@veb - yeah, at this point we've begun topics and are just hoping that the conversation will build around us...then we can let it grow from there.
we actually started a VIP listserv for some of our most active members to start the chatter. we were hoping to transition them over to the forum once it was set up.
Not remotely comparable. In the story you linked to, assets linked to specific crimes committed in the US were seized using civil forfeiture rules (if they were in fact seized; see: stories suggesting this is a hoax). The owners of those domains received court orders and have ample due process protections.
Ordinary citizens linking to those sites or to the new versions of those sites sure to be launched shortly aren't touched at all by these actions; the goal being to shut down ongoing criminal enterprises and not to stifle speech.
Read analyses of the State Department Counsel's letter to Wikileaks to see that the government has had to stop short of even calling Wikileaks itself a criminal actor (the leak itself of those documents to WL being prima facie a crime, but not one WL has liability for). The largest media companies in the United States are publishing the contents of those documents, for profit, with virtually no legal exposure.
Some of those "criminal enterprises" were criminal only because they distributed data the US government said should not be distributed. WikiLeaks distributes data the Australian government has decided shouldn't be distributed. It sounds a little bit comparable to me, even if you agree that one kind of data should be allowed and the other shouldn't.
No, they were criminal enterprises because they violated multiple decades-old statutes in the US code. Moreover, speech (or links to speech) weren't restricted; only assets belonging to enterprises accused of copyright violations.
And, again, the sites weren't simply "blacklisted", but rather had their assets sued for and seized in an actual civil action.
Shortly, fake it until you make it