You may have heard of this, the government is working on passing a bill that will shut down any site simply accused of copyright infringement. If it is found that the site in question was not actually in violation of the law, it's still finished. This same bill would allow the government to block undesirable sites from search engines. Full Text Of The PROTECT IP Act Released: The Good, The Bad And The Horribly Ugly | Techdirt Please call your senators about this.
We may have to go to something like fidonet to get around this shit. I can definitely see the US government trying to ban GC [there is a description in a work of fiction of a world that is very oppressive has a secondary internet that sneaks along the regular one, where you work like normal, but a tiny batch of data sneaks along with the normal stuff and carries the hidden net. There are also message boards that are hidden inside what look like normal websites that you have to be a member of to enter, and to get to be a member someone who is already a member has to propose you.]
this shit talk has been going on for years guys... YEARS. ICE has only seized several domains.. the whole process is an extremely time consuming project. it would take them months and months to finally get ahold of the registrar or site servers. if torrenting is your thing, most of the sites have slowly started to implement an "underground" structure with invite codes and what not. these sites will most likely STAY- there's hundreds, thousands of them. as for GC, you don't have to worry. GC mods follow an anti-piracy policy which is lined out in their Terms of Service. not to mention GC datacenters are in holland. GC will always remain safe
Congress could pass a law that forced the ISPs operating within the US to restrict/prohibit access to sites that advocated cannabis growing, smoking, etc. I realize that this isn't happening right now, but it certainly could happen. Also, you're absolutely right about the scene. They've always been mostly underground. They're not going anywhere. My biggest fear is the major ISPs restricting access and throttling connection speeds of certain applications/sites. Again, there is almost always going to be a way around their (they being the government) restrictions regarding the internet, but they can make it very hard for the average internet user to access a site like GC if they wanted.