Previously Chatty Homeland Security Clams Up After Errors In Domain Seizures Pop Up

from the no-comment dept

As you're probably aware, we've been covering the many serious legal questions raised by Homeland Security's decision to use its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group to seize a bunch of domain names. As we've reported, the basis for the domain name seizures was full of serious technical and legal errors, which called into question the expertise of ICE on this subject. This was made even worse when details revealed that many of the "examples" used to prove infringement were sent by representatives of the copyright holders.

Right after the domain name seizures, we noted that the Assistant Deputy Director for ICE, Erik Barnett, was perfectly happy to go on the record defending the seizures -- brushing off the concerns many people had about the process. He admitted, point blank, that ICE relied heavily on the very biased claims of industry insiders as the basis for what sites to target, and suggested that there were no serious due process problems with taking down entire websites prior to any adversarial trial.

Of course, this was all before the affidavit had been released, and the myriad errors became clear. So I asked Erik if he would respond to a short list of questions concerning the process and the specific errors made, figuring that since he had been so happy to speak out about these domain seizures in the past, he would be able to answer those questions, and perhaps put some of our concerns to rest. While I emailed Erik directly, I instead heard back from Homeland Security's "Office of Public Affairs," which noted that Homeland Security will not comment on "an ongoing investigation before court." Except, that's blatantly false, since Erik was already on the record speaking to other publications.

Either way, I responded and said I understood not being able to comment on ongoing issues (I had asked if the operators of these websites were going to be charged), I would retract the questions having to do with that aspect of the case, but wanted to see if Erik or someone else at Homeland Security might answer my other questions concerning what appeared to be technical and legal errors in the process itself -- such as what efforts did ICE make to ensure that the domain name seizures did not represent prior restraint, as is required in such seizures under the current law, and whether or not this issue was discussed with the magistrate judge who approved the seizure warrant. I also asked whether or not anyone outside of the RIAA/MPAA representatives (and other government employees) were asked to review the evidence prior to the seizures.

Not surprisingly, after asking a second time if Homeland Security could address these questions, I was told "we are not discussing the matter at this time." So, there you go. Homeland Security had no problem playing up these seizures immediately following their seizure, but as more and more evidence comes out concerning mistakes made, the agency clams up. Transparency in government.

Filed Under: domain names, homeland security, ice, seizures

Indie Music Association Comes Out In Favor Of Seizing Domain Names Of Blogs That Promote Their Music

from the sad dept

If there ever were a group that should be embracing new business models and encouraging the music industry to look forward instead of back, you would think it would be A2IM -- the American Association of Independent Music. After all, they don't have the same legacy issues facing the big four record labels represented by the RIAA. Instead, they can be more creative and willing to experiment with what works well. In fact, over the years, we've noted some really cool and unique experiments done by lots of truly creative and innovative indie labels -- including many who are members of A2IM (and even some represented on A2IM's board).

Yet, we've noticed an unfortunate pattern. A2IM often seems to want to be the "mini-RIAA," frequently staking out identical positions on the issues, and simply adding a "me too" to whatever the RIAA says. Early on it came out in support of ACTA. It's also been involved in astroturfing campaigns in favor of 3 strikes laws, and most recently, argued against the concept of net neutrality (Update: to be clear, as Bengloff explains in the comments, they were only against specific aspects of a proposed net neutrality plan). The group's leadership has effectively admitted at times that they take orders from the RIAA. For example, on the issue of ACTA, A2IM's President, Richard Bengloff, admitted he had not seen ACTA, but supported it because the RIAA told him to.

The latest situation is particularly egregious. Jesse Townley, who runs the famed indie label Alternative Tentacles (Dead Kennedys, Jello Biafra, Butthole Surfers, etc.) alerts us to an email that Bengloff has sent out, urging indie labels to write to John Morton, the head of ICE, the Homeland Security group that seized all those domain names last month under highly questionable methods:

To Independent Labels, Creators & Service Providers who rely upon music having value:

For years we have called on government to help fight Piracy, including those websites that promote the devaluation of music and disregard the rights of creators by leaking music early and without permission. Both the Obama Administration and the Congress have started to provide creators much needed support in recent months. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency has taken aggressive action against infringing websites, recently seizing the domain names of 82 sites. Since then ICE, and its Director John Morton, have been taking heat in the blogosphere and in some print media for their actions. It is imperative that the music community let the Administration know just how vital ICE's actions are, and how much we appreciate them.

We need to show them some love for their action! PLEASE send a note to John Morton thanking him for what he's doing.

This letter, which also highlights a recent A2IM press statement, was sent to the Obama administration by A2IM today. They need to hear from our members across the country now!

Use the A2IM letter as a guide, but please personalize your letter... And express your support for the current actions of U.S. Homeland Security detailed in the attached link press release

Yes, you read that right. A2IM, which is supposed to represent independent labels, is supporting the government seizing domain names of sites with no due process, no First Amendment review. Even worse, as it has become clear, the "evidence" against these sites involved songs that were sent by the copyright holders, and the sites in question were well known within the industry for being key places to promote new music. In fact, some of them were near the top of Vibe's top hip hop blogs list, and were well known places for promoters, labels, artists and DJs to go to promote their works.

So why would an organization like A2IM come out in support of that? It seems that they've just decided to hop on the "blame piracy!" and "the government must save us" bandwagon, rather than actually helping their member labels adapt to the world we live in. Pretty sad when labels that supposedly represent the independent and innovative spirit run to Homeland Security to try to shut down some blogs. Why would any indie label want to support that?

Townley also was kind enough to share his response to A2IM, saying that "This flies directly in the face of record labels trying to be flexible & USE blogs for promotion, which all of us smart ones are doing (among many other things)." I doubt A2IM will listen, but maybe it's time for the really innovative indies to form their own group that doesn't focus on demonizing fans and treating them like criminals, but actually helps these labels and the artists they represent embrace new opportunities online.

Filed Under: domain names, indie labels, music, richard bengloff, seizures
Companies: a2im

Full Homeland Security Affidavit To Seize Domains Riddled With Technical & Legal Errors

from the this-just-gets-worse-and-worse dept

Another day and even more evidence that Homeland Security's decision to have its Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) group seize a bunch of domain names without any warning or adversarial hearing was a colossal screw up. We haven't heard too much about the sites seized concerning trademark infringement, but there were five that were the focus of copyright infringement -- including a bunch of hiphop blogs (which were regularly used by artists and record labels alike to promote their songs) and a search engine. Last week, we went through a partial affidavit from a newly minted ICE agent named Andrew Reynolds, which showed numerous technological and legal errors in explaining why the domain of the search engine, Torrent Finder, was seized. Yesterday, we wrote about how some of the "evidence" used against the blogs included songs sent by the labels for promotional purposes.

A few different folks have since sent over the full affidavit which you can see below. So now we can see the "details" of the evidence put together by Agent Reynolds that was (literally) rubber stamped by magistrate judge Margaret Nagle, and it's looking worse and worse for Homeland Security. Basically, all of the sites in question had some forums and in some of those forums, some users posted links to other sites, which hosted some content. In other words, under these conditions, an awful lot of domain names on the internet can be seized by ICE.

Just for fun, I went through most of the files found in the document and searched for them all in Google. In every case, Google popped up plenty of links to sites hosting that content. Now, it's entirely possible that a copyright holder could make the argument that some of these sites reached the level of "inducing" copyright infringement, but, as both Agent Reynolds and Judge Nagle should know, inducement of copyright infringement is a very dynamic area of law, which has multiple factors needed to establish whether or not inducement occurs -- most of which Agent Reynolds did not bother to present. Furthermore, inducement is supposed to be determined in a court of law following an adversarial trial -- not because some recent college grad ICE agent asked a movie or recording industry exec their opinion on the matter.

At no point, does it appear that any effort was made to establish that seizing an entire domain based on a small fraction of what occurred on the site does not violate the First Amendment. This is going to present a pretty serious problem for Homeland Security, because there's a fair amount of legal precedence saying that you need to take into account the First Amendment implications before seizing forms of expression.

Of course, one response to this, that we saw in the comments, was a claim that since ICE only seized the "domain name," speech wasn't prevented, since the speech could still live on on the server itself. This explanation fails for two reasons. First, domain names themselves can be considered speech as has been highlighted in a few different cases. Second, and more importantly, Agent Reynolds' own affidavit makes it clear that the seizures of domain names was because of the content found on those domains (though, he repeatedly, mistakenly seems to think that content on other servers is the responsibility of those domains). If Reynolds was only seizing the domain names to avoid stifling speech of the content on the rest of the servers, his entire argument fails. In his affidavit, he clearly states that he wants to seize the domain names because the domain names are "property used, or intended to be used to commit or facilitate criminal copyright infringement." But, if we're really going to argue that the domain names and the content on the servers are separate, then this argument makes no sense. The domain names themselves are not being used to commit or to facilitate criminal copyright infringement. Only some of the content on the servers.

Furthermore, Agent Reynolds' explanation for why the domains need to be seized rather than allowing an adversarial hearing to take place are laughable at best:

Neither a restraining order nor an injunction is sufficient to guarantee the availability of the SUBJECT DOMAIN NAMES for forfeiture. By seizing the SUBJECT DOMAIN NAMES and redirecting them to another website, the Government will prevent third parties from acquiring the names and using them to commit additional crimes. Furthermore, seizure of the SUBJECT DOMAIN NAMES will prevent third parties from continuing to access the five websites listed above.

In other words, in yet another moment of technological ignorance on the part of Agent Reynolds and the judge in question, they seem to really believe that seizing the domain names prevents people from accessing the content in question. Of course, that was quickly proven false by the fact that most of these sites reappeared within hours on different domain names. But it also highlights how Reynolds really did mean to shut down the entire website (he was just somewhat clueless in how to actually do so) with zero regard (as required by the law) for the First Amendment implications.

On top of that, his claims of why the domains need to be seized, rather than allowing a court to issue an injunction or a restraining order, don't make sense either. Did he really think that with an injunction or a restraining order and an actual case going to court that "third parties" would magically acquire the domain names in question? And, even if they acquired the domain names, what would that have to do with the content on the servers? Is Agent Reynolds really basing his claim that these domains needed to be seized prior to an adversarial hearing based on a series of highly improbable events: (1) that a lawsuit would be filed against these domain holders, (2) that the court would issue an injunction and (3) that, for some reason, it would also not instruct the domain holders not to get rid of the domains in question, and (4) that not having happened, that the domain holders would simply decide to sell off or to give away those domains, and (5) that those domains would then fall into other hands, and (6) that those others might possibly use it to commit "additional crimes"? Really? The first two steps in the chain could be reasonable, given certain conditions, but the following four steps are beyond improbable.

Is Homeland Security really basing its already First Amendment-questionable seizure of domain names, for sites the industry used to promote its own works with no notice or adversarial hearing, with questionable and error-riddled evidence on a series of six hypotheticals, many of which are highly improbable?

Filed Under: domain names, homeland security, ice, seizures

Homeland Security's 'Evidence' For Domain Seizures Also Included Songs Sent By Labels

from the this-gets-worse-and-worse dept

We've already covered some of the serious problems with the "affidavit" filed by Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit, highlighting confusion about both how the internet works and the law itself. The affidavit was written by a recent college grad who appears to have little experience in the subject matter. What we had seen so far was only a partial version of the affidavit, covering the reasons for seizing Torrent Finder's domain. It was full of both technical and legal inaccuracies, which are troubling. The NY Times apparently got its hands on the entire affidavit (though, oddly, doesn't appear to offer it for download, as far as I can tell), and showed part of it to the operator of dajaz1.com, one of the sites that was taken down. The operator of the site notes that many of the examples used in the affidavit of infringing content were sent by the record labels themselves, and he showed the NY Times reporter the emails from labels sending the songs that were named in the affidavit. Hopefully the guy who operates the site has lined up competent legal help, because the more evidence that comes out in this case, the worse and worse Homeland Security/ICE is looking.

Filed Under: blogs, domain names, first amendment, homeland security, ice, promotions, seizures

Homeland Security Presents 'Evidence' For Domain Seizures; Proves It Knows Little About The Internet - Or The Law

from the holy-crap dept

Earlier this week, we noted how the owners of the various hiphop blogs and Torrent-Finder, the torrent search engine, that were seized by Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group still hadn't been provided the details on why their domains were seized. However, that's no longer the case. A partial affidavit and the seizure warrant for those sites has been released, and it highlights how ridiculously clueless Homeland Security is on this issue (you can read the whole thing at the bottom of this post). What's troubling isn't just that the folks who made the decision to seize these domain names don't seem to know what they're talking about, but that they seem to have relied almost exclusively on the MPAA for their (lack of) knowledge on the subject at hand.

It looks like the four blog/forum sites (RapGodFathers, OnSmash, Dajaz1 and RMX4U) and Torrent-Finder were all lumped together into a single warrant and affidavit. The affidavit was written by a Special Agent with ICE, named Andrew Reynolds, who indicates in the affidavit that he only recently graduated from college (he notes that he's only been on the job for one year, but before that he was a "student trainee with the group"). Much of the affidavit relies heavily on the MPAA. This fits with what ICE assistant deputy director Erik Barnett said soon after the seizures, admitting that they basically just took what sites Hollywood said were a problem and seized them.

In this case, Mr. Reynolds repeats the debunked stats the MPAA has given out concerning "losses" to Hollywood, including the claim of "domino effects" of piracy -- a claim that has been debunked so many times it's getting stale. The "domino" effects are really all about double, triple and quadruple counting the same dollars -- and, perhaps more importantly, they only look at the domino effect (they usually call it a "ripple effect") in one direction, ignoring the fact that money not spent on movies still gets spent elsewhere (potentially boosting those other industries). That doesn't mean that it's okay to not pay for movies -- but it means that claiming some massive economic "harm" here is misleading at best. Even the GAO -- from the same government Agent Reynolds works for -- has debunked the MPAA's stats, in part because the MPAA refused to explain how it came up with those numbers.

Most of the reasoning behind seizing the blogs is left out of the released document, but the entire section on Torrent-Finder is there, and the level of confusion by Mr. Reynolds is worrisome. First of all, he calls it a "linking" and a "bit torrent website." Earlier in the affidavit, these terms are defined loosely -- without any indication of the unsettled nature of the legal question concerning whether or not simply linking to potentially infringing content is, itself, infringing. Instead, it's simply assumed that linking is not just infringement, but potentially criminal infringement. That's scary. And wrong.

Meanwhile, a "bit torrent website" is defined is a "website through which illegal copies of movies and television shows are shared and transferred." The problem here, of course, is that Torrent-Finder is not, in fact, a "bit torrent website." It hosts no tracker. It hosts no infringing content. It's a search engine. That distinction is entirely ignored. In fact, Agent Reynolds appears to blame Torrent-Finder for anything it finds as a search engine. Anyone at any search engine (or who understands how the internet works) should be horrified by this. It's like saying that Google is liable for everything and anything that people can find by doing a search on Google. Think about that for a second.

From there, it gets even more ridiculous. As part of Agent Reynold's argument as to why Torrent-Finder is liable he points to a series of posts by the Torrent-Finder Admin in the site's forums. Specifically, he names the following:

I was able to view several posts by the user "Torrent Finder," including "Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent," "Piracy in the Music Industry," "Piracy Can Boost Book Sales Tremendously," "The First Episode of 'The Walking Dead' Leaks to BitTorrent," and "Piracy domain siezure bill gains support."

Agent Reynolds helpfully provides some of these "posts" in the exhibit. And therein we discover a serious problem. The exhibit shows a page from TorrentFreak.com, the popular blog (who we link to quite often) doing its weekly research report -- and not Torrent-Finder. In fact, if you do searches on those "posts" that Agent Reynolds claims are by Torrent-Finder, you quickly discover that a few are blog posts on TorrentFreak, one is a post from ZeroPaid and the last one is a story at CNET's News.com by Declan McCullough.

In other words, the "support" that Agent Reynolds provides for why Torrent-Finder's domain should be seized is that he claims that Torrent-Finder's admin linked directly to infringing material. But that's not true. Instead, the admin was simply pointing to a bunch of different news stories. Even worse, some of those news stories highlight why the claims of the MPAA, which Agent Reynolds relies upon, are simply made up -- such as TorrentFreak's story about comic artist Steve Lieber (which was actually based on a Techdirt story about how Steve Lieber embraced the so-called "pirates" and ended up making a lot more money -- we later interviewed Steve about his experiences). The CNET article is all about the COICA law -- which is about the legality of seizures like this one. How is that evidence of probable cause?

Even going beyond the fact that Agent Reynolds can't seem to figure out that a search engine is different than a torrent tracker or a torrent hosting site, he also seems to think that linking to blog posts like the ones we write here is probable cause for criminal behavior. Holy crap! That's just downright scary.

The entirety of the evidence against Torrent Finder appears to be that because you could do a search that takes you to another site and because the site's admin linked to some blog posts that discuss -- but do not encourage -- the state of file sharing, that there is probable cause of criminal behavior and your domain can and should be seized without any adversarial trial.

Agent Reynolds' cluelessness in the matter is compounded by the fact that it appears the only folks outside of ICE that he spoke to about what he was doing were at the MPAA itself -- which is hardly an unbiased party. It would be like investigating whether or not an upstart bank was committing fraud, by only talking to a large banking competitor. Who would think that's appropriate? Apparently Agent Reynolds and his bosses at ICE.

Equally troubling is that magistrate judge Margaret Nagle signed off on the warrants (literally, with a rubber stamp) without questioning any of this, from the look of things. Nowhere is there any discussion on how the seizure of domain names has nothing to do with the actual servers. Nowhere is there any discussion about first amendment issues in seizing domain names. Nowhere is there any discussion about prior restraint. Nowhere is there any discussion about the difference between a search engine and a torrent tracker. Nowhere is there any discussion about the difference between an infringing file and a torrent. Nowhere is there any discussion about the difference between a link to a news blog post about current events and encouraging people to download infringing content.

I thought the whole thing was ridiculous before. But now that I've read the affidavit -- at least the part about Torrent Finder -- it's become clear that this is a colossal screwup on the part of Homeland Security, ICE and the US government, based on a freshly minted ICE agent who doesn't seem to understand the technology, being lead around by the nose by MPAA staff with an agenda.

Filed Under: andrew reynolds, blogs, domain names, free speech, homeland security, ice, prior restraint, probable cause, seizures
Companies: torrent finder

Owners Of Hiphop Blogs Seized By Homeland Security Still Haven't Been Told Why

from the prior-restraint? dept

The saga of the domains seized by Homeland Security's Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) group continues to get more and more bizarre. We'd already noted that among the domains seized were a bunch of hiphop blogs that artists and record labels regularly used to promote their works and that at least the search engine Torrent-Finder was planning to fight back. As we noted at the time, it seemed like the blogs would have a much stronger case, as there's pretty clear First Amendment problems with the governments' actions.

While it's still not entirely clear what the owners of those blogs are going to do, the NY Times has spoken with some of them and it appears they're certainly exploring their options. I would imagine that the EFF and others have all reached out to them as well. I'm also guessing that the RIAA -- who told ICE to take down these sites -- may actually be getting nervous that it may have pushed too far here. They have to realize that they're going to lose these lawsuits if the domain owners push back. It's classic prior restraint.

What's really scary, though, is that the article notes that the domain owners still have been given no indication of why their sites were seized and may need to wait another 30 to 60 days before they're able to even see the seizure order. That seems ridiculous. You shouldn't just be able to seize a domain name and then tell the owners that they'll find out why nearly three months later. What happened to due process?

Filed Under: blogs, domain names, free speech, homeland security, ice, prior restraint, seizures

Torrent-Finder Plans To Fight Domain Seizure

from the testing-prior-restraint dept

I had mentioned recently that I fully expected at least one or two of the owners of the domain names seized by Homeland Security to challenge the seizures. While the government seemed to think that these sites were so "obviously" infringing that no one would dare challenge the seizures, that seemed hard to believe.

And, in fact, it appears that the operators of Torrent-Finder, a pure search engine that hosts no infringing content, are planning to challenge the seizure, and have hired a lawyer for that purpose. To be honest, I think that the various hiphop blogs that were seized may have a stronger case. I actually think that Torrent-Finder has a pretty strong case as well, but as we've seen in our own comments, it's easier for folks who don't understand how search engines work to automatically assume Torrent Finder must be illegal because people use it to find infringing content.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, domain names, homeland security, ice, search engines, seizures
Companies: torrent finder

As The Feds Seize Domains, More Attention Paid To How Law Enforcement Regularly Abuses Asset Seizures

from the this-is-not-due-process dept

Given our serious concerns over the legality of Homeland Security's domain name seizures, one thing we keep hearing from supporters of the effort is that asset seizures are "nothing new" and happen all of the time. We've already discussed how that's not exactly true -- and how pre-trial seizures are supposed to be focused on situations where evidence might get destroyed. But it's even worse than that. It appears that law enforcement has a long, and rather dubious, history of greatly abusing the ability to seize property for their own benefit.

Ryan Radia pointed us to a detailed report from earlier this year, written by the Institute for Justice, about how the civil asset forfeiture process is regularly abused by police (pdf). And along those lines, Radley Balko has a disturbing story out of Indiana concerning massive abuses of the asset forfeiture process. Basically, law enforcement in Indiana had been abusing the forfeiture rules for their own benefit. As Balko noted in an earlier article, the "forfeiture racket" is basically a "license to steal", as law enforcement can find all sorts of reasons to seize private assets -- even without trying their owners for any crime -- and then profiting off the sale of those items.

In Indiana, the law had been changed so that, officially, any proceeds from forfeiture would go to the state's public schools, rather than directly to law enforcement. However, as Balko reports, Indiana prosecutors have found loopholes, which they regularly exploit to get around the rules:

One popular way Indiana prosecutors have avoided contributing to the school fund is to contract out civil forfeiture cases to private attorneys, who get to keep a quarter to a third of what they win in court. If there are incentive problems with letting police departments and district attorneys' offices keep forfeiture proceeds, those problems are magnified several times by allowing private attorneys to get paid directly from the forfeiture cases they bring on behalf of local governments. Forfeiture experts I've spoken with say the practice almost certainly violates the Constitution's Due Process Clause, since the people making decisions about these cases get a direct financial benefit from those decisions.

Note that, in some ways, this mimics what Homeland Security did with the domain name seizures. As we noted, Homeland Security actually contracted out to a private company to handle the domain name seizures. It's not clear, however, if they directly benefit from each seizure but this does seem like a serious question.

Another loophole in the law allows prosecutors to deduct from forfeiture proceeds the law enforcement costs associated with obtaining them. County prosecutors and police departments exploit this provision by wildly exaggerating the costs of their investigations or interpreting the law in ridiculously broad ways. The Star reported, for example, that officials in Marion County "have a broader--and more lucrative--interpretation of law enforcement costs. They argue that the phrase simply means the cost of enforcing the law in Marion County, and thereby justify holding on to every dollar of the nearly $1.6 million the county received from state forfeiture cases in 2009."

I'm curious if those supporting the whole forfeiture concept as being "perfectly normal" care to comment on these sorts of things...

Filed Under: civil forfeiture, due process, seizures

US Copyright Czar: Expect More Domain Censorship

from the free-speech-ain't-free dept

The US "IP Czar," Victoria Espinel, said at a conference this week that Homeland Security's seizure of a bunch of domain names was apparently just the beginning of a larger plan to go after such folks. Espinel has been making the rounds over the past few months, working to get various companies to voluntarily start censoring websites in this manner, even without the COICA bill being in place. This isn't really a surprise. Espinel has stated in the past that her job is to focus on the enforcement side of copyright law, so it's no surprise she's supportive of such seizures.

What's scary, though, is the fact that she doesn't seem willing to recognize how these seizures appear to go way past "enforcing" copyright law, and move into blatant censorship. In her comments, she noted that "We are going after the piraters and counterfeiters," but she seems to ignore that caught in that net are perfectly legitimate search engines and (more seriously) blogs with plenty of non-infringing content. If that's not the definition of prior restraint and blatant government censorship, I don't know what is.

What's sad is that Espinel has appeared in the past as someone who actually recognized these issues -- and while she's under a lot of pressure from the entertainment industry lobbyists who apparently get to write her performance reports -- if these sorts of activities keep up, she's going to go down as the US's chief censor. What a shame.

Filed Under: censorship, domain names, ip czar, ipec, seizures, victoria espinel

Talking About Homeland Security's Domain Seizures

from the priorities dept

We've had a bunch of posts this week about Homeland Security's seizure of domain names under questionable legal reasoning. Yesterday I went on The Alyona Show to discuss it. Here's the clip (though, I was actually in Sunnyvale, CA about 400 miles from Los Angeles, despite the claim that I'm in LA):

Filed Under: domain names, seizures