Feds Seize 46 Domains... And Then Let Them All Expire Two Weeks Later
from the tax-payer-money-at-work dept
We've written plenty about our concerns with the federal government seizing domains, sometimes on very questionable evidence. The worst of the worst of this was with the completely bogus seizure of the hiphop blog Dajaz1 -- which the government held for over a year, before sheepishly handing it back and never actually filing any lawsuit. There was also, of course, the seizure of Rojadirecta, whose owners actually sued the federal government in response, leading the government to bluster about for a bit, before realizing it was about to get trampled in court and handing back the domain name to get out of the case. Since then, it appears that the government has been at least a bit more careful before seizing some domains (the Megaupload case may be an exception...), but it still seems highly questionable that the government even can seize a domain. The seizure process, remember, is generally supposed to be to prevent evidence from getting destroyed (or hidden), but that's unlikely with a domain name. Furthermore, there's a heightened standard for seizures if they could impact free speech rights -- and a domain name almost certainly does exactly that.But, even worse, the feds really seem quite clueless at times in their domain seizing. The latest, as pointed out to us by Paul Keating, is that the feds had seized 46 domains on July 4th. Unlike the other domain seizure cases we've discussed, these weren't about intellectual property issues, but were apparently related to the US government shutting down Liberty Reserve for money laundering. However, there's an additional oddity. Just two weeks after all 46 of those domains were seized, the feds let them all expire, at which point they went back on the market. The feds, if they had done any investigation, had to know that those domains were about to expire. There was little worry that Liberty Reserve was going to do anything at all with them, seeing as the government had already shut that down. So, why bother seizing the domains just to hold them for two weeks... and then let them expire and go back on the market? Is this really the kind of thing we want our taxpayer funds to cover? Investigating and seizing domain names to release them immediately after?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: dhs, domain seizures, expiration, waste
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Pointless vandalism
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Incompetence
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Incompetence
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Incompetence
Life + eternity - 1 day, actually.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Friend, you use such strange words
> had to know that those domains were about to expire.
What is this 'investigation' thing you speak of?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Friend, you use such strange words
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
grabs popcorn and waits for the inevitable ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This is yet another example of our government gone rabid. It's grown beyond all reason into some sort of monster not worthy of the name of a democracy. (not that we have one of those)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No sanity, please.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
so you all know
just thoght i'd put that out to the world....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Might this be a good thing?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Forfeiture (not seizure) of domains
Forfeiture is widely unpopular. But I once read SCOTUS ruling where they didn't actually rule on its constitutionality but kind of brushed against it. If they ever actually did rule on forfeiture, I think it would be ruled constitutional on the basis of similarity to confiscation of contraband. Contraband is something that is illegal to possess or that is used as an instrument of crime.
So that would make the government's seizures along the lines of, "You use this domain to commit crimes, so it is contraband and you forfeit it. We don't care what you do with the files."
So I don't like seizure of domains, either, but it's probably constitutional. Probably less constitutional is the intellectual property theories under which the government concludes that a "crime" is being committed, and that's where efforts to stop this practice should be directed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Forfeiture (not seizure) of domains
But with domain names, the judicial oversight seems to be about the same level as a search warrant at best, and not even that much in every case.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]