Slashdot Mirror
Man Arrested For Linking To Online Videos
SonicSpike writes "In a case against a New York website owner, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is claiming that merely linking to copyrighted material is a crime. DHS, along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seized Brian McCarthy's domain, channelsurfing.net, in late January. The site has now been replaced with a government warning: 'This domain has been seized by ICE — Homeland Security Investigations, Special Agent in Charge, New York Office.' The advocacy group Demand Progress has claimed that McCarthy never reproduced copyrighted material, and that his website simply linked to other sites. A criminal complaint obtained by the group seems to acknowledge that agents knew that McCarthy was running a 'linking website.' While the criminal complaint alleges that McCarthy did engage in the 'reproduction and distribution' of copyrighted material, it is never clear that he actually reproduced any of the specified broadcasts."
McCarthy was arrested last week. Relatedly, TorrentFreak has posted a list of reasons why these domain name seizures are unconstitutional.
Why is copyright infringement an issue of homeland security?
The DHS has a mission, to protect the riches of corporations.
Looks like TorrentFreak is making the same bad assumption that most US citizens continue to make. That is, assuming that "constitutional" matters one whit anymore to the US government or the people who run it.
"Remember when I said I would never lie? Well, that was the first time."
The annual deficit is $1,400,000,000,000. and they are wasting money on crap like this?
Domain name seizures cause damage. We should be able to route around it. Frankly, I don't want to care whether it's unconstitutional or not, I want it to be technically infeasible.
This is it folks.
Notice that the summary talks about "linking to videos". However, as we now know, both words and pics of any kind are copyrighted from the moment someone creates them. Reply with Quote? Look! It's a copy! Hotlinking pics? Linking!
For the third time I'll float my "subset" theory. They started small with "SomeGuy" (subset of everyone) and "SomeCategory" (videos, subset of all copyrighted items). This has the effect of keeping people looking at trees and not forests, and posts which deal with the grand plan get downmodded.
Linking to copyrighted works? If they can convince the Supreme Court to let this stick, there's the Ice Cannon they want to use againt the entire web. We're beyond copies now. If you can't link to anyone at all, ever, (because it's not you, and all items are copyrighted instantly), then forget Net Neutrality, that is the end of the net.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Copyright linker: "Looking to find a lot of copyrighted material for free? Walk down this street, turn right, then left, and it's right there. In the building marked "library"".
Undercover Police officer: "You're busted."
Copyright linker: "Whaaaat?"
Undercover Police officer: "For aiding and abetting copyright infringers."
Thats a fairly broad stick. Everyone links to copyrighted materials everyday.
By the looks of Slashdot's (c) blurb i could be linking to materials owned by a dozen people by posting a single link. I link to a few stories throughout the day. Looks like i better stop before I see an ICE badge. "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by Poster. The rest © 1997–2011 "
btw....i might be taking this way off topic, but itsnt it bad form for ICE to use an image of their shield? I think it might have been a slashdot story, but i vaguely remember an article talking about how horribly illegal it was for someone to reproduce the FBI shield and, in fact, the FBI doesnt do it or allow it.
Doesn't this make linking to practically any website in the world illegal? If you look at the bottom of most web pages you see the copyright sign. If linking to copyrighted material constitutes infringement does this mean the end of hyperlinking for the internet?
They know you read this article, so its too late anyway. And remember, just having knowledge is now considered intent.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is another instalment of the long-awaited crunch as the Web's refreshing informality and common sense collides with the institutionalized imbecility of the law. Tim Berners-Lee made his views unmistakably clear nearly 20 years ago: see http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkMyths.html. The basic principle is that, if you don't like the way the Web works, you should just ignore it. No one forces anyone to publish a Web site; but, if they do, it is an implicit invitation to anyone else anywhere to read it - and link to it.
However, it was only a few years later (probably about 1998) that the vast mass of money-grubbing freeloaders (sorry, the "business community") discovered the huge untapped mother-lode represented by the Web. "Hey!" they cried jubilantly, "Just look at this immense opportunity to make stacks of money that some stupid sucker has just given us - completely free of charge, too". Those were the same guys who soon began complaining that the Web's design was not optimized to help them make as much money as possible with no effort.
It was around 1998, too, that I stumbled across a law company's Web site somewhere in the USA that laid down strict legal principles for creating Web sites. One of these rules was that every single hyperlink required a separate legal agreement - negotiated by a reputable law firm, naturally.
The worst of the matter is that the reptiles (sorry, lawyers and politicians) can always change the law in any way they like. It's their game and their ball, and they are apparently absolutely unaccountable to anyone sane or educated.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
According to http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/dhscomplaint/ the subject is actually accused of EMBEDDING, not linking. That is, he is alleged to have embedded copyrighted video streams (and/or their surrounding pages) inside his own site with surrounding ad content, instead of linking the user to the actual hosting web site. The major mistake by ICE appears to be a failure to actually use the word "embed" in their complaint. I would expect a takedown or lawsuit if I did this, so it's difficult for me to be surprised. Of course, that's no reason not to retrieve the links from the Internet Wayback Machine and (properly) link them from all of our home pages.
...is linking to an article that fails to mention how McCarthy has made made over $90,000 in ad revenue from his website.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/illegal-tv-streamers-heres-how-the-feds-will-hunt-you-down.ars
His website was dedicated solely for the purpose of copyright infringement
Why is copyright infringement an issue of homeland security? It is a federal law, it has to be assigned to someone, and The United States district courts has exclusive subject-matter jurisdiction over copyright cases. IMO, you should learn about copyright law and history - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law
A single act of linking to copyrighted material is not criminal, but if you systematically do it, aren't you "inducing infringement?" That's copyright infringement under current law.
Sounds like a a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment.
It's like he believes Bush is still President or something.
If you look at the policies of the US government, you'd be hard pressed to tell that Bush isn't still President. Same shit, different guy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Google is in trouble. Unless the law is different for those who have wealth and power. ;)
You're right, she has little interest in terrorism except where it empowers her department. It has nothing to do with "selling out to corporate America." If you knew anything about Customs, which you obviously don't, you'd know that Customs/ICE brings in a few dozen dollars to the treasury for every dollar it receives in base funding. Customs, not the IRS, was the original revenue-generating service of the federal government.
The reason that DHS is pursuing this is that corporate America's interests coincide with Customs/ICE's revenue-generating ability. If Customs didn't stand to make oodles of money for the treasury, they would be pursuing other work because their revenue-generating potential is simply too important to the federal government to waste on something that some lackeys in the DoJ could handle.
Well - we differ on our view of government, I suppose. Have you looked at how ACTA is being handled by the US government? Until recently, even the existence of the discussions was secret, and the content of those discussions top secret. Who is discussing, anyway? RIAA, MPAA, and other alphabet soup people - not people, or civil liberties organizations, or even constitutional lawyers, or lawyers of any other type. (sure, there are lots of lawyers involved, each representing the interests of one corporation, or group of corporations or another) There aren't even any lawyers from academia involved. It's all corporate run.
But, you bring up a way of looking at things that I had neglected. The government has been pretty nearly insolvent for most of my life (over 5 decades now) so they need SOME way of making money. Doesn't matter how wrong and immoral the methods might be - they need to make money to avoid bankruptcy.
Well, I'm prepared to do my part. I'll get in line, right behind the Baby Boomers to get my euthanasia shot, so that the Social Security pyramid scheme doesn't have to pay me anything. Where's that line again?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I believe the government is applying the wrong standard with respect to Web Links (URL's) and copyrights. They claim that creating a link creates a copyright. However, I strenuously believe that people are confusing the idea of "creating a copyrightable work" with the "mechanism of indexing and accessing" a work. URL's are no more copyrightable than the Dewey Decimal label is on a book in the public library. The fact that links (URL's) are a little more high-tech than the Dewey Decimal label on a book does not change it's fundamental essence.
The question is, could ICE or any government authority shut down or *confiscate* the Dewey Decimal label on a public library book simply because you referenced that book (or other material) by its *Common Cataloging System INDEX* in some public manner???
Linking to a web site is no different than saying "Go read this book at the public library, here is it's catalog number". An link *in and of itself* does *NOT* provide or imply *ACCESS* to the item, rather simply a pointer to it's location. Likewise, the idea of "Deep Linking" is no different as it is simply saying "Go read book XYZ on page 37".
The notion that the link (URL) itself provides "meaning" is simply ludicrous-- of course it does. And in a manner that's long been established as LEGAL and USEFUL and USED by libraries and media referencing systems all over the world-- for well over a hundred years, and probably longer than that. Even the United States own Library of Congress uses indexing schemes to catalog and reference their materials. The fact that a link contains meaningful information is a fundamental property and the very essence of creating a referencing catalog scheme. You can take the Dewey Decimal label from any book, for instance, and discern meaningful information about the nature of the work referenced simply by knowing the algorithm (naming / numbering conventions) incorporated by the scheme. The fact that web links (URL's) have the ability to be more descriptive is a function of the *INDEXING* mechanism, even if it is somehow technically made available to the author to suggest. It is no different than an author attempting to influence the librarian to catalog the material in one section rather than another.
Moreover, the courts have upheld many times that it is NOT a copyright infringement to publish a REFERENCE work containing even literal quoted passages from the original source as long as it is constructed in the manner of a catalog, all quotations are duly cited, and the work is "transformative". In other words, stands alone apart from the original quoted work in a substantive manner. In the case of linking to a web site, the author (person doing the linking) is not necessarily even quoting anything other than the INDEX of the cataloging method used to house and access the material. However, even if the title, author, etc. of that work were referenced, it is no different than going to the public library and pulling up the "link" to the exact same information stored in their card catalog system. In fact, in many cases, the card catalog even contains a brief synopsis of the source material, quotations, or other direct passages from the original material.
Finally, even if the person who put the links up online and then proceeded to laugh and make jokes or otherwise reference them, *that very act* begins a transformative process which is IN ITSELF a *copyrightable* element! So creating a page and linking to other sites *IS* in and of itself, a copyrightable act! And the more that is said in reference to those links, provided they do not incorporate substantive direct quotation of the material-- the *better* the argument that a new copyrightable work is being derived. There is tons of relevant precedent in the application of "Fair Use", "Derivative Works", "Satire" or "Parody", etc. to give someone an extremely good legal footing to claim that a substantially new work is being created, if incporporated into a larger framework. However, that said, simply claiming "Fair Use" or a
If this sort of activity were truly illegal, then every single search engine on the internet (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) would also have to be seized and their employees arrested. It's bullshit and it needs to STOP, NOW.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!