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Article Poll

Poll Most Likely to be Shutdown By Government Agency
TrueCrypt
EFF Patent Busters
GNU Software Radio
WikiLeaks
CryptoMe.org
Tor
Freenet
CowboyNeal
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:246 | Votes:7108

Community Choice Award "Most Likely to be Shut Down By Govt"

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Jun 09, 2008 12:44 PM
from the make-your-sarcastic-vote-heard dept.
News
Last week we took nominations for a Slashdot category at the SourceForge Community Choice awards. Our category was 'Most Likely to be Shut Down By Government Agency'. Your nominations were tallied, and we arbitrarily selected a few that we think are the best. Today is the day where you can at long last determine the winner, using the incredibly scientifically accurate Slashdot Poll. Our nominees are Truecrypt, EFF Patent Busting, GNU Software Radio, WikiLeaks, Cryptome.org, Tor, Freenet, and CowboyNeal.
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The corporate overlords at SourceForge asked me to name a Slashdot category for their upcoming Community Choice Awards and to let you guys select the winner. I have named my category "Most Likely to be Shut Down by a Government Agency." We're going to run this like we do an Ask Slashdot call for questions — post your nominations into the comments here. Use moderation to send up good ideas. In the upcoming days we'll post another story where you can vote on the actual winner. Nominations need to include the project name, a link to some sort of official website, and a paragraph of why you think they deserve to win. The project that wins will gain fame, notoriety, and maybe a cease and desist order that they could print out and frame if they had that kind of time.
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Community Choice Award "Most Likely to be Shut Down By Govt" 25 Comments More /

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  • Most likely to be shut down by the government? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2008, @12:45PM (#23711401)
    Slashdot of course!

  • So I'm guessing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2008, @12:45PM (#23711405)
    TrueCrypt has already changed it's name to TueCrypt to avoid pursuit.

  • The Most Likely Choice... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fragholio (574860) on Monday June 09 2008, @12:49PM (#23711473)
    ...has got to be WikiLeaks.

    Among the nominees, it's the biggest threat to the governments themselves. And make no mistake, the governments will deal with threats to itself before others.

    • The Truth Is Out Th-*WHACK*

      WikiLeaks domain sold to the Urinary Tract Infection Society Of America.

    • Re:The Most Likely Choice... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UnderCoverPenguin (1001627) on Monday June 09 2008, @01:13PM (#23711883)
      Depends on your definition of shutdown. More likely, I see the service being manipulated by social engineering.

        • Re:The Most Likely Choice... (Score:5, Informative)

          by moderatorrater (1095745) on Monday June 09 2008, @01:38PM (#23712257)
          Copyright infringement, people posting things they're legally/contractually obligated not to post, etc.

          • Re:The Most Likely Choice... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2008, @01:50PM (#23712439)
            Copyright infringement is a maybe (depends heavily on how good your lawyer is...), but under US law Wikileaks can't be held responsible for displaying things that other people weren't supposed to be sharing. Wikileaks can't very well violate an NDA that they never signed onto and all that. Of course, this is also almost entirely irrelevant, since Wikileaks is based in Sweden, which is also noted for a rather laid back stance on the whole copyright infringement bit (of course, that doesn't mean that individual contributors can't get in trouble in their home countries, especially since many of them are Chinese, but Wikileaks itself isn't terribly vulnerable). So, um, yeah... What exactly is illegal here?

        • Re:The Most Likely Choice... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tirerim (1108567) on Monday June 09 2008, @02:40PM (#23713157)
          Nothing illegal about it... yet. The point is that WikiLeaks is the most likely to expose information that the government doesn't want the public to know about. That could be anything from treatment of political prisoners to uses of surveillance. Anyone in power who is abusing it (i.e. most of them) will want to avoid having that come to light. Okay, yes, I'm kind of paranoid. The U.S., at least, still has some protections on freedom of speech and press, as do some other countries, and those may actually protect WikiLeaks. But given some of the efforts that governments have been taking to reduce those rights, I'm not certain.

  • Any Serious Chance It'll Happen???!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2008, @12:49PM (#23711493)
    Think about it, what exactly has been shut down by the government lately? Freenet or Truecrypt anyone???!!

    I challenge anyone to even find one credible attempt by anyone in government to shut down one of the nominees.

    This story is just hysterical scaremongering.

    • Re:Any Serious Chance It'll Happen???!!! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Steauengeglase (512315) on Monday June 09 2008, @01:34PM (#23712197)
      I wouldn't call this scaremongering. Just having a little fun.

      There is something about geeks that leads them to be more suspicious of authority. Perhaps it is being ostracized at a young age or the fact that there are simply a lot of really dumb people out there who have somehow manage to get a little power.

      • I wouldn't call this scaremongering. Just having a little fun.

        There is something about geeks that leads them to be more suspicious of authority. Perhaps it is being ostracized at a young age or the fact that there are simply a lot of really dumb people out there who have somehow manage to get a little power.
        I think it's that geeks tend to know a lot about controlling information and how much power that gives a person -- so they tend to see situations that politicians might abuse to gain power that other folk might miss or dismiss.

  • **AA (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2008, @12:50PM (#23711505)
    I've lost track. Is the **AA is counted as a government agency, or is the government counted as an **AA agency? Can anyone clarify?

  • YouTube? (Score:5, Informative)

    by RobBebop (947356) on Monday June 09 2008, @12:54PM (#23711593) Homepage Journal

    I read the earlier story, but it only now just occurred to me that another prime candidate for this is YouTube. The freedom to "Broadcast Yourself" is scary in a lot of general contexts that have already led to a number of government agency censorships around the world.

    Also, giving Google the ability to self-censor the content posted (currently, I believe objectionable violence and pornography is banned by the TOS) provides for a bias on the site.

  • Likely? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath (38547) on Monday June 09 2008, @12:55PM (#23711601)
    What difference does it make if something is "likely" to get shut down by a government agency?

    It matters if something is actually shut down. The answers on this "likely" poll are just a measure of the prejudice (in the dictionary sense of the word prejudice [reference.com]) of the people answering the question.

    Where's the answer for "none of them should be shut down, but I prefer to keep an open mind and deal with reality rather than wallow in my own preconceptions about things that haven't happened yet"?

  • Vote None! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mveloso (325617) on Monday June 09 2008, @01:10PM (#23711833)
    The government doesn't shut down websites. They can't, legally, unless there's something criminal going on.

    • Re:Vote None! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bsDaemon (87307) on Monday June 09 2008, @01:17PM (#23711941) Homepage
      Until they figure on some exigent circumstances. "pedophile terrorist communists use freenet!" use of freenet is then banned.

      Someone posts to wikileaks about how the govt made up the charges about freenet, and then freenet gets taken down over "state secrets" or something.

      Notions of law and justice are really somewhat quaint these days.

      • Re:Vote None! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Z34107 (925136) <[ten.epacsten] [ta] [repinssuolaez]> on Monday June 09 2008, @01:38PM (#23712263)

        Just because some of our 535 crazies committed to Congress this session want to shut it down, doesn't mean it'll happen.

        A bill was introduced in 1955 to ban Rock and Roll music, for the same "protect the children" reasons used as excuses to ban anything. Of course, that didn't happen - what would've happened to "Guitar Hero?"

        Congress wants to look like it's doing something - actually doing it is hard. Watch them ban Wikileaks, make a press release, and then do nothing within their (limited) power to actually shut the site down. They get their press time, everyone's happy.

        But, in some ways, that's a good thing. An ineffectual government is better than one with "quaint" notions of law and justice.

  • Not a suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by petes_PoV (912422) on Monday June 09 2008, @01:17PM (#23711939)
    Given that most governments now consider George Orwell's classic: 1984 more as an instruction manual than a warning, someone should make it clear to the govt. that we are not asking them to close these sites down.

  • As much as I think TPTB would like to kill off truecrypt (assuming it's on their radar), it can live on with underground distribution since it's a software project. Development might grind to a halt, since no one could easily validate the source for various underground successor projects. But checksums for the last known, good version would be as easy to find elsewhere as a bootleged disc of code.

    The whole point of Wikileaks is to make things public, so driving leaked documents repositories underground would make them indistinguishable from conspiracy theorists and the lunatic fringe.

  • EFF Patent Busting?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OldSoldier (168889) on Monday June 09 2008, @01:28PM (#23712101)
    Well.. if the government "shuts EFF Patent Busting down" by fixing the patent system, then that would be a Good Thing.

    Seriously, even the patent office is complaining about the backlog of patents. I think they want a solution as much as the rest of us.

  • Excellent question! (Score:5, Funny)

    by spazdor (902907) on Monday June 09 2008, @03:13PM (#23713703)
    Yes, Slashdot. Tell us. What projects *are* most likely to be shut down by government?

    Listening attentively,
    -US Gov't

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