Internet Technologies--the company that was hosting Bev's site.

Last night, I went to a burger joint for dinner and was flipping through the free rag for something to get incensed about, when I came across this Alex Lekas piece, parts of which follow...

With people like this on AIT's site, I'm only surprised that they didn't send a death squad over to Bev's house.

How Do You Like Us Now?
Left and terrorists have a lot in common.

//Snip a rephrasing of the RW e-mail about how Clinton promised to get the terrorists seven or eight times and didn't.//

"As this nation finally decides to no longer lie down and take it, one party has made clear that it cannot be counted on to confront an aggressor who only understands force."

Well, you get the idea. Go here http://www.upandcomingmag.com and follow "News and Views" to Alex's tripe.

And yes, I am getting ready to rip this guy a new asshole.

I thought that Bev. Harris was saying that AIT was essentially "innocent"... They were following their lawyer's advice... It's a business, why would they turn down business from Bev. Harris. They were worried about getting sued...
-CV

... and the Democrats being the literal enemy has been popping up so frequently that I can't help but think it's a recent talking point coming out of the RNC.

And, yeah, no paranoia required, it smells of Rove.

Cheers.

Are you guys saying that AIT killed bbv.org for political reasons ? If even B. Harris does not make those accusations (based on the documents and exchanges she had with them), what evidence is there to support this hypothesis ?... -CV

but the site was pulled for linking to a site that linked to a site in New Zealand. Talk about abusing the DMCA which is an abuse of the first ammendment in and of itself.

I don't want to spend my time reading it if it doesn't. Does he mention BBV? Bev Harris?? Otherwise, AFAIC it's speculation on your part and not really a BBV story at all.

Eloriel

I know Clarence Briggs, who owns AIT. I've met quite a few of the people who work there. I have read more of Alex Lekas' tripe than I care to mention. So this guess has been educated enough that it's got its masters degree.

They're freepers over there. All of them. I don't think anyone there (they employ a couple hundred people) isn't a Republican. One of my pressmen's sons-in-law went to work there in outside sales; in his New Employee Packet was an application for the Cumberland County Republican Party.

The guy offered me $19 an hour to administer domains. In this town that's damn good money. I turned him down because I have a soul.

AIT hosts "over 190,000 domains" so there's no way they could read everything they host, but tell me: if you were a freeper who owned the largest web host in the world, you received a C&D letter from Diebold and you pulled up a website that was on your server farm that detailed the ballot rigging that put Bush in the White House, would you leave it up? Oh hell no!

The whole point of the Internet is that now everybody has a printing press. "The power of the printing press belongs to them that owns one."

Only you DON'T really have a printing press if you're BBV and the guy hosting your site is a freeper.

I'm not sure on exactly how it's done, but a lot of businesses go out a buy a few Dell server boxes and host their own sites. I remember reading once that Marth Stewart had a bunch of servers in her basement. Sounded pretty impressive.

It could be worth a try.

but cannot somebody upstream still cut you off, even with your own servers ?... You have to buy access to the pipes somewhere... Let me know if you happen to find out anything on how to really be independent... Thanks. -C

The phone company installs a T-1 line and you hook up your server. You can run them off a DSL, some people used to even use 56K. But there you're a little more dependent than if you had your own T-1, but I suppose they could shut down your T-1 as well.

A server: a good computer with server software.

it's the pipes that are expensive.

David Allen
www.plan9.org

Diebold Voting Machines
We vote for you, so you don't have to!

They have their server on some island near Australia. It apparently doesn't respect copyright or Kazaa would be gone. I was just watching the download hearings and that was part of the questioning. I don't remember the name of the island, sorry.

I'm wondering: would P2P applications be a viable emergency source of the webpages?

Have you considered peer to peer as a possibility?

...except maybe too has signed on to the convention recognizing copyrights registered in other countries.

It's not like extradition, or not recognizing the criminal law of another country. If youi're alleging copyring infringment, you could probably get something pulled pretty easily even if it's in another country.

1) They had the option to ask us to cut the offending material and stay up, but they refused

2) They had the option to do a take-down only on the offending page, but they refused and clearly overstepped by taking down all unrelated pages

3) They had the option to put us back up after sending a safe harbor letter (that's what Jim March did, and his server put him back up). They notified me, in writing, that even AFTER sending the safe harbor letter we would be down for "10-14" days.

4) They had the obligation to grant us access to our FTP server. Now, I have gotten everything up through point three in writing, and may file suit against them for the overstepping. The FTP server issue I do not have in writing, and it is possible that a password was changed by someone else. That we will ascertain this week, along with obtaining ALL of the access logs for our files for the entire time the site was down.

5) It does not stop here. We also are not allowed to move our domain to a new server. Coincidentally, both that problem and the takedown problem may be solved right AFTER the election.

This is not a copyright issue. And by the way, there are very few cases invoking copyright on a link, and no cases that have been won on that, and there are also no cases that involve a two-deep link, which this was.

We were also threatened with a take-down of the "site is not available" page based on a three-deep link to a site that was not even cited in the take-down letter! The site led to another site which had a link which led to another site, which had a link that led to the memos.

This is harassment. It is also actionable, and our next task is to identify each and every person who bears responsibility for the decisions, the overreaching, the FTP blockage, and any access to the files while we were shut down, both officials from AIT and any private individuals.

I am not at all surprised to see the political affiliations of AIT -- it explains a lot. They are going to be in the hot seat with at least two news articles coming out in the next 24 hours.


Bev

That's a new one on me, what are they saying to justify not releasing your domain?

By the way, my server is on Interland which is why I haven't offered it. I suspect it would be kicked out within a week and I just can't afford the loss of income when I know going in that's what would happen. Hope you understand.

That's been going on for over a week. I demanded an explanation in writing as to who did it and under what authority, and they said it is due to maintenance. They claim this block is on all .ORG sites.

Bev

Never heard of that one. Can't even imagine a reason for it. We have .com and .net sites and they're set up the same. I think we did a couple of .org's a few years ago, I'll ask hubby in the morning. He does the server stuff.

Our domain registrar has a system where changes cannot be made except by us. The domains are locked. That's to keep them from being hi-jacked. But once we release them, they're released. It's less than a 24 hour process. Somebody is definitely messing with you, and you're right, the link is not copyright protected. You are not passing it off as your material. I was going to say 'or linking to dangerous material', but, lol, it IS dangerous. That's why they don't want you letting people know it's there!!

Have you guys contacted that Congressman who introduced the legislation, you know what I mean, my brain won't dig up the right words!! I wonder if he could help?

Administrative, Technical Contact:
Caribbean, Ltd., Owego hostmaster@owego.net
Owego Caribbean Ltd.
11 Oxford Road
Kingston, 5
JM
876-880-2853
818-475-5446

I have the guy's name, if you want more info, I'll PM it.

Now, I am NOT particularly recommending this guy as somebody great to do business with. He had servers in LA and we used them for a few months. We went from our own server to a managed location because we want to travel and can't hardly turn around and come clear back home if our server went down. He does know what he's doing, but he had his system go down because he hadn't paid his bill. After the second time, we had to move. I don't know if this is out of reach of corporate fingers or not, I don't know if he's actually in business still or not, but I thought I'd give it to you and let you decide.

Hubby got up for, um, personal reasons, and laughed when I asked about the .org thing. This is a basic first amendment violation, there's just no two ways about it.

Any private concern anywhere can suppress speech -- just as DU does. No law against it and certainly no violation of Constitutionally protected free speech.

Eloriel

Ah! OK, this makese sense. From the information posted on the bbv.com site I had the impression the AIT was ok, somebody there was really worried and was following orders from their lawyer(s) (who overreacted):

"We are finally getting some answers to our questions about the site shut down.
The following letter was sent to the ISP. Understand that the ISP is a reseller. The physical equipment is leased from a server farm. The company who actually shut down the site was the server farm, not the ISP re-seller.

I have redacted some info. The reason for this is that their are a few innocent parties caught in the middle. The server farm has been told by their attorney that they MUST shut the site down and lock it up, giving access to no one until the matter is resolved. They are simply following their attorney's advice and I can sympathize, so please, leave them alone."

Has the above interpretation of facts changed (the "leave them alone" part)? Did some facts change ?From the description in your previous message, it looks like there was more than just this going on... But it could be plain incompetence... Of course, one can be paid to be even more incompetent :) ... -C

this is a bigger problem (even) than we first thought. My biggest complaint is that I cannot arrange to meet people on my own message boards; I cannot set up access for citizens who experience problems in California next Tuesday; I cannot use the site to drive people to the evidence and documentation contained in the book.

If this was a simple DMCA takedown, there would be no block on moving the domain, and I would not have been shut out of my FTP server with the files.

By the way, check whois.sc for the ownership -- look at the contrast between blackboxvoting.net, which I own, and blackboxvoting.org, which I also own. For some reason the registry information differs, though I have correspondence as recently as Friday Oct 3 that confirms nothing has changed.

Recap:
- There has never been a case on a two-deep link, and even cases on direct links have not been validated through the courts
- We were not allowed to resurrect the site by removing the offending link
- We were not allowed to keep the other 300 pages on the site, even though they had nothing to do with the link
- We were not allowed access to our FTP in order to retrieve our files. My publisher, David Allen, got a tech to bypass the chain of command and open the FTP so he could access the files.
- When I attempted to relocate the domain, I was not allowed to.

This is quite different than a copyright suit. It will unravel; we not only have a First Amendment case, but a legitimate cause for damages with restraint of trade, and in the event that the blockage was caused by private individuals seeking qui tam money, instead of the more obvious incompetence of the ISP, that money will be legally enjoined, should it ever materialize, and I will seek to have it redistributed to some worthy cause, with charges filed against all those involved. Oh, of course there is the tinfoil reason, but who knows -- a misuse of the Patriot Act would cause the same symptoms.

The real reasons for the takedown and blockage is one of (or a combination of the following)

- ISP incompetence
- ISP bias and political muscle
- A coalition of private citizens seeking qui tam money, who pulled strings behind the scenes to block public disclosure of information they hoped to use (under seal) in their case
- Misuse of Patriot Act

Any of the above are actionable, save the last. Most likely it is the first explanation, but that doesn't explain the block on relocating the domain to a new server.

"A coalition of private citizens seeking qui tam money, who pulled strings behind the scenes to block public disclosure of information they hoped to use (under seal) in their case"

I would find this scenario particularly likely... Only problem is that it seems a little too late. The info is out there... Been around there for a while... The Federal Govt. could act on the basis of your book and copies of the memos etc... They don't need anybody else... And they don't need to blow several millions of $ to pay a whistleblower at this point. It's too late.
Oh... On second thought... Have you thought that a Diebold INSIDER, sick of it all, would actually go for something like that ? Do people get immunity of some sort ? -C

Whoever gets there first gets to go for the money. All they need is info that hasn't gone public yet.

But of course, if we all have access to those BlackBoxVoting.org files and the ability to continue public discussions of the memos, the material filed under seal might be exposed, putting all those millions at risk. The deal is it has to be information that hasn't been made public.

My take on this: By now someone, somewhere, is preparing or has filed a case; my bet is it's filed. More power to them -- but to the extent that it takes away the citizens' right to a public airing of the issues, this move unquestionably puts personal gain above the public interest, and in fact jeopardizes the long-term resolution of the problem.

Still, people will do this, so be it.

I've been discussing this issue with reporters -- it fascinates them, by the way. Activists are among the most likely to file, since they have the most information. If activists were previously very active and vocal on this issue but have recently become muted (except for relating general news and general opinions and discussing old news), there's your cue.

I urge you to replace the silenced voices with your own.

Bev

how is it a First Amendment case?

Eloriel

but we'd really like a server under our own control.

David Allen
www.plan9.org

Diebold Voting Machines
We vote for you, so you don't have to!

We have an undisclosed location for it, and will see about taking it live and speading the word as soon as we know for sure -- hopefully within 24 hours. We're at about 80 percent -- serious setbacks with all the dirty tricks against the two web sites, but David Allen is the greatest.

We have a forum up at Blackboxvoting.com but I want to work with the folks there to get it to feel more comfortable (for example, I can't get myself logged in, and I'd like to change the organization of it to make it more appealing).

First, though, we had to reformat the whole Chapter 7, which got corrupted and left out whole swaths of text and made very little sense -- that was weird. We're getting there on that.

Bev

Kick!

:kick:

.....Bev, remember that 'non profit' organization I recommended setting up to solicit funds for legal actions and public education projects? :evilgrin:

Anyone have any suggestions for President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer as well as members of a Board of Directors? We're getting lots of good feedback and offers of help for staging one hell of a concert as a fundraiser. I have another meeting later this week and can start outlining the plan then. :)

will PM you tomorrow or regular M you or whatever.

Love ya, Paranoid Pat

From Paranoid Bev

1.) Can these people access the site for their own reading pleasure, including the private forums? Is that how Qui Tam can be used?

2.) Is there a way to find out what other hosts they carry, so we can avoid them? I wouldn't want my sites to have any affiliation with them, nor help them make money off them.

Okay, sorry, I know that's more than two questions, and if my questions make no sense, that's because I don't understand the technical side of all this. <sigh>

Hmmm...same snarky style of writing. Same hatred of Democrats. And same pack of unvarnished lies.

I've known Ann Coulter was a man for quite a while now. But hey! Who'da thunk he was really named "Alex Lekas"?

Ann, you look better in the fright wig. But nevermind that. We have serious business to attend to. Mainly, that you're lying through your teeth again.

Oh, lemme see...the 1993 WTC attack? We "blow no houses down"? Ya might not want to tell that to the four men who did the deed; they each received 240 year prison sentences with no parole. How you actually serve 240 years in prison I'm not sure, but our jailers are good and they'll think of something.

The 18 soldiers killed in Somalia? Would you rather it be 180? 360? The man you call president certainly would. He's got one of those "These Colors Don't Run" bumper stickers on his old beat-up pickup. President Clinton has a "These Colors Shouldn't Be Wrapped Around a Soldier Who Got Killed Because I Want To Look Tough" bumper sticker. And frankly, I agree with the second sentiment. As Kenny Rogers put it, ya got to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.

The 1996 attacks in Saudi Arabia? I'd tell you not to tell the people who did that one that the United States means business, but you can't; the US got together with the Saudis and caught those guys, the Saudis took jurisdiction (Saudi Arabia doesn't have an extradition treaty with the United States) and beheaded them all.

The attack on the Cole? Why the Right likes to pull out this one I don't know. The Port of Aden, Yemen, was known to be hostile, and the captain of the Cole didn't put out any security. Two sailors in a rowboat with a fifty-caliber machinegun would have prevented the Cole incident--and they weren't down there. In the old navy, they would have hung the skipper from the yardarm for doing something so idiotic. But it's easier to blame Clinton for this one, I guess.

Now let's talk 9/11. George Bush was scheduled to read a story book to a classroom full of second graders. When he was informed at his hotel that the first plane had hit the WTC, what did he do? No, not what Clinton would have done, which is to get back to Air Force One and get on the phone. Bush went to the school and began to read. When Bush's press secretary informed him that the second plane had hit the tower, what did he do? No, not what the man who actually won the election would have done, which is to excuse himself immediately, get to a phone and start working to stop these attacks--George Bush picked the book up and read for twenty more minutes. (Never mind that with all of these airplanes flying all over hell's half acre and no one knowing where they were going, his presence in that classroom endangered all of those children. No, the big problem is that when the United States needed their president the most, he decided to do his very best First Lady impression so he wouldn't frighten the second-graders. I'm sorry, but we don't pay this man hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be First Lady. And he makes a rotten First Lady too--he wears men's clothing, his appearance on television to beg Congress for $87 billion shows that he looks terrible in women's makeup and he probably can't bake cookies. Y'all thought cookie-baking was an important thing when Hillary Clinton was first lady; therefore, it must still be important.)

Did we bring down a despotic dictator who threatened the stability of the world's most fragile region? No, we just brought down a halfwit crackpot. The guy was big on torture, but threatening the stability of the region? Considering that exactly zero Arab nations sent anything more than good wishes to Bush's Coalition of the Gullible, he must not have been all that big a threat to the region's stability.

I love the snide little remark about the left suddenly finding fiscal religion over funding a bona fide function of the government. Uhh...explain to me how overrunning Iraq like Hitler overran Poland in 1938 is a bona fide function of the government. We started that war because Saddam had thousands of tons of lethal agents and was building a nuclear bomb. Now we find out that Saddam was thinking about starting a program to make lethal agents so we had to invade them now. Y'know, I've got a recipe for chocolate chip ice cream. You think that if I sent a letter to the state fair saying I had this recipe, they'd give me the blue ribbon for ice cream? I don't even have an ice cream freezer and this recipe contains three onions, but I might start a program to make ice cream and following the logic Bush has displayed, I should be the champion!

Yeah, you're right. Saddam did gas his own people...in 1988...with gas we sold him the ingredients to make and out of a helicopter we sold him. As the left is so fond of saying, we know Saddam had a chemical weapons program because we have the receipts. Know who sold it to him? Bush's daddy. If you'd like I can send you the picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.

And yes, the left knows all about tyrants like Saddam. We, however, don't sell them weapons like Ronald Reagan did. We don't give them money, like the current George Bush did with the Taliban. Oh hell yes, the Taliban stopped opium cultivation. Why wouldn't they? There was a glut of heroin on the market and any more production would have driven the price down too much.

Do we have a postwar plan for Iraq? Yeah, put the UN in charge of this, send all the combat engineers we can scrape together to Iraq, have them fix what we blew up, let the Iraqis choose a government they like and get our people the hell out of there. Which is better than the Bush administration's plan, which seems to be "give Halliburton $40 billion so they can go over there and do nothing." You do know that we're paying Halliburton to deliver water to our soldiers, and they sometimes won't do it because Iraqis shoot at them--which means our guys are surviving on a quart and a half of water a day and they're losing weight. How, exactly, is paying two Halliburton employees $60,000 a year to drive a water truck a better deal than paying a PFC and a sergeant whatever PFCs and sergeants make to drive the same truck? And using the PFC and the sergeant has one advantage: they will take the water to the soldiers whereas the Halliburton guys have been known not to.

And yes, we've known of Saddam's brutality for years. If you knew anyone on the left, you'd know the kind of stuff Saddam liked to pull. The difference between someone on the left and someone on the right is that someone on the left wouldn't have sold Saddam any guns.

Those who wish this country harm have learned that the United States is run by some sort of power-drunk idiot cowboy who shoots first then makes up new questions when they got the wrong answers to the ones they asked after they blew the smoke off their pistols. They know that the only thing propping up Bush's phony numbers is war-war-war, so he'll start stupid ones like the thing in Iraq.

They know that Bush has stripped the Treasury so badly there's not enough money left to fight any more war. And why did he strip it, you ask? So Bill Gates could have a tax cut that's bigger than many of his employees' salaries.

And they know that because of all the war-war-war, there aren't enough soldiers in the continental United States to defend it.

One minor quibble:

Oh hell yes, the Taliban stopped opium cultivation. Why wouldn't they? There was a glut of heroin on the market and any more production would have driven the price down too much.

No, my understanding it was a religious thing.

I couldn't find what you were rebutting specifically. Do you have a direct link?

But remember, everything they did they said was for religion. They eliminated healthcare for women because of religion. They beat the shit out of people on the street for religion.

Afghanistan has exactly one thing they can trade on the international market: opium. Or, as they call it, narcotic. Too much narcotic on the market depresses the price, hence screws up Afghanistan's foreign trade. (Please remember that not all opium winds up as heroin; there is a legal market in opiates.)

Note that when the Taliban banished opium cultivation, they didn't get rid of the stocks they had. If they would have eliminated the on-hands, that would have shown they were trying to eliminate opium from the market. As it is, they were just adjusting their stocks.

Remember when the Dubya maladministration gave $43 million to the Taliban?

Those who wish this country harm have learned that the United States is run by some sort of power-drunk idiot cowboy who shoots first then makes up new questions when they got the wrong answers to the ones they asked after they blew the smoke off their pistols.

Has kind of a Mark Twain feel to it. Thanks.

Bev

:kick:

Now go nail it to the door of these guys!

to revolt against their advertisers.

I'd write up a flyer that prominently features the "death squad" quote, some commentary about this fascist's disregard for free elections, and an explaination of your intention to avoid shopping at any store that continues to advertise in the rag.

Then distribute it to as many like-minded people you can find and have them personally hand deliver it to the store managers. Two or three advertisers who drop the rag could have a big impact.