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?

Filed Under: dhs, domain seizures, expiration, waste

As Expected, ICE Seizes 313 Websites In Its Role As The NFL's Private Police Force

from the government-overreach dept

Earlier this week, we predicted that either today or tomorrow, we'd hear about ICE and the DOJ once again seizing a bunch of websites... and here it is. This morning, ICE announced that it had seized another 313 websites based on its highly questionable legal theory concerning taking down websites without any adversarial hearing. Of course, lately it's moved away from doing site seizures concerning websites that deal with content/copyright issues, and focused instead on those it claims are selling counterfeit merchandise. Along those lines, ICE announced that it arrested a few people with counterfeit Super Bowl merchandise.

Of course, this is all for show. Waiting until just a couple days before the Super Bowl is pretty ridiculous, since if people were going to buy merch, they already did so. This is just ICE, once again, generating headlines for the corporations it seems to think it represents. As is his usual MO, ICE boss John Morton talked up just how "successful" this operation was, based on his own metrics, claiming "This just takes good old-fashioned police work, people getting out on the streets."

Funny, then, that he completely leaves out the parts where they seized legitimate merchandise and hassled the seller. It appears that, sometimes, ICE just isn't very good at "good old-fashioned police work." And that's especially true when it seems to be taking orders from big companies, rather than the public it is supposed to be protecting.

Filed Under: counterfeiting, dhs, doj, domain seizures, homeland security, ice, merchandise, super bowl, trademark
Companies: nfl

Richard O'Dwyer Cuts Deal To Avoid Extradition To The US

from the sad-that-it-had-to-come-to-this,-but-good-that-it's-over dept

It appears that the ridiculous saga of the US's baseless criminal case against Richard O'Dwyer is now ending, as O'Dwyer has effectively cut a deal to pay a small sum in exchange for avoiding extradition and trial in the US. If you don't recall, O'Dwyer, a computer science student, ran TVshack.net, one of the sites that ICE and the DOJ seized during one of their many questionable censorship days, in which they seize domain names, in direct conflict with what the law requires. Then they went the extra step of seeking to extradite O'Dwyer to face criminal charges in the US. In this case, it was doubly bizarre, because O'Dwyer, a UK citizen, was running a site that was nearly identical to some other sites that had been found to be perfectly legal in the UK -- and one of the pre-requisites for a criminal copyright charge is that the person needs to be willfully violating the law. Given that other comparable sites were found to be legal, it's difficult to see how US officials could meet that bar. There was also the fact that the US was, as it had attempted in the Rojadirecta case, trying to create a completely made up theory of criminal copyright liability for secondary infringement. In fact, as we noted in other cases, US courts have found that what TVshack was doing was not infringement.

The O'Dwyer case continued to get plenty of attention, with widespread protests in the UK, especially after UK officials approved his extradition to the US. Now, however, the case will be wrapped up under what's known as "deferred prosecution" in which O'Dwyer will pay a "small sum" and the case will be concluded. You can see why O'Dwyer would do this deal after a year and a half of fighting the extradition. It's also not too surprising that the DOJ would agree to such a deal, given how it ran from other similar cases once it realized that there was competent legal help absolutely decimating its ridiculous legal theories. The DOJ had to realize that it was likely to lose badly even if O'Dwyer was extradited -- so now they get to save face and pretend that O'Dwyer paying a small sum is a form of "victory."

It's good that the case is over and that O'Dwyer can get on with his life, though it's ridiculous that any part of this case ever happened.

Filed Under: copyright, doj, domain seizures, extradition, ice, richard o'dwyer
Companies: tvshack

Apparently All That Stuff About Needing SOPA To Go After Foreign Sites Was Bogus

from the just-saying dept

Tim covered the story of ICE doing its annual censorship binge in seizing domain names without adversarial hearings (as we still believe is required under the law). However, there were a couple of additional points worthy of a followup. First off, if you remember, one of the key reasons why we were told SOPA was needed was that for all of ICE's previous domain takedowns it was "impossible" for it to take down foreign domains. Except... as ICE's own announcement here shows that was completely untrue. It seems to have had no difficulty finding willing law enforcement partners around the globe to seize websites without any due process:

...recognizing the global nature of Internet crime, this year the IPR Center partnered with Europol, who, through its member countries, executed coordinated seizures of foreign-based top-level domains such as .eu, .be, .dk, .fr, .ro and .uk. This effort is titled Project Transatlantic and resulted in 31 domain name seizures.

"This operation is a great example of the tremendous cooperation between ICE and our international partners at the IPR Center," said ICE Director John Morton. "Our partnerships enable us to go after criminals who are duping unsuspecting shoppers all over the world.

Yeah. Apparently it's possible for ICE to censor those sites if it actually does a little work and calls up its law enforcement pals. Another example of why SOPA was never necessary in the first place.

The other issue? ICE's own release shows that ICE appears to have no understanding of the intellectual property laws it's seeking to enforce. From that release:

During this operation, federal law enforcement officers made undercover purchases of a host of products; including professional sports jerseys, DVD sets, and a variety of clothing, jewelry and luxury goods from online retailers who were suspected of selling counterfeit products. If the copyright holders confirmed that the purchased products were counterfeit or otherwise illegal, seizure orders for the domain names of the websites that sold these goods were obtained from federal magistrate judges.

Note the confusion (or ignorance) here. Counterfeits are about trademarks, not copyrights. Most of what they discuss are items covered by trademark. But then they say "if the copyright holders confirmed that the purchased products were counterfeit." Yes, there may be some copyright claims mixed in here (especially with "DVD sets"), but for the most part this is about trademark. Why say "copyright holders" unless you're either willfully misrepresenting what's happening... or ignorant of the law you're supposedly helping to enforce?

We've complained before about ICE boss John Morton's apparent deliberate conflation of copyright and counterfeits in the past -- but usually it's just lumping them together. To confuse the two here, in an official release from a government group that's enforcing the law, suggests some serious problems. ICE is either ignorant of the law it's supposedly enforcing... or maliciously misrepresenting itself. That seems like a problem.

Filed Under: copyright, dhs, domain seizures, foreign sites, ice, sopa

Annual Cyber-Monday ICE Take Down Blitz 2012

from the nice-use-of-ICE-resources,-guys dept

It's cyber-Monday, the day when many of us basically go to Amazon.com and get a bunch of gifts for friends and family because going to the store this time of year is as dangerous as a North Korean prison camp. I say "many of us" partially to account for anyone out there who doesn't celebrate Christmas and partially to account for the hardworking folks at America's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who instead spend the day posing as shoppers to shut down internet sites that they think are selling infringing or counterfeit products and replacing their web pages with handy little ICE "naughty" badges (Just like Santa would do! Yay!). We covered their exploits last year as they went about taking down 150 domains, sans the websites in question being able to tell their side of the story. It's like justice, minus any of that annoying rights of the accused crap!

Well, ICE is at it again, this time taking down only 132 websites, in their effort to stop commerce they decide they don't like.

"This operation is a great example of the tremendous cooperation between ICE and our international partners at the [Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center]," ICE Director John Morton said in a statement. "Our partnerships enable us to go after criminals who are duping unsuspecting shoppers all over the world. This is not an American problem, it is a global one and it is a fight we must win."

As with last year, ICE appears to be focusing on trademark infringers and counterfeiters, but they haven't released the list of sites seized yet, so we can't be sure there aren't any Dajaz1-type screw-ups in there as well. Still, the question remains why they have to do this en masse on one day instead of going through the more tedious, though transparent, process of taking the sites to court. Yes, the article states that they are getting court orders to take down the sites, but why not actually drag site owners into the courtroom and give them a chance to represent themselves before shutting down their ability to operate entirely? Is it likely that most, if not all, of these sites are infringing some way? Perhaps, but given that we've seen ICE take down innocent sites in the past, why not err on the side of caution and actually follow the justice process?

I also find Morton's comment about this not being an "American problem" quite amusing given the annual cyber-Monday take down blitz. If this isn't an America-focused event, why is it being conducted on cyber-Monday, a predominantly American marketing term?

Filed Under: copyright, counterfeiting, dhs, domain seizures, free speech, ice, trademark

ICE Reluctantly Releases A Small Number Of Heavily Redacted Domain Seizure Docs, Holds The Rest Hostage

from the but-of-course dept

Back in December of 2010, Aaron Swartz filed a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts to seize, without any notification or adversarial hearings, domain names which ICE claimed were facilitating copyright and/or trademark infringement. After nearly two years of back and forth (including ICE apparently losing an updated request and closing the request because of it), ICE has finally delivered 100 pages worth of heavily redacted material which are close to useless. They are also claiming that there are another 16,137 records out there, but they want him to pay over $1,000 to get the rest. They told him if he didn't cough up the money within a few days, they would consider the request closed. Aaron, with the help of the Muckrock site (which helps people file FOIAs), is appealing this decision.

In the meantime, however, we have 100 mostly useless documents that appear to just show the warrants that US Magistrate Judge Alan Kay approved on the morning of November 23rd, 2011. Of course, these are completely redacted, so you don't even know what domains they're referring to. In going through the documents, the only thing of interest that I spotted was that the judge time stamped each warrant signature, and many of them are mere minutes from one another -- at least raising some questions concerning how carefully the judge reviewed each individual case before granting the warrant that allowed the feds to then seize and shut down those sites. Considering that we already have two known cases -- Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta -- in which it later came out that the government did not have the necessary evidence, and where the feds were embarrassingly forced to hand back the domains and drop legal proceedings, it seems that a judge should be expected to at least spend some time understanding why it is he's signing off on an order to take down speech.

Either way, it really does seem like these documents being the first 100 released was, perhaps, done on purpose, to make sure the released documents don't actually get at what Swartz actually requested, which was:

• Any guidelines or protocols for ICE agents about the procedures for seizing domains
• Any communications between ICE and other government agencies with regard to the seized domains
• Any communications between ICE and intellectual property owners requesting domains be seized or discussing seized domains
• Any court filings requesting authorization to seize domains
• Any internal emails mentioning the seized sites
• Any legal memos mentioning the seized sites

Instead, he gets 100 pages of heavily redacted warrants? What a joke. And, is it that difficult to expect that a judge will take more than a minute or two to understand the issues at hand when signing off on a warrant to completely shut down a website with no adversarial hearing with the site owner?

Filed Under: aaron swartz, domain seizures, foia, ice, redacted

As Feds Drop Bogus Domain Seizure Cases, Another Site Admin Held Without Bail And About To Be Deported

from the the-importance-of-good-legal-help dept

While the cases of Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta have shown that the US government wants nothing to do with lawsuits around domain seizures when those sites lawyer up with strong legal teams, it has continued to railroad those with less-than-stellar legal support. We saw it with NinjaVideo where it was clear that the defendants did not have particularly strong legal advice, and because of that were pretty much forced into plea bargains. And, now, the same basic thing appears to have happened with a guy named Yonjo Quiroa, who had nine different sites that ICE seized in January of this year. They arrested Quiroa in February, and he's not only been held without bail since then, but he's now done a plea bargain in which he's pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge, expecting to get 6 to 12 months in jail (remember, he's already been there for 7 months) and will then be "removed from the United States."

From the letter his lawyers sent on his behalf to the court, it's clear that Quiroa was given a public defender. There certainly could be differences between his case and others, but the differences between the cases where sites had well-known, widely respected litigators, and those where they did not, is pretty stark. Of course, the feds understand this and use it to their advantage in pushing those they've gone after into plea bargain deals. Now, don't be surprised when ICE's John Morton starts using the case of Quiroa as an "example" of all the great successes they've had in seizing websites...

Filed Under: deportation, domain seizures, legal help, plea bargains

Congressional Reps Question Feds Over Botched Domain Seizures

from the will-we-get-answers dept

The government's admission that it had (once again) mistakenly seized and censored a website for over a year when it dropped its case against Rojadirecta/Puerto80 has reminded everyone that Dajaz1 was not an isolate case. It was a part of a wider program where DHS (via ICE) and the DOJ systematically believed whatever the RIAA and MPAA were telling them, leading to the blatant censorship of a variety of websites, without proper due process. Thankfully, some in Congress are paying attention. Bipartisan Congressional Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Jason Chaffetz and Jared Polis have teamed up to send a letter raising a number of questions about Operation in Our Sites, to both Attorney General Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano.

The letter doesn't even mention the Rojadirecta case, but focuses on what happened with Dajaz1, pointing out their concern with the program, and how it appears to violate free speech rights, ignore due process and destroy legitimate businesses. The letter raises the fact that Dajaz1 is not an isolated case. As we've pointed out in the past, we're aware of at least a few other domains that were seized, and whose owners had challenged the seizures. And yet, well over a year later, there appeared to be no evidence of either a return of those domains or a forfeiture process started. Given how the feds treated Dajaz1, with secret extensions, preventing Dajaz1 from representing itself in court, we've wondered how many other domains the DOJ and ICE had incorrectly and illegally seized -- and which they were now keeping in that kind of holding pattern. It's good to see that this letter directly asks about that issue:

Other complaints have been raised by websites seized under "In Our Sites" that bear similarities to the Dajaz1 case. These complaints center around unnecessary delays in advancing and resolving cases, difficulty in obtaining documents from the government that are fundamental to the underlying cases (such as affidavits), and difficulty even maintaining contact with the U.S. Attorneys prosecuting the cases. The effect of these problems is to severely limit the ability of website owners to challenge the legality and merits of the domain name seizures.

The letter goes on to ask a series of important questions for both DHS and DOJ, especially regarding the utter failure of both departments in the Dajaz1 situation.

1. What is the process for determining which sites to target? Who is involved in that process? What specific steps do DOJ and ICE take to ensure that affidavits and other material are thoroughly reviewed for accuracy prior to seizing a domain?
2. To what extent are government agents required to evaluate whether the potentially infringing material to which target sites link -- or which they host themselves -- are non-infringing fair uses, impliedly licensed, and/or de minimis uses?
3. Do government agents consider whether a site complies with the DMCA safe harbors? If so, how does this affect the determination to target a site?
4. How many sites have attempted to retrieve their domains, via any process, judicial or informal, and what is the status of those cases?
5. Have you made any changes to your domain seizure policies or their implementation as a result of the issues arising from the Dajaz1 seizure or any other seizure? If so, what were those changes?
6. What specific steps has the DOJ and ICE taken to ensure that domain name seizure cases proceed without unnecessary delays, and that website owners seeking to restore their domain names have swift access to the officials and documents necessary to resolve their cases?
7. How many more seizures do you anticipate occurring in the next six months and year?

It seems to me that questions four and five are the key ones here, which means I fully expect DOJ and ICE to be especially non-responsive in whatever answers they provide.

Filed Under: dhs, doj, domain seizures, forfeiture, ice, jared polis, jason chaffetz, legality, stalling, zoe lofgren

Oops: After Seizing & Censoring Rojadirecta For 18 Months, Feds Give Up & Drop Case

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

Looks like we've got something of a repeat of the Dajaz1 insanity, in which the US government seized and censored a website for over a year before giving up and handing the domain back -- though this time it's with Rojadirecta. You may recall the Rojadirecta case, where two domains have been held by the US government on a highly questionable legal theory for over a year and a half -- well, the government just dropped the case, and it appears that the domains will be returned.

The case began when ICE seized two Rojadirecta domains from the Spanish company Puerto 80. As we noted at the time, Puerto 80 had been found legal (twice) in Spain, so it was hard to fathom that there could be "willful" infringement here.

Of course, over time, the situation got even more ridiculous. As with Dajaz1 and other sites, the US Attorneys in charge of the case stalled when the site fought back. In the case of Rojadirecta, Puerto 80 decided to stop waiting and sued the government. From there, something of a comedy of errors by the government ensued, with bizarre and unsupportable claims, and (worst of all) repeated attempts to mix and match different pieces of the law to dance around the fact that there was no legal basis for the seizure and the whole thing was unconstitutional. Each time the feds would present an argument, as you picked it apart, you could see that even they didn't seem to understand the law.

It appears that someone over there finally figured it out. We'd been waiting a while to hear from the court, and the last thing we'd heard was Rojadirecta/Puerto 80 pointing to Judge Posner's recent ruling about how a site embedding clips from elsewhere isn't infringing. Some copyright maximalists insisted that this had nothing to do with Rojadirecta, and that Rojadirecta would still lose... but not everyone agreed.

Today the government filed a "voluntary dismissal" notice of the case against Rojadirecta.org and Rojadirecta.com. You can see the short dismissal notice below. What's unfortunate, of course, is that the government might now get away with this blatant censorship and disregard for basic due process, without a court ruling showing that it was an illegal move by the feds. In other words: without punishment, the feds may feel free to do this again. This is now the second (and third) example of the government seizing a domain and censoring it for over a year on a very questionable legal theory -- and when the pressure finally gets to be enough, the government turns tail and runs, giving back the domain with no explanation or apology for blatant censorship. That's unacceptable.

Mark Lemley, who was on the legal team defending Puerto 80, told me:

We're obviously thrilled that after 18 months it looks like we will get the domain names back. I think this is a sign that you can stand up for what's right in copyright law and win.

That's true... but just the fact that they had to fight this for 18 months while the government held their domains raises serious questions about the government's actions here. It's probably not worth it for Puerto 80 to pursue things any further, but it's unfortunate that in both cases where people have fought back against the government's over-aggressive seizures of domain names, the government has tried to wait them out... and then finally admitted by default that it was wrong, and handed back the domains.

I expect that we may see a few more such cases as well. Unfortunately, though, we may not get a clear legal ruling telling the government it can't do this -- meaning that they'll be free to continue to abuse their powers in such a manner going forward.

Update: Added the letter that the DOJ sent with the dismissal notice, suggesting that the MyVidster ruling impacted their thinking...

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, criminal copyright law, doj, domain seizures, domains, free speech, ice, rojadirecta, seizures
Companies: puerto 80

ICANN Confirms That It's Going To Make It Easier For Governments To Seize Domains Around The Globe

from the not-cool,-icann dept

This just gets worse and worse. After pointing out that ICANN was missing a big (and important) opportunity by not speaking out against governments seizing domain names, we were disappointed to see ICANN release a white paper that was more of a how-to manual for governments on seizing domains. Now, Paul Keating points us to the depressing news that ICANN is now publicly saying that it will work more closely with governments around the world to help them seize and censor domains. The writeup is a little vague, but it says that seizing domains for copyright infringement was a "hot topic" at ICANN's recent meeting -- including promises from ICANN that it would work more closely with law enforcement around the globe and the various registrars to help law enforcement be more effective in censoring these websites. This is really unfortunate and once again highlights ICANN's uselessness in protecting the internet. Instead, it appears to be actively working against basic internet principles.

Filed Under: domain names, domain seizures, legality, seizures
Companies: icann