This is insane. Notice that the content of the site seems to have little to do with the crime that he was arrested for. He was busted for selling Xbox mod-chips, not for publishing information about which IP is 'pirated'.. yet they want to take over isonews.com because of that publishing, certainly not because he was selling mod chips..

The fucking US DOJ is out of fucking control. Good to know they have resources to waste on bullshit like this. Guess that's what "justice" is all about. Your tax dollars at work. Go DMCA.

quoted:
===
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The leading public Internet site dedicated to online copyright piracy was
seized by the Justice Department today. Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff and Paul J. McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia today announced the seizure
of www.iSONEWS.com as part of a previous plea agreement entered into by a defendant convicted of violating the criminal copyright laws.

David M. Rocci, 22, of Blacksburg, Va., who used the online screen name "krazy8," pleaded guilty on December 19, 2002, in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, to
conspiring to import, market and sell circumvention devices known as modification (or "mod") chips in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Mod chips are designed to
circumvent copyright protections built into game consoles such as the Microsoft Xbox and Sony Playstation 2, and once installed, allow the unlimited play of pirated games on those
consoles. As a condition of his plea, Rocci agreed to surrender to the government his public website, www.iSONEWS.com, which he used to facilitate his illegal activity.

The United States assumed control of the domain name and website this week. Individuals who now visit www.iSONEWS.com will no longer find the latest news on new pirated releases by
illegal software piracy (or "warez") groups. Instead, they will view information about the case of United States v. Rocci, as well as general information about copyright infringement
and the criminal prosecution of individuals engaged in online piracy. In addition to this information, the site now contains links to the website of the Department of Justice's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, www.cybercrime.gov, which contains further information on the Department's criminal anti-piracy efforts.

#118: 02-26-03 JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SEIZES TOP INTERNET SITE INVOLVED IN COPYRIGHT PIRACY

So, what's wrong with PayPal and why is this site here?

PayPal Sucks is an anti paypal site to expose the nightmare of doing business "the paypal way." Post your complaints, troubles, fraud stories, lawsuits, and other dissatisfaction in the forums. Read the links & faq pages for help in resolving your paypal troubles and complaints. Read the options page to find an alternative to paypal, perhaps even get yourself your own merchant account to access credit cards directly. To enumerate the complaints:

1. Their customer service is horrible. They hide their telephone number, (intentionally - by their own admission) and only provide support via "form" emails:

As for the customer service, Sollitto said they intentionally make the phone number very difficult to find in order to save costs."

If you have a problem, you are at their mercy! (And you will eventually have a problem.)

2. Their terms of service are not completely disclosed upon signup and some key "conditions" are not disclosed. No place do they openly tell potential members that their money is 100% at risk. That PayPal can, will, and has in the past, completely cleaned out customers' accounts, (including your checking or savings account) with no appeals process available.

3. If PayPal feels your actions are questionable, PayPal is the investigator, judge, jury and executioner. "Telling your side" of what happened, in most cases seems to be irrelevant. They also refuse to provide you with the details of their investigation and withhold documents they relied upon to make their decisions. Your only contact will be an email that says:

Thank you for contacting PayPal. We apologize for the delay in respondingto your service request.

After review, the decision has been made to keep your account locked. Thisdecision cannot be appealed.

If you have any further questions, please reply to this email.

That will be end of it as far as PayPal is concerned. You can email back, but you'll just get more of the same.

4. If you are a bona fide, up-standing individual with hundreds of successful transactions, but someone pays you with a stolen credit card, your account (by PayPal's own admission) is immediately flagged as being "criminal behavior" and any money in that account is confiscated. If a customer "disputes" the charge, same thing happens. (See email above.)

5. PayPal's fees are now up to 2.9% plus $.35 per transaction. A money order costs $.50 to $1. The bank charges most businesses $.05 to $.12 per check. A good credit card merchant account is about 2.3%. (Plus you can contest chargebacks and have merchant rights.) On a $100 item, PayPal's fee is over $3. At one time, PayPal was the cheapest way to send money, but they are now one of the most expensive, plus you totally at their mercy in regards to chargebacks.

6. Money sent from PayPal account to PayPal account is subject to the exact same fees credit card purchases are. Thus every transaction makes PayPal money, but it's nothing more than an entry in a computer database on their system. No money has actually moved.

PayPalSucks.com is where you will learn the abuse, fraud, & evil behind the PayPal system!

Remember those flat round things you may have found lying around the house. Those that never really worked well as flying saucers? Well, the other day I happenned to have a good look at one through a magnifying glass. I was able to discern something waveform'esqe in the shape of the grooves. I thought, "groovy, there must be a way to extract something sensible off of that" (actual thought quoted). At which point I came up with some great excuses ^H^H^H^H reasons to have a go:

A) These round objects could have some archeological value.
B) I could waste some time.

Happily convinced by these, I tried to recall an old legend I once heard concerning these objects. This legend being of technological nature, entaled a diamond needle that would vibrate when placed atop the revolving flat things, these vibrations, when amplified would produce music.

...

Thus, to supply the virtual gramophone at least one complete revolution of the record, four regions had to be separately scanned. These were later stitched together to form an image of several complete inner tracks of the record.

Digital Needle - A Virtual Gramophone

By Leander Kahney

quoted:
===
Now, a university student from Israel has written a piece of software that goes a step further. Ofer Springer has created a "virtual gramophone" that plays LPs using an ordinary flatbed scanner.

Springer's Digital Needle uses a high-resolution image of an LP captured by a flatbed scanner. (Because 12-inch LPs are bigger than the image glass on most scanners, Springer first takes four pictures and stitches them together into a single image.)

Then, like a needle on a record player, his software follows the image of the groove as it spirals around the record, generating sounds based on the wavelike patterns of the groove.

The results are barely recognizable as the original music, but strangely affecting. Springer has posted samples on the project's Web page.

Wired News: Press 'Scan' to Play Old Albums?

... When we net it all out, competition in the telecommunications industry has come at a tremendous cost -- our country has lost its crown jewel.

Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
by
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School

I remember a time years ago when I was as convinced that Dick Cheney was obscenely wrong about something I am now. Subsequent events raised the possibility that he might not have been so wrong after all.

With this in mind, I've given some thought lately to how all this
might look to the Vice President (who is, I remain convinced, as much the real architect of American policy as he was while Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff or George the First's Secretary of Defense).

Sympathy for the Devil by John Perry Barlow

LOS ANGELES --

Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to venture out of the solar system, has fallen silent after traveling billions of miles from Earth on a mission that has lasted nearly 31 years, NASA said Tuesday.

What was apparently the spacecraft's last signal was received Jan. 22 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Deep Space Network. At the time, Pioneer 10 was 7.6 billion miles from Earth; the signal, traveling at the speed of light, took 11 hours and 20 minutes to arrive.

HoustonChronicle.com - Lonely Pioneer 10 phones home for last time

quoted:
By Matt - 10/04/'02
I don't know what it is. I don't know what it's for. I don't know why it's pink. The Mysterious Pink Box has entered my life, changing it forever. I found this substantial plastic entity laying on a shelf, all alone, in one of our local closeout stores. It sat there, by itself, waiting for the right person to come along. It sat there, by itself, pondering it's master plan. It rested comfortably in aisle six of Mace's Closeout Outlet, confident in it's abilities, as the rest of the world went about it's business, unknowing. What is the Mysterious Pink Box? What will it mean for mankind? What will it mean for me?

I still don't know.

X-Entertainment - The Mysterious Pink Box.

] PARIS, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- The apparent suicide of a
] celebrated French chef late Monday has relaunched a
] debate in France on the pressures of securing -- and
] keeping -- the coveted acclaims of restaurant guides such
] as Michelin or GaultMillau.
]
] Popular chef Bernard Loiseau was found shot dead Monday
] evening at his home in Saulieu, a gastronomic center in
] Burgundy. A hunting rifle lay beside his body.

They take cuisine very seriously in France.

United Press International: Feature: Suicide sparks ratings debate

... The next time you see a strange street sign in your neighborhood, it might just be a prop in someone else's entertainment, and the next Google search results page you pull down might contain a link to a node in the L3 universe. That's the thing about games without frontiers. You never really know when you're playing.

Geeks Without Borders, by Steven Johnson