Within the week the FBI shut down the site of SF Redbook. They have done this to dozens of sites for various reasons over the years.

But what disturbs me is that they do this without a court order and do it as if the parties are guilty before proven innocent as under the Code Napoleon as practicized in Mexico and France.

Just look at how they state things when they shut down a site :

" This domain name has been seized...this domain name is subject to civil and criminal forfeiture.  This seizure is based on probable cause to BELIEVE that this domain name was involved in racketeering derived from prostitution in violation of state and federal law.

Property, including domain names are subject to forfeiture ... "

What bothers me is that this was an ad site. Women and men placed ads, many of them free, on the site. If you wanted a more prominent ad, you paid for it.

What I would like to know is HOW is accepting money for an ad racketeering ? The owners of the site were not engaging in prostitution. They accepted ads from people and some of them engaged in non  sexual activities, such as dominatrixes and non sexual massuese/masseurs ( and yes there are ones that just give massages. ).

But the other thing about all this is the ability to SEIZE property before any charges have been filed and before the owners of that ( or any board this happens to ) have their day in court.

It seems to me that the government seeks to shut down websites for ANY reason, they should go to court first and allow the site owner to protest the proposed forfeiture.

This gives the government the right to shut down any site merely because they BELIEVE the site operators are engaging in racketeering.

This disturbs me.

In all probability, these guys didn't pay their taxes. They were stupid. And the other ostensible reason is that supposedly child prostitution ads were on the site as was mentioned in news reports. Yet that remains to be proven in a court of law.

I used the site as a social place to be to make posts and discuss things and to send stuff in inboxes. Now because the FBI and IRS decides that this site's owners are " racketeers " thousands of ad holders are out money and social folks like me are out a place to go.

But I don't feel the government should have the ability to shut any site down before going to court ( except perhaps in the case of terrorist sites ). If they can do it to this one they can SAY its rackeetering or terrorism to ANY site.

What do you think ?