Do The Statutory Damages Rates For Copyright Infringement Violate The Eighth Amendment?

from the questions,-questions dept

While we often discuss the rather large conflict between the First Amendment and copyright law in the US, Stephan Kinsella is also wondering if the current statutory damages rates in copyright also violate the Eight Amendment and its prohibition on "excessive fines." I somewhat wonder if that issue will come up in the Jammie Thomas appeal, which will focus heavily on whether or not an award within the statutory damages rates was too high, but I believe the focus there will be more on the Fourteenth Amendment, and whether or not it was a violation of due process. In fact, it seems like most of the Constitutional discussions on statutory rates focuses on the Fourteenth Amendment, rather than the Eighth. I'm certainly not a Constitutional scholar (and would love for legal scholars to chime in here), but I believe this is because the courts historically treat these two amendments as related, and effectively argue that the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment is applied via the 14th Amendment on due process when it involves state laws. So I'm not entirely clear why it's also being used on a federal copyright issue -- but I'm sure someone out there will help explain it to us in the comments shortly!

Filed Under: 8th amendment, constitution, copyright, punishment

Judge: Using The Copyright System To Force People To Pay Up Is Unconstitutional

from the well-that'll-be-effective dept

In yet another case of odd legal choices by copyright troll lawyers, apparently a lawyer named Ira Siegel has been avoiding complying with a court order that he reveal how much money he's been making from demanding settlement fees based on accusations (and the threat of court) of copyright infringement. It's no surprise that he would avoid doing so, but there are two interesting points related to this. First, he filed the response two days after the judge's deadline. That's not a way to win points with a judge. Second, he spent much of the filing complaining about an anonymous blogger who has nothing to do with the case. I'm not quite sure what the strategy is here other than to look foolish and lose the case. Of course, there's been conspiracy theories that perhaps he wants this case dismissed to avoid having to reveal how much money he's raking in.

Thankfully, rather than dismiss the entire case, the judge has followed the precedent of many other courts dealing with such copyright trolls, and dismissed all but one defendant, effectively ruining the legal strategy of the trolling operation. The judge goes through in great detail why joining so many different people in one lawsuit makes no sense. And you sense that the judge is annoyed that Siegel wasted his time with such a bad case. The judge clearly saw through the whole scheme, and flat out says that abusing the court system to force people to pay up is unconstitutional. It's too bad this part is hidden in a footnote, but the judge clearly states:

The Court’s concerns are heightened by plaintiff’s refusal to file under seal a copy of its settlement letter and related information about its settlement practices. The film sells for $19.95 on plaintiff’s website. According to public reports, plaintiffs in other BitTorrent cases, rather than prosecuting their lawsuits after learning the identities of Does, are demanding thousands of dollars from each Doe defendant in settlement. If all this is correct, it raises questions of whether this film was produced for commercial purposes or for purposes of generating litigation and settlements. Put another way, Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to enact copyright laws ‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts’. If all the concerns about these mass Doe lawsuits are true, it appears that the copyright laws are being used as part of a massive collection scheme and not to promote useful arts.

That's quite a statement. It's so rare to see a court look at the actual purpose of copyright law to see if it's being met by a plaintiff...

Filed Under: constitution, copyright, shakedowns

If ACTA Is Approved In The US, It May Open The Door For The President To Regularly Ignore Congress On International Agreements

from the bad-news dept

On of the sneakier parts of ACTA is that the White House has insisted from the beginning that the document is not a binding treaty. Instead, it insists that ACTA is merely an "executive agreement." Of course, the only real difference is that an executive agreement doesn't require the Senate to ratify it. Basically, the US is calling it an executive agreement so that the administration can sign on without any oversight or scrutiny on the treaty. The Europeans, in the meantime, never got the "ix-nay on the inding-bay eaty-tray" notice from the US folks, and have been happily declaring ACTA a binding treaty as it clearly is.

However, many legal experts have noted that this raises serious constitutional questions, as the Constitution simply does not allow this kind of agreement to be signed without Senate approval. Amusingly, Senator Biden -- back during the previous administration -- was one of the leading voices in trying to prevent President Bush from signing an "executive agreement" with Russia, without getting Senate approval. One wonders if he's magically changed his mind.

However, more and more people are getting concerned about this breach of the Constitution. James Love points us to a new paper at the American Society for International Law by Oona A. Hathaway and Amy Kapczynski, which worries about the precedent this will set if Obama signs it as an executive agreement and bypasses the Senate entirely.

No comparable agreement has been concluded in this way. Thus if concluded as a sole executive agreement, it would represent a significant expansion of the scope of such agreements. As a result, it could pave the way for more extensive use of sole executive agreements in the future. That, in turn, could have implications for the nature of democratic control over international legal agreements concluded by the United States, as well as the legitimacy of these agreements both at home and abroad.

Furthermore, the report notes that it does not seem Constitutional for the President to sign such a document as an executive agreement. The only things that can be signed as an executive agreement are things that are solely under the President's mandate. But intellectual property laws are clearly afforded to Congress and not the President under the Constitution -- meaning that he has no authority to sign this document without it first being approved by the Senate. The report notes that President Bush also tried to expand executive agreements, and ACTA would be a massive expansion in what could be covered under such agreements, taking away tremendous authority and oversight from Congress.

Setting a precedent for more expansive use of sole executive agreements has consequences not only for intellectual property law, but for any area in which an international agreement may be concluded—which is to say, nearly any area of law. International law now reaches into almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives. The possibility that such legal commitments could be made by the President without the input, much less approval, of Congress or the public raises serious questions about the potential of these agreements to undermine democratic lawmaking writ large

This is pretty troubling for a variety of different reasons, and it seems like Congress itself should be pretty concerned about this attempt to take away its oversight on international agreements.

Filed Under: acta, constitution, executive agreement, lobbyists, treaty

RIAA Files Expected Appeal Over Judge's Decision To Decrease Jury Award In Jammie Thomas Trial

from the how-dare-the-judge-be-reasonable! dept

The RIAA's war against reasonableness continues. As totally and completely expected after Judge Michael David reduced the jury award against Jammie Thomas-Rasset from $80,000 per song shared to a still ridiculous $2,250 per song shared, the RIAA has now appealed the case to the Eighth Circuit appeals court. Now is when the case finally starts to get more interesting. The RIAA is actually challenging three parts from the three prior trials (as you may recall, the first two were tossed out). Specifically, the RIAA is asking:

Whether the District Court erred by concluding that making a copyrighted work available for download on an online file-sharing network is insufficient to constitute a 'distribution' under 106(3) of the Copyright Act, and therefore refusing to enjoin Defendant from making Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings available to the public.

Whether the District Court erred by concluding that it had committed an error in instructing the jury that making a copyrighted work available for download on a online file-sharing network constitutes a "distribution' under 106(3) of the copyright Act and therefor vacating the jury's verdict and ordering a new trial.

Whether the District Court erred by holding that the jury's award of statutory damages for defendant's willful copyright infringement violated the due process clause even though it was well within the range of damages awards authorized by 504(c) of the Copyright Act.

All three are interesting legal questions. The last one may be the biggest, but the hardest to succeed on. The reasoning used so far by two different judges in dropping jury awards is that the jury awards were so out of line with reality that they violated due process. The RIAA is scared to death that any sort of reasonable awards be associated with copyright law, because they're still under the ridiculously misguided belief that absolutely insane judgments for millions of dollars will scare people into no longer sharing files. The thing is, it's likely they have this misjudged in a big, bad way. The awards in the millions of dollars for just a few songs seem so incredible and so unfathomable, that most people simply think it's impossible. I honestly believe that they'd have a lot more luck if the fines were seen as much lower and much more within the grasp of the average file sharer. But the RIAA is not known for thinking logically.

The first two issues are actually important as well, though they'll get less attention. It's a key fighting point by the RIAA: which is whether or not a copyright holder needs to prove actual distribution to show an infringement of the distribution right under copyright law... or if merely "making available" constitutes distribution. This has been a major point of contention. The RIAA relies on a case about library books to say that merely "making available" is a violation of the distribution right, but other rulings and basic common sense on what constitutes distribution, suggest that merely making available is not, in fact, distribution by itself.

Filed Under: appeal, constitution, copyright, distribution, jammie thomas, making available, statutory damages
Companies: riaa

Judge Decreases Amount Jammie Thomas Owes For File Sharing Again (Yes, Again); Says It's Appalling

from the do-we-get-to-do-it-a-fourth-time? dept

Check out Judge Michael Davis. After the second Jammie Thomas-Rasset case had a jury return an award of $1.92 million for her sharing of 24 songs, the judge reduced the award from $80,000 per song to three times the statutory minimum of $2,250 per song. Of course, this resulted in a wild freakout by the RIAA... and a third trial. In the third trial (just on the award amount), the jury went with $62,500 per song shared, or $1.5 million total. Considering the massive freakout last time, you might think that Judge Davis would just be done with this, but instead, he's sticking to his guns, once again reducing the award to the same $2,250 per song. This really makes it the third time he's overturned the jury (though, the first time was because he felt he gave improper jury instructions).

Of course, the RIAA will once again freak out and this will be appealed. The judge's ruling, though, is well worth reading, calling the jury award of $1.5 million "appalling":

The Court concludes that an award of $1.5 million for stealing and distributing 24 songs for personal use is appalling. Such an award is so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable. In this particular case, involving a first-time willful, consumer infringer of limited means who committed illegal song file-sharing for her own personal use, an award of $2,250 per song, for a total award of $54,000, is the maximum award consistent with due process.

This reduced award is punitive and substantial. It acts as a potent deterrent. It is a higher award than the Court might have chosen to impose in its sole discretion, but the decision was not for this Court to make. The Court has merely reduced the jury’s award to the maximum amount permitted under our Constitution.

He notes that, given the past experiences with this dispute, he's "loath" to do this again, but "the Constitution and justice compel the Court to act."

Judge Davis is clearly aware that the RIAA would freak out about this, and lays out, in great detail, his arguments for why the original awards are unconstitutional (as a violation of due process) and why the maximum fine he believes is allowed under the Constitution would be the $2,250 per song he changed the award to.

The RIAA, of course, will continue to claim that the ridiculous million dollar plus awards for sharing 24-songs are perfectly appropriate. They'll claim, as they have in the past, that the fact that multiple juries came up with this amount shows that the public agrees such ridiculous fines are normal. As per usual with the RIAA, they're being misleading. The reason that juries reach such disproportionate awards is because of the way the choices are framed to the jury. There are all sorts of studies on how framing influences a jury, and how juries don't actually consider the proportional response of the offense to the punishment.

There's one other interesting bit in the ruling that won't get much attention. That is that the RIAA asked for an injunction barring Thomas-Rasset from infringing any further, and the court grants it... in part. It's the part that it doesn't grant, which is interesting. The RIAA asked for the court to say Thomas-Rasset should be barred from "making available" any copyrighted works via file sharing programs, but the court, correctly (despite the RIAA's long-term effort to pretend otherwise), points out that there is no "making available" right within copyright law. The Court is short and sweet on that point:

Plaintiffs further request that the Court include language in the injunction barring Defendant from making any of Plaintiffs’ sound recordings available for distribution to the public. Plaintiffs argue that, if Thomas-Rasset makes Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works available on a peer-to-peer network, she will have completed all of the steps necessary for her to engage in the same illegal distribution of Plaintiffs’ works for which she has already been found liable. Because the Court has held that the Copyright Act does not provide a making-available right, it will not enjoin Thomas-Rasset from making the copyrighted sound recordings available to the public.

While there's nothing really new here, it's nice to see that point reinforced once again. Making available, by itself, is not copyright infringement, despite the industry's attempts to portray it as such.

Filed Under: appeal, constitution, copyright, jammie thomas, statutory damages

Court: Naked Scanners Are Constitutional; But TSA Should Have Asked For Public Comment

from the can-they-x-ray-the-constitution? dept

This isn't a huge surprise, as we said when the lawsuit was first filed, but EPIC has failed in its attempt to have the TSA's naked scanners declared unconstitutional. The court seems to think the scans are just dandy, though it had some trouble with how they were implemented. There were two key legal points raised by EPIC. The first was that implementing the naked scanners without a public review violated the Administrative Procedures Act. The court seems sympathetic to this argument:

The TSA seems to think it significant that there are no AIT scanners at some airports and the agency retains the discretion to stop using the scanners where they are in place. More clearly significant is that a passenger is bound to comply with whatever screening procedure the TSA is using on the date he is to fly at the airport from which his flight departs. 49 C.F.R. § 1540.105(a)(2) (no passenger may enter the “sterile area” of an airport “without complying with the systems, measures, or procedures being applied to control access to” that area). To be sure, he can opt for a patdown but, as the TSA conceded at oral argument, the agency has not argued that option makes its screening procedures nonbinding and we therefore do not consider the possibility. We are left, then, with the argument that a passenger is not bound to comply with the set of choices presented by the TSA when he arrives at the security checkpoint, which is absurd.

In sum, the TSA has advanced no justification for having failed to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking. We therefore remand this matter to the agency for further proceedings.

Still... even then, it says that ordering the TSA to stop using the machines would "severely disrupt an essential security operation," so it will not halt the use of the machines, even if it expects the TSA to begin holding public review of them.

The second key argument (there are a few other lesser arguments) is the Fourth Amendment claim. And here, the court just doesn't see it.

As other circuits have held, and as the Supreme Court has strongly suggested, screening passengers at an airport is an “administrative search” because the primary goal is not to determine whether any passenger has committed a crime but rather to protect the public from a terrorist attack.... An administrative search does not require individualized suspicion.... (individualized suspicion required when police checkpoint is “primarily [for] general crime control,” that is, “to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing” unlike “searches at places like airports ... where the need for such measures to ensure public safety can be particularly acute”). Instead, whether an administrative search is “unreasonable” within the condemnation of the Fourth Amendment “is determined by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual's privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.”

That balance clearly favors the Government here. The need to search airline passengers “to ensure public safety can be particularly acute,” ... and, crucially, an AIT scanner, unlike a magnetometer, is capable of detecting, and therefore of deterring, attempts to carry aboard airplanes explosives in liquid or powder form. On the other side of the balance, we must acknowledge the steps the TSA has already taken to protect passenger privacy, in particular distorting the image created using AIT and deleting it as soon as the passenger has been cleared. More telling, any passenger may opt-out of AIT screening in favor of a patdown, which allows him to decide which of the two options for detecting a concealed, nonmetallic weapon or explosive is least invasive.

This is, again, not surprising, but disappointing. It's rulings like this that allow for the gradual disposal of the 4th Amendment, by simply stretching the interpretation further and further each time, until there's just nothing left at all.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, constitution, privacy, scanners, tsa

Iceland (a.k.a. The Transparentest Place On Earth) Crowdsources Its New Constitution

from the totally-throwing-off-the-transparency-curve dept

We talk a lot about government transparency here at Techdirt. (We honestly do. Admittedly, the conversation tends to revolve around the lack thereof, but that's hardly our fault. We weren't the ones promising the most transparent government ever and then spending most of our time boarding up the windows and chanting "State Secret" over each piece of paper that crossed our collective desks. But I digress...)

Back to the point at hand: a transparent government. Ours may be struggling mightily with the ideal, but Iceland has one-upped every government in the world by crowdsourcing the writing of its new Constitution. Not only that, but it's embracing the crowd at all the popular hangouts, incuding Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, and it's streaming all of its meetings live.

Of course, opening up yourself to the "wisdom of the crowd" has its drawbacks, most them directly related to the "wisdom" of said crowd. Some bizarre advice has turned up on its Facebook page, but to its credit, the moderators are handling it with the tireless patience that Iceland will soon become famous for, if there's any justice in the world. Here's a sampling of some of the best/worst from their Facebook page.

Here's Joshua E.'s three-pronged platform:

Just read the full current draft, and had some thoughts: 1. I would suggest that under Education, a clause be instituted to allow children and their families to seek restitution from individual teachers upon improper teaching of personal views, 2. the amount of parliment needed for impeachment of the president be reduced to 2/3rds as to avoid blocking by a member of the president's own party, and 3. that a process be created by which the collected MPs may create amendments to the constitution

Silja Bára Ómarsdóttir (Iceland Facebook page admin):

the president in Iceland is not affiliated with any party so that's moot. The idea of amendments is not something we normally use here, we would rather have the whole document revisited, for example through constitutional assemblies every few decades. And for the first point, I would be hesitant to support such a document as I think it would support the development of a "sue the bastards" mentality we have not had so far. But thanks for your critical reading of the document and interest in the process.

 

Justin E. lays out some common sense:

Okay, here is a no-brainer. To keep special interests out of the government, you pay politicians at a flat rate, and do not allow them to accept monetary sponsorship from corporations.

Katrín Oddsdóttir (another admin):

Exactly what we're doing Justin ;)

 

Joe C. takes a swing at the "welfare state" and ends with a baffling plea to edit the Consitution and Bill of Rights:

If you write "rights" to the fruit of other peoples' labor into the Constitution, you will have set up this state for failure before it even started. Please copy the US constitution + bill of rights, remove the bad parts and clarify the liberty-damaging clauses.

Katrín Oddsdóttir:

If there is any place in the world where the constitution can promise social welfare to all, that would be Iceland which is very rich in resources and has only 320.000 people. So we have to go for the full force social and economic rights, in my opinion. We also have a very different legal system to the US so it's hard to compare how such constitution traditions would act out, on the Ice. Thanks for the comment Joe.

 

Justin L. is concerned with an inseparable church and state:

Having an Established Church as well as Religious Freedom seems a little counterintuitive.

Katrín Oddsdóttir:

This is a huge issue and no wonder you mention it. Iceland has had a national church for decades and very many people want a separation between the Church and the State. However, the current constitution demands a referendum should the state church be abolished and that is why our current draft has two options on the church. This essentially means that when (and if!) our new constitution goes to referendum, the people of Iceland can choose whether they want to mention the Established State Church in the future constitution or not.

 

And finally, Phil C. reminds us why we love/hate the internet -- semi-coherent, punctuation-less rants:

You people are crazy nuts You are abdicating your responsibility to your nation's people. guarantee all the "rights" you want to includingno-one needs to work the government will take care of everything cradle to grave a country of welfare is a country that cannot survive. You are ruining your country and setting the worst possible example
People will have no desire to contribute sweat equiity if the government pays all the bills. Have you thought of where you will get the money needed to support all of your welfare recipients once you guarantee they won't need to pay for any of there own needs?

Stjórnlagará:

Now now Philip. We are blessed with ample natural resources like hydro electricity, clean water, agriculture and sustainable fishing. Our healthcare and education system is the foundation of our future.

I would not go as far as to say that we are crazy nuts, but as a nation of viking seafarers we do like to go out on a limb sometimes.

It's true. Vikings are iconclastic ass-kickers and somewhat prone to rash action, hence Iceland's sudden drive to rebuild its constitution. (The still-in-progress full text is online both in English and in the original Icelandic.) All the push Iceland needed was a catastrophic collapse of the financial system. To say that this effort has struck a chord with people worldwide is an understatement. And while there's probably a million reasons this won't work, it might turn out to be a perfect fit for a country with the population of St. Louis, MO (approx. 319,000). If nothing else, it may inspire a bit more transparency worldwide, and that can't possibly be a bad thing.

Filed Under: constitution, crowdsourcing, iceland

Defending The Indefensible: Lawyers Who Love Loopholes Ignoring Serious Constitutional Issues In Domain Seizures

from the this-is-just-sad dept

One of the really sickening things in the debate over the seizures of domains by the US government without due process and with no regard to prior restraint is the way some pro-copyright lawyers have tried to wave off these rather significant concerns, highlighted by multiple lawyers, by focusing on quoting cases out of context and searching for legal loopholes to justify the seizures. Of course, if you dig into the actual case law, you find that the legal loopholes they highlight don't actually apply in this situation.

However, I wanted to step back from that, and take a look at the bigger picture, rather than focus on the legal loopholes that the lawyers are tossing around gleefully.

And from the bigger picture, I can't see how anyone who isn't interested in "the game" of winning a legal argument can possibly justify these seizures from a common sense standpoint. The US is based on certain key principles, and while some can mock those of using phrases like "due process" and "free speech," those aren't joking concepts. They are the underpinnings of a free society, and both are clearly under attack by the crux of these domain seizures.

First, the due process claim: defenders of the seizures claim that "due process" exists because a magistrate judge rubber stamps an affidavit, no matter how many mistakes there are. Of course, if you look at this from a common sense standpoint, no one thinks that due process includes the government seizing your property and letting you sue them at some later date (months later) to get it back. Supporters will point to the history of government seizures, leaving out (conveniently!) the intent of such seizures. It's always been about seizing evidence that might otherwise disappear. Yes, over the years some law enforcement folks have stretched this, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to abuse it in this manner.

The key point here is that there is no justifiable reason why these domains had to be seized without first hearing from the domain holders. None. No one has offered up a justification for seizing them pre-hearing at all. And holding a hearing would allow the government to avoid colossal screw-ups like relying on flatly incorrect evidence from the RIAA or taking down 84,000 legitimate sites and accusing them of being involved in child porn.

This isn't a minor issue. People in the US have been taught that we're innocent until proven guilty. Would it really have made that big of a difference for the government to actually hold a trial before seizing the domain? The answer is no. I mean, it would have meant that the government had to actually make a real case, rather than use questionable evidence, but that's why we have the concept of due process. It's not supposed to be easy for the government to take property or lock people up. That's kind of a key point in a free society.

On the free speech point, the First Amendment is pretty clear that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Of course, over the years, the courts have chipped away at this here and there, but when the government is seizing speech or even tools that are key to use in speech, most people recognize that this should involve a high level of scrutiny to avoid the obvious opportunity for abuse.

We've already seen governments in other countries use questionable copyright claims to stifle the speech of critics. And it's not difficult to see how this could happen in the US as well -- especially given the recent domain seizures. Considering the vast number of perfectly legal sites seized, how hard would it be for political operatives to target critical sites using a similar "copyright" claim? Not hard at all. And that's why we protect our First Amendment rights quite strongly.

In fact, I'm troubled by the claims that seizing speech is fine because it's "copyright infringement." That ignores the fact that the speech we're concerned about isn't infringing speech at all, but it was also taken down due to these seizures. And, as in the due process discussion, there's simply no justifiable reason for why the government could not have waited until a court actually determined what content was infringing (if anything) and targeted any takedown or seizure to that content.

No one tossing out these (generally incorrect) legal loophole arguments seems willing to address either issue. They hide behind misreadings of case law, but can't defend the seizures to the man in the street who is extremely worried about the government blatantly censoring websites with no trial and no due process, while making frequent mistakes undermining the entire claims of the lawsuits. Perhaps there is an actual common sense justification for seizing domains without a trial first, but we haven't seen anything other than misquoting caselaw. So, for those who continue to brush off the due process and free speech concerns, can you explain an actual common sense reason why there couldn't have been an actual trial first?

Filed Under: common sense, constitution, domain seizures, due process, free speech

More Reasons Why Homeland Security Seizing Domain Names Is Unconstitutional

from the keep-up dept

We've raised a number of reasons as to why the federal government's domain name seizures (via Homeland Security's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement group) are almost certainly not Constitutional. And while we've run these arguments by a number of well respected Constitutional lawyers who are extremely interested in these issues (and may be getting involved in various ways), some in our comments have insisted that our points could be ignored because we are not lawyers. And while I've asked some of the lawyers I regularly speak to if they would write blog posts commenting on these issues, many are quite busy trying to actually do something about these issues, and that seems a bit more important.

So it's nice to see some lawyers jumping into the fray. Practicing attorney David Makarewicz has written up an explanation of 5 reasons why the domain seizures are likely to be unconstitutional. It's really quite a well-balanced piece, detailing arguments on both sides, before coming down clearly on the side of why these seizures violate the Constitution in multiple ways. You can head over to that link to read the details, but the short version is as follows:

1. These seizures violate the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. There are certainly arguments here, but Makarewicz breaks down in which areas and for what reasons seizures without a prior hearing are allowed, and explains why those rules should not apply here.
2. The prior restraint argument. Seizing speech without a hearing violates the First Amendment. Here Makarewicz highlights why the arguments that say this is not prior restraint don't hold much water, and notes that, if allowed, such a ruling will almost certainly be abused for the purpose of political censorship.
3. There was no reason for the seizures without a hearing first. As we've pointed out in the past, seizures are generally allowed to preserve evidence. That doesn't apply here, which makes the seizures that much more questionable.
4. The high risk of wrongful seizure. Obviously, the 84,000 websites seized in the mooo.com case make that clear. While he notes that the government doesn't always have to be right, the Constitution "does require the Government to institute sufficient procedures that reasonably protect a person’s freedom and property from a wrongful taking." Here, it's clearly failed.
5. Finally, there is no immediate way for site owners to reclaim their domain. He notes that when there are exceptions to the First and Fifth Amendments, they're generally allowed, if there's immediate recourse. Here there was not.

It's a good read, and by a real lawyer. So I do wonder if our regular critics will similarly brush aside the concerns as not being worthy of consideration.

Filed Under: constitution, domain seizures, due process, fifth amendment, first amendment, free speech, prior restraint

ICE Boss: It's Okay To Ignore The Constitution If It's To Protect Companies

from the how-nice-of-them dept

While the folks at Homeland Security keep telling me that they simply cannot speak publicly about the seizure of various domain names -- and specifically the numerous mistakes they've made that appear to clearly violate both the First Amendment and Due Process rules -- it seems they have no problem talking about the domain seizures to folks in the press who don't bother to ask tough questions.

ICE boss John Morton did an interview with Politico, where he trots out a bunch of highly questionable statements about the domain seizures, including claiming that it's all okay for them to do this because they're trying to "protect U.S. industry" rather than "regulate the internet." But that's not the role of Homeland Security or ICE. And there are limits on what ICE is actually allowed to do, and Morton's technically clueless agents seem to have ignored many of those rules.

"We don't have any interest in going after bloggers or discussion boards," he said. "We're not about what is being said by anybody. We're about making sure that the intellectual property laws of the United States, which are clear, are enforced. When somebody spends hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the next movie or a billion dollars to develop the next heart medicine, the innovation and the enterprise that went into that effort is protected as the law provides. It's that simple."

There's so much wrong in that statement that it should be grounds for dismissal. Morton is not representing what has happened, the law or the facts accurately here. He's lying to the American public (and to Politico, who appears to have failed to call him on any of it). First of all, if they don't have any interest in going after bloggers or discussion boards, why did they? Second, if the intellectual property laws of the US are "clear" -- why did ICE not use them and actually get anyone charged with infringement? Third, the laws aren't that clear -- which is why we (normally) have trials to make sure there was actual infringement. If ICE had been willing to let due process play out, it would have avoided embarrassing mistakes, like taking down 84,000 websites because a few may have had illegal content. Or seizing a blog (yes, a blog, despite what he says) that posted links to music elsewhere that was sent by the labels and artists. And, when someone spends all that money to develop something, there are plenty of business models for them to use, and they have every right to use civil laws to go after those who violate their rights. What they shouldn't have is some government agents taking down websites with no due process, seizing plenty of protected speech in the process.

Finally, for Morton to claim "it's that simple," when the law is anything but simple should get the man fired. Seriously. No one who knows anything about the law thinks it's that simple. He shouldn't be in charge of ICE if he thinks that the laws are as simple as he makes out. It's not, and either he knows it and he's lying or he doesn't know it and he's unqualified for the job. Which is it? I figure I'll send these questions to my friendly press contact at Homeland Security, and I imagine the answer will be the same: "I'll have to direct you to the Justice Department on those questions." Because actually responding to American citizens whose rights he seems to have no problem trampling is not in his job description. Helping Hollywood by violating multiple parts of the Constitution is much more fun.

Morton also seems to think there's simply no legal questions in seizing domain names:

"We can seize and forfeit them just like we seize and forfeit bank accounts, houses and vehicles that are used in other crimes," he said. "Any instrument of a crime is subject to our jurisdiction in terms of seizure and forfeit."

Again this is incorrect on a number of levels, and again raises questions about Morton's competence to hold the job he holds. You can seize property, but the case law is pretty clear on the different rules when it comes to seizing speech. And he's never responded to that at all. Because, of course, he cannot.

John Morton seems to think it's fine to be censor-in-chief and to violate multiple parts of the US Constitution, because it protects a few businesses who have failed to adapt their business models. This is a sickening display of the takeover of the American government by corporations.

Filed Under: constitution, domain seizures, homeland security, ice, john morton