Court Orders Shutdown of H-1B Critics' Websites

theodp writes "Computerworld reports that a NJ Superior Court Judge ordered hosting firms to shut down three Web sites that oppose the H-1B visa program and seeks information about the identity of anonymous posters. GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Comcast and DiscountASP.Net were ordered to disable ITgrunt.com, Endh1b.com, and Guestworkerfraud.com. Facebook Inc. was also ordered to disable ITgrunt's Facebook page. The judge's order was made in response to a libel lawsuit filed by Apex Technology Group Inc., which is citing its copyright ownership as it seeks the identity of the poster of a since-removed Apex employment agreement on Docstoc.com, which drew critical comments on US and India websites."

Comments

getting myself a glass of iced tea

[jollyreaper]

I think I'll enjoy sitting back and watching the information suppression fail. I was not aware of this story until they tried to suppress it. :)

Re:getting myself a glass of iced tea

[mpe]

Do people not understand pages are cached?

They understand that about as well as they understand that banning something is the best way to ensure that several million people who would otherwise not even have heard about it will become very interested in it :)

Re:getting myself a glass of iced tea

[Hurricane78]

How does a county judge in nowhere New Jersey have any jurisdiction over multiple companies that are not in his county?

Simple: All the rules that you think exist, are actually only as meaningful, as they are supported by the ones in power. We still live in a society ruled by the law of the jungle. We just don’t know it, because the power is so remote and invisible.
But in the end, if you make up your own rules, and are the one in power, of it’s something the ones in power like, they sill are the law of the land.

That’s why Cheney can shoot a man in the face, and get away with it. Simple as that.

Now all you have to do, is find the ones in power, and gain power over them. E.g. by doing something that makes them buy into your reality. That’s why your biggest enemy should be treated like your closest friend. He has to blindly trust and believe you.
Why do you think I got so interested in psychology and social engineering. It’s the hacking of the 21st century. ^^

Copyright BS

[Herkum01]

I fail to see how an employment agreement can be copyrighted.

what is defamatory about "common knowledge"?

[peter303]

Everyone knows much of he H-1B program is abused by employers, temp companies, and many of the workers themselves. "Go away. Nothing to see here."

Re:what is defamatory about "common knowledge"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you would be surprised by how much you think everyone knows that everybody doesn't know.

My sister is well educated (has an bachelors and MBA), reads the newspaper, and has no clue that the DRM on the Kindle is the first time in hundreds of years book publishers have been able to prevent resale of books despite the doctrine of first sale using some bs "this thing you bought is licensed not sold" garbage, or that they wiped out a book from everybody who bought it. She doesn't know that her Blackberry costs more because a patent license had to be paid to the tune of over $600 million for the idea of "we'll send e-mail to people over the radio," despite the fact that this should be obvious to anyone "skilled in the art", decades old prior art exists (among other things, a functioning RF messaging system was built in 1973), doing something "with a computer" or "with a radio" isn't an "inventive step", the people at NTP didn't do a darned thing to help the people at Blackberry, and the people at Blackberry didn't do a darned thing to hurt the people at NTP. She doesn't know that her TiVo is more expensive because Pause Technologies has a patent on using a circular buffer with a video. And she doesn't know that H-1Bs are a modern day indentured servitude program that is completely corrupt, fraudulent, and downright immoral.

I tried having a few of these conversations over the Christmas break, but apparently immigrants are mexicans who are doing jobs that Americans don't want and the solution to immigration problems is a fence and stepping up the drug war, the Kindle is nice because it is convenient and who would want to sell a book they bought anyway and it's ok because the license says they can't and you can't break the rules of the license, and patents are good because they promote innovation and Blackberry and TiVo make enough money that they can pay inventors. I can't begin to tell you how frustrating these conversations are.

Sorry about the AC, but at least one of these opinions might be construed to interfere with my paycheck someday.

H-1B is a Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

How can we be so short of American programmers and other IT people that we need to import foreigners in the middle of this awful recession?

We aren't. It's fraud. It's meant to reduce your salary.

It's the kind of fraud that Indians have ingrained in to their culture and Americans seem to get better at every day.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because there's an awful recession going on and most American Programmers and other IT people won't work for the amount of money, lack of holidays, benefits and hours that those being imported will do.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[Heartz]

If somebody can offer a service at a cheaper more efficient price, why not? All this humbug about salaries that one "deserves" to get is purely protectionist and doesn't benefit anybody. Offering cheaper overall inputs provide better value for all Americans to enjoy. If you're peddling global free trade, you've got to be willing to accept that labour needs to move freely and capitalism dictates that the person who can do it cheaper and offers an apple to apple comparison of quality will win. It's pure economics. If somebody can do something cheaper than you can, and is willing to do it, then there is nothing wrong with it.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

The employees still pay taxes on their income and property, still pay for products, food and maybe rent. All going straight back into the ecomony. You can't blame a world economic collapse on a handful of imported programmers. You are xenophobic. Stop blaming everyone except locals for what has been corrupt financing for several years, lead by the US.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[omnichad]

Except when the quality declines, and is considered acceptable because it saves so much money. The world is full of copy-and-paste programmers, and call centers with thick accents and no grasp of common English. And Americans are the worst to trust with voting with their dollars. The vast majority pick the cheapest every time, with no regard to quality.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[pdabbadabba]

Well, maybe it does reduce your salary, but I doubt that's the point. Rather, I imagine it's to get bright, foreign-educated workers to put down roots in the US so that we get to reap the economic benefits of the educational systems of their home countries, thus causing a brain drain into the US. Only really works if the US has a much higher standard of living though...

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[GooberToo]

I'll bite.

You bit the wrong place and for entirely the wrong reasons. Its all about the math. For one good American coder you can higher three to five shitty Indian coders. In the mind of a CEO that means he can gut his coders and hire an army of shitty coders while banking on the chance that in an army of shitty coders perhaps one or two may actually be worth their third world rate. This in turn provides leverage to reduce wages of American coders.

Then, at some later time, the CEO is able to claim he's saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions for the company in labor which then allows him to get both a salary increase and/or additional perks and benefits.

Regardless of what your personal take on this is, this is the general approach and the reasons they do so.

To make this all work, they further scam the system by putting out reqs for American programmers who must have every skill in every language and usually require more experience longer than the given technology exists. And in exchange for the programmer who doesn't not exist anywhere, they'll pay them just below fair market rate; which they have been driving down by illegal H1B hires. They then claim they are unable to fill the unobtainable position and therefore are justified in continuing their H1B hiring practice.

In short, what I detail is the way the majority of large companies operate. If you want to put your head in the sad to feel better and rampant illegal and abusive practices which is directly driving salaries down, unemployment up, and fewer grads to follow, by all means, remain ignorant.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[Maxo-Texas]

I suspect you are comparing apples to oranges here.

Are you saying that 800,000 jobs requiring at least a bachelor's degree and/or years of highly technical experience were created?

There is a reason that companies exist to teach corporations how to phrase their jobs needed ads so that no one in the united states qualifies (so they can legally import a less expensive worker who will gladly work 60+ hours a week without complaint). These companies wouldn't exist if large corporations didn't save money net of the cost of paying them.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[tibman]

I agree with you. But (sorry) that only works if everyone is playing in the same sandbox. If the cost of living and doing business in the US is higher than Mexico (for example) then a company would save a lot of money moving the actual factories to Mexico and continue to sell to the US. The new factory doesn't have to restrict it's byproducts and emmissions as much as in the US and the local population has a lower standard of living. But the price of the product to Americans does not go down, right? So Americans are making less money and still paying for the higher cost of living.

The effect is slowly lowering the quality of life for Americans and slightly raising it for the local factory workers (and the increased profit does not go to the workers, but to the company owners). While this is probably a good thing for the world at large, it is a draining effect on the US.

Nobody should want to equalize the quality of living by decreasing it anywhere.. but to raise up the lower levels. If the company that moved it's factory decreased the cost of it's product to align with the decrease of costs to make it, both Mexico and the US quality of life gets better or remains the same. Not to mention Mexico could actually purchase the product instead of the company selling it at higher than local quality-of-life prices.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[Znork]

Offering cheaper overall inputs provide better value for all Americans to enjoy.

If done under the same rules.

you've got to be willing to accept that labour needs to move freely

Ah, but see, labour doesn't move freely, most labour is stuck where it is. The current state of affairs enables some brilliant exploitations of that fact; western labour is kept stuck in high-cost systems, exacting as much revenue as possible through means such as 'intellectual property' and similar systems that prevent the price reductions from reaching the market as far as possible, making the western labour utterly uncompetitive, while using what amounts to negative interest rates to further exact revenue and prevent price collapse as they move deep into debt.

The combination of low-cost parts and high-price parts of the global system and the regulations keeping them separate and competition tightly limited to what is 'approved' makes the exacting of wealth by middle men exceedingly simple, and possible to a much further extent than earlier.

and offers an apple to apple comparison of quality

It's rather hard to offer an apple to apple comparison in a global system where it's hard to trust even the currencies the trade is done in.

If somebody can do something cheaper than you can, and is willing to do it, then there is nothing wrong with it.

Well, unless it's movies. Or books. Or music. Or medicine. Or software or hardware or fashion or shoes or sports gear or...

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[Surt]

The problem is you didn't raise the salary to a level competitive with contracting. If you did so, the contractors would be willing to make the employment commitment. Instead, you got a foreigner to take a job that could be done by an American if you were willing to pay the higher salary.

Thus, h1b drove down american IT salaries, and YOU are the proof.

Re:H-1B is a Fraud

[pclminion]

What... the... hell? Two hours prior to RELEASE, you were BUILDING the product? Wow, you allocated what, an hour, for release testing? Or you just kinda skip that part? You don't freeze your code base months or weeks prior to release? You don't have a revision control system that allows you to roll back a bonehead change? Yes, there certainly is some incompetence at your company, but it's not the Indian.

This is a job for WikiLeaks!

[ThreeGigs]

it seeks the identity of the poster of a since-removed Apex employment agreement on Docstoc.com

Seriously, the document in question should have been uploaded to WikiLeaks.
Anyone have a copy or linkage? I can't find it.

Sold justice.

[unity100]

this is what happens in a cutthroat, unregulated capitalist system. rich can buy justice, whereas individuals can buy shit. enjoy.

Re:Sold justice.

[introspekt.i]

Libel is libel, buddy. Get off your high horse.

First thoguht on RTFA

[DragonFodder]

fascism
/fæzm/ Spelled Pronunciation [fash-iz-uhm]

–noun
1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly
suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive
nationalism and often racism.

Courtesy of Dictionary.com

Re:First thoguht on RTFA

[Artifakt]

I always though people bold parts of a definition because definitions are often complex, and in particular, have conditional parts. The definition you're addressing does have such parts (i.e. "often racism" and arguably ".etc"). You may note that Azaris boldfaced one of the conditional parts, and if you leave off that optional 'racism' part, is making the argument that there's no aggressive nationalism going on around here that could lend support to the definition of fascism being true now. Rather an odd claim to make, isn't that?

        Regimenting industry means what it means. Taken at the most literal, it means something like arranging industries so they fall into neat groupings. I think "for the purposes of the arranger" is pretty much a 'gimmee' there, so if the arranger is the government, it moves a shade towards your 'taking control', but that's not exactly 100% overlap with the variation you propose.

        Would you agree that there are a lot of people who move back and forth from industry boardrooms to government positions, often repeatedly? How do you tell industry taking control of government from government taking control of industry, when it's really the same people acting in the same way as they shift locations? Right now, Dick Cheney is reaping the benefits as a private citizen that began when he was secretary of Defense (if not earlier), were implemented in part while he was a board member of Haliburton up to 2000, and were still being developed during the period he re-entered public office as Veep.

        You might want to study the German and Italian cases, as that's exactly the sort of thing that happened there - highly placed officials either moving back and forth from industry to government or using transparent proxies such as close relatives to control such industries while remaining in government (or vice versa). Don't worry about whether a given regimentation starts in industry or government, look at the people who drive the changes, what they want, and where they are going.

      You know, Eisenhower didn't coin the phrase "Military-Industrial Complex" so people could still demand that it all originate with one side or the other. The whole point is they are blended together too much to know which initiatives start with the official government and which start elsewhere.

Job Reclaimation, not creation.

[ground.zero.612]

Maybe if we had a president that said he was going to do something he could actually do, this wouldn't be a problem at all. The president's job isn't to create jobs, and I feel bad for all of you that voted for Obama because you thought he was going to change the country into a fully employed working class with free healthcare.

One of the biggest crocks of shit I've heard these holier than thou politicians say repeatedly, is that they are going to use our tax money to create jobs. Jobs that our very own government let our corporations outsource to India, Mexico, and China. I'm not sure that the term outsource fully matches with importing temporary H-1B visa immigrants to take our jobs, but I see it as part of the same problem.

I would really like to see a guy run against Obama in 2012 on the premise of reclaiming our outsourced jobs, canceling all worker visas, banning of outsourcing, banning of multinational corporations, and fighting illegal immigration with the greater enthusiasm than drugs and terrorism.

The fact is, the people of the US were better off when we were mostly isolationist and had extremely limited foreign trade partners. We were certainly better off before our government let our corporations sell us out to cheap 3rd world labor.

Re:Job Reclaimation, not creation.

[drsquare]

DEY TOOK OUR JERBS!!!

But seriously, you want to turn the USA into an isolated state like North Korea just so you don't have to compete for employment. And you haven't thought it through very well: protectionism works both ways. Cut yourself off from the world, and US companies won't be able to outsource any of their products. They'll have no option but to move their entire operations outside of the US, then you won't have any jobs at all.

Re:Job Reclaimation, not creation.

[Anonymous Coward]

, canceling all worker visas, banning of outsourcing, banning of multinational corporations, and fighting illegal immigration with the greater enthusiasm than drugs and terrorism.

Stop being ignorant. We *need* the worlds most talented engineers to come to the US legally, work here and pay taxes. If anything, we probably need stricter hiring practices. If Americans hire crappy engineers, it isn't the engineer who is at fault for trying. Also, If you think you're so better than the Indian H1-B you should have no problem convincing any employer to give you a job. I have never seen a (US citizen) programmer who is proficient unable to get a job. If you're run of the mill average, as I suspect most of these sites' members are, then tough shit.

Btw, I'm pretty sure Linus Torvalds came here on an H1-B Visa ;)

Re:Job Reclaimation, not creation.

[Svartalf]

Considering that it was overall cheaper for Dell to slowly move their Customer Support operations to places like Oklahoma City instead of India, there should be a hint in that for all of you that keep spouting this BS line... :D

Re:Job Reclaimation, not creation.

[frank_adrian314159]

Ha ha. This is what "superior" geeks say to make themselves feel better about their sad lot in life.

But riddle me this, Batman... Who's really the smart one in this relationship? The one who's giving the orders and doing quite well doing so, or the one taking the orders that can be fired on a whim?

Make them citizens already.

[tjstork]

H1-B is meant to bring Indians into the USA and have them by the short hairs. I rather think that if an employer wants to bring someone onboard to the USA, they can, and should, without restriction, but, once you work in the USA, and pay taxes for six months, you should be made a citizen already.

Taxation without representation is not fair.

I thought we revolted from GB over that very issue, and it is despicable that we even tolerate this modern form of indentured servitude.

If the same happened in Iran or N. Korea,

[BhaKi]

Western media would have magnified it 10 times and portrayed the country as having a tyrannous dictatorship. Before modding this post, make yourself aware of the extent of success in ongoing propaganda and manipulation.

Re:If the same happened in Iran or N. Korea,

[maxume]

What sort of media do you think Rolling Stone is?

Re:Good way to end this BS

[mea37]

It only takes a review of the purpose of copyright to see that the claim of copyright over an employment agreement should be thrown out. Whether the law itself is well-enough written to allow for that is another matter.

OTOH, contracts can and routinely do include clauses to the effect that you cannot disclose the terms of the contract. Whether an employment agreement is a contract at best varies by state, but I'm aware of no reason they couldn't contain confidentiality agreements regardless.

Of course, the protection for that isn't as strong as copyright. And in the end, it doesn't matter; if I know that a company isn't proud of its employment agreement such that they want it kept secret, then I'm thinking twice about subjecting myself to said agreement.

Re:First amendment

[MobyDisk]

Yeah, but the injunction was against the entire site, not merely the libelous statements. Would it be fair to shut down all of Slashdot because of one libelous post? Also, if this is a copyright issue, then a DMCA notice is sufficient to have the document removed. No need to take down the entire site.

Let them know what you think

[assertation]

I remember a few months ago some local government tried to require job applicants to turn over their Facebook and other such similar logins. Obscure situation.....until it became the buzz in the blogosphere. The resulting public embarrassment and censure got the local government to scrap that policy.

To that end here is the URL for the contact page of Apex:
http://www.apextgi.com/contactus.php

Let them know what you think.

Anyone have the contact information for the judge or the relevant agency of the NJ state government?

Re:Good way to end this BS

[causality]

So there should be no privacy at all in any kind of legally binding arrangement?

If you want my tax dollars to finance its enforcement, in the form of our court system, then no. There should be no privacy in a contract. At least, any privacy would be in the form of "don't disclose it in the first place" and would not take the form of "now that it's been disclosed, use copyright laws to shut down sites which host it." Not only is the latter position a total failure to understand the nature of the Internet and the Streisand effect, it's also inconsistent with the purpose of copyright.

Re:Doesn't look like they got all of them.

[netsavior]

Speech you do no agree with is the most important speech to protect; because it is the easiest to suppress.

Re:First amendment

[Svartalf]

It's not just First Amendment violations we're talking about here.

The order impacts stuff completely out of his jurisdiction. Unfortunately, for the Judge, he's just issued an order that has National and International ramifications and at least one of the companies in question happens to be based in Scottsdale, Arizona (GoDaddy...).

HOW can a state judge issue such orders? This is actually quite outside of his jurisdiction as best as I can tell.

Re:Good way to end this BS

[dcollins]

"OTOH, contracts can and routinely do include clauses to the effect that you cannot disclose the terms of the contract. Whether an employment agreement is a contract at best varies by state, but I'm aware of no reason they couldn't contain confidentiality agreements regardless."

Great, but of course not binding on any 3rd parties.

Re:Libel trumps Free Speech

[jbolden]

OK that's an interesting point. The problem here is that the claim is copyright violation not libel. That is the plantiff is claiming the information is true not false. AFAIK true information cannot be libelous.

Re:Good way to end this BS

[Maxo-Texas]

You really want expert "X" badly so you pay them $150k AND give them 6 weeks vacation to get them but make it a secret to preserve morale of your other workers (making $90k and getting the usual 2 weeks, then 3 at 5 years) and to prevent other desirable employees from requesting the same treatment.

For example, I had a free week of vacation but wasn't to share that information with other employees.

Re:Good way to end this BS

[geekoid]

If everything was public, everyone would realize everyone else is just as weird as they are and we can get over it.

An Obvious Truth

[icbkr]

After reading the above, I know a lot of good South East Asian programmers, many Indian, and I know a bunch that really suck. This is not a generalization, it is an observation. I also know a whole lot of WASP programmers that rock, and a whole lot that SUCK ASS. There is no doubt that there are companies that scam the H1-B system and that it affects programmers already in the US, but it affects the formerly H1-B programmers as well, so if we're to get some really good insight into this, how many citizens, formerly H1-B, are pissed off about the corruption in the system? And if you can figure a way to stem the corruption, by all means, be about it. More griping on here isn't helping. Write your congress and senate. Organize. Join your local AITP or whatever and do something.

Re:ITgrunt.com still in Google Cache.

[geekoid]

True, but sadly complaining means they will cut you and you end up back into the hell hole you came from.

rights and wrongs

[OrangeTide]

I don't care at all about the bullshit you just mentioned.
I only care that individuals have the right to criticize the government.

H1B program is indentured servitude. Instead,

[Brian Stretch]

skilled foreign workers should be fast tracked for citizenship. Any nation that makes migrating to the other side of the world look good DESERVES to lose their best and brightest.

The biggest problem is that H1B visa holders are made dependent on the company that hired them. If that company turns out to be yet more proof that Dilbert is non-fiction, they're stuck. They're forced to put up with the abuse or go home. Removing that dependency would eliminate much of the abuse.

Or maybe the biggest problem is that so many Big Businesses appear to be run by shortsighted sociopaths with MBAs. Or that Congress is corrupt as hell and is easily bought by said sociopaths. Or... anyhow, Indians aren't the problem.

Re:Good way to end this BS

[Maxo-Texas]

Yes that does suck. And based on our 20x productivity improvements, we should have 20 hour work weeks and 6 weeks vacations. We are screwed and being ripped off.

Not much we can do about it. It used to have other benefits, but we are losing them.

I currently get 22 days holiday. Soon it will be 27 days and that's it for a loooong time. I think in most of europe you get 20 days vacation plus 10 days holidays to start with. It's a sweet deal, especially when combined with good state provided health care and unemployment benefits.

The trade offs are 50%+ tax rates, but my understanding is folks are happy and don't mind that very much. It's more relaxed and less grasping than in the US.