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Comment by vxNsr | Hacker News Reader

Wow, this is unbelieveable...

I didn't realize they had this power, or that they'd exercise it like that... it's just scary to think that the internet is not as free or open as it feels or appears.

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This is nothing new, only the newly digitized weapon de jour is changing. Remember back in the nineties when exporting encryption was the hot topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_in...

The only actual difference being that cryptography never killed anyone...

it saved lives probably, can't have that, verboten.

You don't have to kill someone in line of sight with it to argue that a technology is a vital military asset. Nor has it to be its sole purpose.

PS: Obligatory Enigma reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra

PPS: I'm not saying encryption should regulated by the government.

How many people were killed by a CAD file?

And neither has a plastic gun.

Typically they only have the power until a court intervenes. What they do is rely on the fact that many sites they take down or information they have removed stay that way as the operators cannot afford to the court costs. That and they will rely at times on public sympathy by using known "concerned groups" who are nothing more than fronts for various politicians.

Was it on a .com domain? Because they've had the power to take those down for a few years now.

I found it on a certain .nz domain[1], the owner of which (who, oddly enough, renamed himself after the TLD you mention) is currently thumbing his nose at the USG[2].

[1] https://mega.co.nz/#!JplQVDDQ!Qi8kflIn8kMZl0hK96YW1h7RIc9vz2...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom

Certainly the silencer design is done by a friend of mine who lives in NZ who already avoids going to the US so I suspect that will stay up for a very long time.

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