So. Today, I am browsing the internet. You know, like normal people do all the time. And I…read morethought to myself, I better check out that website I haven't visited in a long time. You know, the one. Well, it doesn't really matter, cause that's not the point of my typing. What matters is that the website is not online and I wanted to look at it. Seriously, gone as best I can tell. Now you are probably thinking "this type of stuff happens, bro. websites go down and away for all kinds of reasons, bro." As a note, I would probably tell you that you say "bro" too much. But anyways, that's not the point, nor is that what happened here. The website gets redirected to some page that says this:
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Dear Webion hosting client -
You are seeing this page instead of your content because IPv4 address space in the range 64.5.96.0 - 64.5.111.255 was revoked from Webion Inc as the result of a Court Order, effective at approximately 2pm on June 26th of 2014.
The IP range has been transferred to our company in accordance with said Court Order. If you would like to keep your IP assignment(s) from the range 64.5.96.0 - 64.5.111.255, please contact us to discuss hosting / colocation arrangements.
Please use the contact form here or call us toll-free at 855-SAC-COLO (722-2656).
Best,
Datacate Team
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Now I don't know what a Webion is, I just know the site I typed in isn't displaying what I expect to be displayed. And from this message I gather that these guys got a court order and took down this website. Since the notification states it is a full address range I can only guess it was multiple websites. Hopefully they were all owned by whatever a Webion is, because that is who the court order was against, right?
I can't fathom what kind of court order would give anyone permission to yank a bunch of ip address just because you are the master of the universe, but what do I know. Maybe court orders are like "I give you this court order against a Webion and you can step on anyone you want right in the face!" Is that how court orders work? If so, I'm gonna go get me a court order. I bet Amazon sells them!
So, back to the story, I contacted the owners of this awesome website and you know what they told me? Do you know? You don't know. But like Kanye West "Ima tell you." I was told that their website was offline because the previous hosting provider (called Webion) that was licensed to use the ip addresses was being sued AND these other dudes got a court order, but didn't actually win a case or anything, and are therefore being granted these ip address.
Good for them! They were probably in the right and deserved to win! That's what court orders say, right? (the answer to that is a big no of course)
But, and I know what you are thinking here, why in the world that we live in would these dudes yank a random website off the internet? A website that had zero to do with their court order. They took down a random company's website because they had something to prove? They had to flex their muscles so big that a random business owner had to face their wrath? Now the scary part, it wasn't one website. It was hundreds, maybe thousands. Maybe billions! Probably not, but you get where I'm going with this because that's how ip addresses work.
Anyways, I'm gonna go check out some lolcats. I just know that this rubs me the wrong way, and that something like a "court order" makes a company feel like they can harm other people and/or their businesses even though they have nothing to do with their court order. Maybe they found Elvis or Jimmy Hoffa or something though. Fingers crossed.