Domain Name Seizures Potentially An Elaborate Hoax

I've wondered for a long time what 4chan vs the government would look like. They're unbelievably creative and resourceful (see <a href="http://www.urlesque.com/2010/11/18/hot-topic-rage-guy-shirt-4chan-racism-troll/" rel="nofollow">http://www.urlesque.com/2010/11/18/hot-topic-rage-guy-shirt-...</a> for a good recent example). I figured they wouldn't go straight up against it, protesting in the street and writing emotional op-eds. They tried this once, with Scientology, and it didn't seem to get them anywhere. They're best at playing mind games and finding the most ironic ways possible to win, exploiting what they're given -- in this case, controversial domain seizure.<p>Good news doesn't travel nearly as far or as fast as bad news on the internet; some of us will read this post, assuming it turns out to be true, but not nearly as many and we won't react nearly as strongly as we did to the "WTF THE DHS IS SEIZING DOMAINS NOW" posts.<p>GWB was a pretty disastrous presidency, but it didn't usually threaten to impact the internets' daily lives as much as some things now are. The internet is beginning to get mad at the government, and the trolls are heading to Washington. 4chan is the internet's immune system.

What about this statement:<p>"“ICE office of Homeland Security Investigations executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names,” said Cori W. Bassett, a spokeswoman for ICE"<p>from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html</a>? Seems to confirm that at least some of the seizures actually happened.

I am very curious of 4Chan's "Anonymous" userbase.<p>Most community structures have identifiable leaderships of some kind yet 4Chan has no usernames and no way of communicating provenance of a given user -- either in terms of reflecting reputation or simply being able to accurately know that two posts in a thread were by the same person/the OP/etc.<p>Hoaxes and stunts like this <i>(if this is true)</i> are either truly, truly remarkable or the work of a closer sub-set of folks who are in more private inter-communication away from 4Chan for the purposes of coordination but represent themselves to be part of the massive 4Chan community, perhaps for plausible deniability more than anything. It also makes wonderful fodder for the media to make even more of a FUD story out of.<p>Given that most of 4Chan does seem to be bored teenagers posting pornography, penis jokes and occasionally child pornography I'm inclined to believe it is the latter.

Wild West Domains is GoDaddy, so strike bullet 3 off the conspiracy theory.

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Even is this is a hoax, it serves well to keep vigilant when dealing with something important as freedom of speech and censorship. Luckily the online community hadn't fallen asleep yet.

Interesting. If it's a hoax, it's very well done. And a good reminder of how the world is going to look with the ACTA in place.

We'll know Monday once the thanksgiving weekend is over and any details are posted to ICE.