Congressional Investigations Into Dajaz1.com Censorship Begin
from the let's-see-what-they-find-out dept
If the Justice Department hoped that it could seize the domain of a hip hop blog for over a year with no due process and then return it quietly and pretend nothing had happened, it may be in for a bit of a surprise. About an hour and a half after we broke the story, it just so happened that Rep. Zoe Lofgren was in a Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder, providing her an opportunity to ask him about the situation. You can see the full five minute exchange below:It looks like he may be getting other reminders as well. Senator Ron Wyden told Wired that he intends to start asking significant questions about Operation In Our Sites, and it doesn't sound like he's going to give up easily:
�I expect the administration will be receiving a series of FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests from our office and that the senator will have very pointed questions with regard to how the administration chooses to target the sites that it does,� said Jennifer Hoelzer, a Wyden spokeswoman. She said the senator was �particularly interested in learning how many secret dockets exist for copyright cases. There doesn�t seem to be an obvious precedent or explanation for that.�I'll certainly be interested to see what they turn up.
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Filed Under: copyright, dhs, doj, domain seizures, eric holder, free speech, linking, pipa, protect ip, ron wyden, sopa, zoe lofgren
Companies: dajaz1
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Hopefully the next story will say,
"Head of DOJ fires employees ..."
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The cowards won't even have the guts to provide credible evidence.
/Infringement aside, due process MUST be followed or we all lose.
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Five years from now the statement will be busted as a myth by Mythbusters, immediately followed by the arrest of the hosts, production company, production staff, promotional stuff, the pizza delivery person and the next door neighbours of the base of the show and, finally, the idiot the blew up that cement truck all those years ago and disturbed a few endangered nesting crows.
Oh, crows aren't endangered? Whoops, scratch that!
Trials are expected to begin in 2115. Until then the alleged offenders will be held in custody in an unknown location.
Our country is once more saved.
Signed. J. Edgar Hoover, Guardian Ghost of America.
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Sorry Mike, not much here.
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If you read the article there are two members of congress, not one. And it appears that they are asking a lot more than one question. But then I guess that actually reading the article cuts into the amount of trolling time you can put in during a day.
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Sorry Mike, not much here.
Agreed. This is just typical grandstanding by Lofgren and Wyden.
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All I need is a "broadbrush" or a "freetard" and I'll have bingo!
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Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see.
What is your take on the government being all super-duper double secret (seriously, so secret that the opposing lawyer can't even see the rulings involving his client, WTF?) on the Dajaz1 case.
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I think that's normal for an ongoing criminal investigation, and I don't think it's a Due Process violation. But the whole dajaz1.com situation does seem like a clear First Amendment violation. I hope they sue.
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Just because gov gave back the domain does not mean they were innocent.
Do you think dajaz is going to go back to business as usual like they did before the seizure? Let them try and we'll see how that works out for them.
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I never said dajaz1.com was innocent. In fact, I said I had no doubt they were engaged in criminal copyright infringement.
I have no idea what dajaz1.com will do now, nor do I really care. I'm not into hip hop.
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Hate to Godwin this...but:
First they came for the hip hop sites, but I didn't care because I didn't like hip hop.
Then they came for the online blogs and news sites, but I didn't care because I didn't read online blogs or news sites.
Then they came for me...
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Extrapolating an actual legal judgement out of such inaction is nothing but wishful thinking.
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How so?
Two points worth noting: it posted works received from legitimate sources (so, no showing of willfulness) and it had no advertising prior to the seizure (so, no commercial profiting). It also hosted no files.
So... helps us out. Where's the criminal copyright infringement?
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Pirate used to be a term that described guys who actually produced counterfeit copies of movies and CDs and sold them for $5 in Chinatown who arguably were criminals making a profit off of someone else's content. Now seven year old girls downloading Justin Bieber songs are dirty criminal pirates.
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And this statement doesn't make any sense; if Arcara justifies the forfeiture, then ipso facto, it also justifies the seizure.
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How could forfeiture, which demands a higher standard, be acceptable but seizure *unacceptable* in the same case?
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It does not receive first amendment protection.
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Terry Hart phrased it well: "Domain name seizures are not prior restraints in any sense of the word. They aren�t made based on the content of any expression. They do not remove any expression from circulation. And they don�t bar any future expression from either the web site owner or its users."
This tactic being used by dajaz and Techdirt was attempted by Napster and failed. "The courts will not sustain a First Amendment challenge where the defendant entraps itself in an �all-or-nothing predicament.��
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Dajaz engaged in serial copyright infringement via assimilating thousands of links to illegal material. That some of the examples given by ICE were submitted by labels doesn't change that fact and never will.
There has been no statement that Dajaz was innocent of copyright infringement by the government and there never will be.
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And perhaps they've all been First Amendment violations. I don't doubt that dajaz1.com was engaged in criminal copyright infringement. But I also don't doubt that First Amendment protected speech was happening on that site. It's the lack of a prompt, post-seizure adversarial hearing that I think makes the seizures constitutionally infirm. I'm all for Operation in our Sites, I just think there needs to be more process.
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That's a dichotomy of thought. Operation in Our Sites didn't involve any due process.
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If this were the case, then bank robbers would carry political protest signs with them during their robbery and claim "the actual illegality of my bank robbing doesn't matter because there is protected speech involved".
That's just silly.
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Aggregating links to infringing material is inducement.
Now go die in a fire.
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I think you've gone completely off the rails there. How can there be secret court rulings that even the attorney representing Dajaz1 cannot see or talk to the judge about? I'll agree that in some narrow national security and espionage cases, secret rulings make some sense. But this is a copyright infringement case. There is zero chance of any physical harm to anyone, zero chance of national security secrets falling into the hands of a foreign government, and near zero chance that the defendant would flee the country.
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Did you hear her? The DOJ head had a congressional representative asking for someone to be fired over this shortly after the story broke. At the very least, I think Ms Lofgren has made the point that the public and their representatives are watching what the DOJ are doing. They'll have to be a bit more careful about what they do.
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Can someone please tell Wyden about this?
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Silly Copyright maximalists
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You guys and your tin-foil hats.
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I wonder if there is going to be an analogy with the record labels. Once they realized that they had a licence to get anything they wanted from the government they were reckless. Now the media, the press, and other tech companies have them on their radar. Big media might get SOPA passed because they got a lot of commitments before the mess went public, but after this I am guessing that they will have a lot more trouble with the next thing they ask for.
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No wonder....
It's obvious from a ton of commenters here, that TechDirt is dedicated to the theft of US property and could be shut down immediately under SOPA. All of the pro-piracy articles here are "clear" evidence that this site should be shut down immed....
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Re: No wonder....
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Politicians need to get the facts
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Re: Politicians need to get the facts
Mike made a correlation that they were close in time, but made no assertions nor provided facts that one caused the other. Did you read somewhere else that they were related?
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Frankly, I am a loss to explain why counsel for the website apparently chose not to immediately file a motion with the court for return of the site as provided in the relevant statutory provision. This would have forced the DOJ to appear before the court and explain its actions and the legal basis for such actions, including evidentiary matters.
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Might have something to do with DOJ saying that if you do anything like that it will charge the counsel's clients with criminal charges for which they'd face jailtime.
Intimidation by government is so much fun.
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And it worries me that the "news story" she offered to give to Holder was one of Mike's "stories."
Techdirt should have a big disclaimer on every "story" it publishes that Mike isn't actually a journalist, and he does not follow even the minimum, basic, fundamental tenets of real journalism.
I'd hate for someone to hand a Techdirt "article" to the A.G. and have him mistakenly think it had been properly vetted.
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Liar
He's also trying to act like this is maybe some one off problem, while in fact the entire "In Your Sites" operation is in violation of the 1st, 2nd and 4th amendments. And that falls squarely under his responsibility.
If anyone should be fired it's Eric Holder.
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Re: Liar
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People in the AG's position, are insulated from these types of shenanigans, not so much for their benefit as the benefit of the people directly in charge of this.
Specifically, the person actually behind this is not advertising their actions, as the patent constitutional violations would force someone as public as the AG to act. They were hoping to slide this one by, and got caught. They're probably shitting bricks now that the AG got asked about it.
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In the best traditions of ICE, let's just assume he's guilty until he proves his innocence. ;-)
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to much big money in Washington and to many of these people do the worst things to us.Look at the new post about imprisoning US Citizens.That law maybe could be used against us in the future ??
They did make the Patriot Act and lied about that being used for terrorists only as those laws are used against common US Type Criminals.
I believe that a good chunk of those in government do not give a poop about us.They do care about getting money and keeping themselve and their Party in power but not us citizens.We do not matter to them.
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Senator Wyden, Below is the information you asked for in your Freedom of Information Request.
The #### ###### ############ ################ a ####
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Sincerely ICE/DOJ
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A pebble
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