More domain name insanity
A look at the Department of Homeland Security seizing domain names and charging people with linking to copyrighted material. Five years for linking something.
It’s a good thing they’ve rid the world of terrorism and can now focus on such trivial things.
May 18th, 2011 at 9:30 am
We were told that our supposed enemies attacked us because they hate our freedoms (protected and enumerated in the Bill of Rights). So the remedy was for our own government to created the Patriot Act and Homeland Security to keep us free–by taking our rights instead of the “terrorists” (whoever they are) from taking them???
May 18th, 2011 at 10:28 am
Seal Team Six! Seal Team Six! Seal Team Six! Take THAT Disney! What are you going to do, send out your Gooberment Goon Squad to Arrest me for so-called Trademark Infringement? I’m so pleased to know that the Federales are now acting as Enforcers for those Corporations that are Friends of Barry’s. Lord, even in the days of the 5 Families, the Mafia wasn’t this Greedy!
May 18th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Maximum PC is plainly not adept at legal analysis or writing good headlines (or generally not sucking) – but in fairness to them, almost none of the reporting on this case involved any amount of research or diligence.
If you dig in deeper, you’ll find it was not just “linking”, shockingly enough.
It was making [significant] money off of it – which makes it criminal, contra MPC’s claims that “Investigators just made up a law the MPAA wanted” – 17 USC 506(a) does, in fact, exist.
It is uncontested that he wasn’t hosting the content – but it’s not at all clear that that matters (or should matter).
(Unlike a “common carrier” – like an ISP or Google – he isn’t immune to prosecution, because he was picking and choosing content – and all of it was necessarily infringing. That was the entire point of his website and his business.
When your entire business model is copyright infringement, nobody is going to – or should – buy a “but I wasn’t actually HOSTING it myself!” defense.
The press on this “issue” has been atrocious – people attempting to make it sound like merely pasting a link to a video on a webpage is sufficient to get arrested – and none of them even bothered to look up what he was charged with or what the statute said.
And reporters want me to think they’re skilled professionals and important…)
Further, remember that DHS is not “The Terrorism Agency” alone; they also contain Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.
If we’re going to have IP laws (and we should), someone has to enforce them.
Who should? Given that part of it is related to customs (imports of counterfeits!), why not DHS? Would a shiny new agency be better?
May 18th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Ah. That explanation makes substantially more sense.
May 18th, 2011 at 3:04 pm
I think they (DHS) are still guilty of an appalling lack of due process though.
Also, search-fu up the MafiaaFire add-on for Firefox, and the demand by the DHS to have it taken down.
May 19th, 2011 at 12:23 am
Ah, I see the problem. See terrorism doesn’t actually fall under the Department of Homeland Security. They can investigate in conjunction with their other responsibilities but the FBI is the lead agency for all terrorism investigations in the US. DHS has some centers in states that funnel money but the FBI runs the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which have the proper classified information clearances and comms to share information.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there are black helicopters on the lawn for terrorism is one thing but dissing a bureaucrats power is far worse.
May 19th, 2011 at 4:54 am
I do wish they wouldn’t call that “McCarthyism.” He was right about commies being evil, and loathesome, and just generally bad.