Why Hasn't ICE Been Talking About Its Latest Domain Seizures?
from the the-new-quiet-strategy? dept
In the last few weeks, Homeland Security's ICE division has once again been seizing servers. TorrentFreak noticed a group of five domains seized recently, and SD pointed us to details of five more domains seized a little over a week earlier. From the domain names, it's clear that ICE is mostly focusing on sites that sell counterfeit goods right now, which is slightly less controversial. Pretty much all of the names (e.g. lacosteshoesmall.com and newerahatss.com) involve some sort of brand name. The site owners are unlikely to protest because they're likely engaged in trademark infringement. However, that doesn't make the legality of simply seizing such domains prior to an adversarial hearing any less questionable. It's just that ICE is doing the same thing that police have been known to do with drug dealers: seize stuff knowing that the people they're taking from don't want to go to court. It basically becomes a license for law enforcement to steal.Of course, it's highly questionable how effective any of this. Maybe it makes someone sitting in an ICE office excited, but the counterfeiters are still counterfeiting and still selling their goods. Hiding their website doesn't do much to stop anything. But perhaps a bigger question is why ICE isn't hyping up these seizures? Perhaps it's trying to avoid all of the backlash when it screws up?
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Filed Under: counterfeiting, domain seizures, homeland security, ice, trademark
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UDRP Fee Schedule
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All you budding gov't agencies, take this as a learning moment.
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You trot this number out in a press conference to show what an amazing job your doing.
You can then say we have seized X evil sites and only a couple complained, and they had to have been breaking the law if we went after them... look how many other times we were right.
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oh wait, you only like the laws that are convenient for your freetard ass?
Yes, let's drop everything and do what works for you. Right away.
Cuz y'know, in a society, it's all about you.
Yes indeedy, and btw, that's such an awesomely, infinite situation you have there, the one where other people labor to entertain you for nothing. Because, y'know, as much as you are addicted to content, it now is worth nothing because it was easy to steal in 2003. And that is the way it will always be, forever and ever, amen.
So in the spirit of that, someone go find me the remote and make me a turkey sandwich. Now.
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IIRC, the law says one gets their day in court.
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Cuz y'know, in a society, it's all about you.
And THAT RIGHT THERE is what is wrong with modern IP-centric society. This is the attitude displayed, not only by politicians, but by the MAFIAA, IFPI and their ilk. These fuckwits genuinely believe that it's all about them, and fuck everyone else with Ferdinand the Bull.
And it's got to stop.
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Wow, you got the Delorean running again McFly?
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“Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”
- Thomas Jefferson
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We saw this attempt to get government protection, in whale oil -vs- electric lights, buggys -vs- cars, trains -vs- cars, cruise lines -vs- airplanes. In every one of these cases the new technology won out. We are seeing a repeat of this again in carbon -vs- renewables, and content services -vs- dumb pipes.
Now we have the content companies running down this same path, trying to block all competition, remove the public domain, and invalidate the creative commons. All in order to mainatain a monopoly position.
Like that is going to work, 5 million bands on myspace, new shows coming out online, new video and audio editting apps for the android operating system. Soon everyone will have the equivalent of a TV and music studio hanging on their hip. It's not a conspiracy, it's the death struggles of the big business golden era of music and video.
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what a crock of shit we all have to be force fed by these frakkers.
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Debunking the "consumers are getting ripped off" argument
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Interesting perspective Mike. Steal what, how?
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Steal your money and/or property. No due process required.
It's been done before.
I remember some years ago a tv documentary during prime time that covered a particular police department in Florida. They would stop people for speeding, then they would say something or other about drugs and steal all of the people's cash. Most of these people were on vacation and had lots of cash.
What, so they took $1200? How much time/trouble is it going to cost you to get it back.
If you cannot see how ICE being able to do this without due process opens up potential for all kinds of abuse, then you are blind as well as stupid.
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Steal your money and/or property. No due process required.
If you cannot see how ICE being able to do this without due process opens up potential for all kinds of abuse, then you are blind as well as stupid.
Stupid would be believing that such seizures haven't been already tested in court and found to be constitutional.
You may make the rules in your LARP league, but the federal courts have this one handled. Thanks anyway.
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Stupid would be believing that such seizures have been already tested in court and found to be constitutional.
They haven't. Certainly, the government can seize infringing goods, but I don't know of one case where the government was allowed to seize legal goods along with the infringing goods.
That may not apply in these cases, since AFAIK the sites did not have significant non-infringing content. However, it certainly does apply in the copyright cases.
Perhaps that's why ICE is desperately stalling anyone who actually wants to fight the seizures in court.
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Read the news much? For example, here's a Michigan State Police Press Release (Feb 23, 2011):
(Emphasis added)
Related news report: “Attorney General Bill Schuette's public integrity unit files first case against two Michigan State Police lieutenants” (Feb 28, 2011).
When the government just starts taking stuff, then individual cops feel empowered to start just taking stuff.
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Oh wait, are you suggesting that some virtual and infinite things (there is effectively infinite domain names) somehow have value and can be stolen?
Welcome to Contradiction City, population you.
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Oh wait, are you suggesting that some virtual and infinite things (there is effectively infinite domain names) somehow have value and can be stolen?
Welcome to Contradiction City, population you.
Hahahahahahaha.... nice beatdown of the Lord High Apologist Techdirtbag.
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Look up how seizure laws have been abused in drug cases. For example:
- http://www.law.cornell.edu/background/forfeiture/
This sort of thing happens all the time.
I personally wouldn't call these particular seizures "stealing." I would simply call them "censorship." Far less than the copyright seizures, of course, since these site have nothing but "commercial speech" on them, but censorship nonetheless.
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Why not call the seizures "stealing"? Whether the government has worked a ‘meaningful inteference with a posessory interest’ or instead the government has worked a ‘meaningful interference with a liberty interest’, the result is the same. The domain registrant paid for the publication of an NS record and A record glue. The government has prohibited the publication of the former NS and A records, and ordered that substitute records shall be published. Whether it's liberty or property, the government has completely deprived the registrant of what he formerly had. The goverment has utterly excluded the registrant from what he paid for.
Is stealing liberty less objectionable than stealing property?
If you pay for a listing in a phone book, how is it not stealing when the goverment orders the phone-book publisher to change the listing to the number of a goverment office.
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Exactly the opposite, which is why I think government censorship is worse than stealing.
Also, "stealing" implies that the government is taking the domain name for its own financial use (as is the case with the Willie Jones case, and most of the "drug seizure" cases). I don't think that's what is going on here.
The goverment has utterly excluded the registrant from what he paid for.
You make a good point. In the words of Dowling v. United States: "interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use."
Since the government did assume control over the domain name, and deprive the owner of its use, the seizures in this case do "easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud."
More than the crimes they're prosecuting, certainly.
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Forget everything you just heard and go back to sleep.
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Double Standard
The only difference between these seizures and the seizures of previous sites is that Homeland Security is working for the fashion industry instead if the RIAA/MPAA. This is still a branch of the US Federal Government doing something that benefits a private industry, which should be left in civil court. Beyond the specific industry in question, there is no other difference!
Seriously Mike. I know these aren't tech-related companies, but it's unfair for you to be any less outraged here!
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He's a piracy apologist, not a counterfeiting apologist. What did you expect?
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"Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old programmer and online political activist, was indicted Tuesday in Boston on charges that he stole more than four million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers."The charges filed against Mr. Swartz include wire fraud, computer fraud, obtaining information from a protected computer and criminal forfeiture"."
“Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars,” said Ms. Ortiz in the press release."
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data-theft/
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http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2011/07/reddit-founder-arrested-for-excessive-jstor-d ownloads.ars
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59397.html
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domains
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