Stepping on the little guy

Cryptome.org, is a whistleblower site that archives “documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular materials on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence and secret governance”. Wednesday, Cryptome’s hosting provider, Network Solutions, took down the site and “legally locked” the domain name. When a domain name is “Legally Locked” it means that the domain information cannot be modified or transfered, only the registration can be renewed (basically you can do anything that makes them money, but not puts your site elsewhere). This action from Network Solutions was motivated by a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint followed by Microsoft, in regards to Cryptome’s releasing a leaked Microsoft document, which I told you about earlier. Basically, Microsoft is ticked that Cryptome has exposed to the internet the things it doesn’t want made public about how they violate their customers trust and privacy, and now they want to use their weight to take down Cryptome. They are using their size, to bend a copyright law to suit their own purposes (Big Suprise right). It was reported by ReadWriteWeb that once the complaint was filed, Network Solutions requested Paul Young, The sites owner, take the document off the website, to which he refused. The ISP then sent a warning that if the document was not removed from the site by Thursday, they would disable the site.

In the complaint, Microsoft states that the reason for their request was “infringement of copyright laws”. Luckily, the Electronic Frontier Foundation spoke up saying “We find it troubling that copyright law is being invoked here. Microsoft doesn’t sell this manual. There’s no market for this work. It’s not a copyright issue. John’s copying of it is fair use. We don’t do this anywhere else in speech law.” John Young has filed a counter-notification, to which we will probably be talking about later today. However, if Microsoft doesn’t send a notice of litigation, Network Solutions will be forced to reactivate the website and unlock the domain in no more than 14 business days.

In the mean time, you can still access Cryptome’s UK site available Here

-Zach Morton “The Uber Geek”

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