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Court: Domain Seizures Don't Violate Free Speech
Since last year we've been following the story of how domains are being seized by the U.S. government for allegedly facilitating online piracy. The seizures received a legal challenge back in June from the owners of one such site, and now a U.S. federal court has returned a ruling in the matter:
"District Court Judge Paul Crotty decided to deny Puerto 80's request, which means the domain will remain in the hands of the U.S. Government. The Judge argues that seizing Rojadirecta's .com and .org domains does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. 'Puerto 80's First Amendment argument fails,' the Judge writes. 'Puerto 80 alleges that, in seizing the domain names, the Government has suppressed the content in the "forums" on its websites, which may be accessed by clicking a link in the upper left of the home page. The main purpose of the Rojadirecta websites, however, is to catalog links to the copyrighted athletic events — any argument to the contrary is clearly disingenuous.' The judge further ruled that the claimed 32% decline in traffic and the subsequent harm to Puerto 80s business is not an issue as visitors can still access the site through foreign domains. Puerto 80's argument, that users may not be aware of these alternatives, was simply waived."
I somehow doubt that the SD article actually states what we want to know. Anybody actually read the article?
Color me surprised that the Government sides in its own favor in its own cases.
DO NOT register your domains in US.
Avoid .com domains, and if you're really successful also avoid doing business with the US altogether because of the patent trolls. Then you should be (mostly) fine for some time. Oh...I forgot...and don't link to anything you haven't written yourself...ever!
but this judge seems like an actual idiot.
The fact that you can get information via a second route does not mean that there is no speech problem with shutting down the first one. In a 1939 case, Schneider v. New Jersey, for example, the Supreme Court held that
one is not to have the exercise of his liberty of expression in appropriate places abridged on the plea that it may be exercised elsewhere.
It repeated this basic tenet some forty years later in Va. State Bd. of Pharmacy v. Va. Citizens Consumer Council, Inc.:
We are aware of no general principle that freedom of speech may be abridged when the speakerâ(TM)s listeners could come by his message by some other means....
I'm glad I'm not the only one who believes that this ruling is questionable, and is one step closer to a World Wide Web that is completely at the mercy of copyright holders.
The actual ruling here is on a specific provision of the law where a seized domain owner to petition the courts to have the domains returned.
(Relevant part of the code here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/983.html)
The judge is merely ruling here that this provision doesn't meet the requirements of this specific provision.
The Judge continues, "Although some discussion may take place in the forums, the fact that visitors must now go to other websites to partake in the same discussions is clearly not the kind of substantial hardship that Congress intended to ameliorate in enacting 983. See 145 Cong. Rec. H4854-02 (daily ed. June 24, 1999) (statement of Rep. Hyde) (“Individuals lives and livelihoods should not be in peril during the course of a legal challenge to a seizure.”). Puerto 80 may certainly argue this First Amendment issue in its upcoming motion to dismiss, but the First Amendment considerations discussed here certainly do not establish the kind of substantial hardship required to prevail on this petition."
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
that's BULLSHIT.
Why do we even pretend we have rights at all anymore. They strip them away anytime it's convienent anyway.
I need a new country... er... planet...
It appears from what the judge wrote that he considered the content being hosted at the domain when he determined seizing the domain did not violate the first amendment.
IANAL but it almost seems like the take away here is that a bunch of links are not protected speech, it seems to leave open the possibility seizing a domain might violate an individuals freedom of speech.
Had the domain pointed to a web server hosting pages about white supremacy, jihad, golf or similar it might have been protected. I am not sure what impact this ruling will have at all.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
please route around it.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
Ok so it is swatted down on the basis of free speech...but didn't these people still pay for their domain name? Are they implying that it's still ok to seize property you own without a warrant?
Use an alternative to DNS, such as Namecoin. It's only a matter of time before RIAA/MPAA make their way to controlling the entire DNS.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
How can forcefully seizing a domain name, which is not criminal in any way, not be a violation of freedom of speech.
Let's take away this judge's phone number. He won't suffer any substantial hardship, because he can just tell everyone to use his new number.
Read the decision. The ruling is that this is not a violation of this individual's free speech because the information being presented is for mere business, rather than political, purposes.
Now contrast that with "Citizens United" and other recent court rulings that have held corporate commercial speech is absolutely protected by the First Amendment.
Now take a look at the recent unprecendented wave of corporate donations and junkets being flooded into the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. For the first time in history, we have Supreme Court justices openly accepting small fortunes from various interests that appeared before them.
We've got an awful lot of corruption to clean up in the judiciary before we can expect to get fair and logical decisions out of them again.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Let me know when you find a country that:
a) Won't bow to US political/economic/military pressure
b) Isn't worse than the US when it comes to tyranny
Sure, you can register your domain in Iran and avoid the jackboots of the **AA, but what are you getting in return?
The Judge argues that seizing Rojadirecta’s .com and .org domains does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.
This could be true, if the ability wasn't abused. Unfortunately, it is already being abused for things like taking down perceived 'hacking' sites and sites supporting the freedom of information, such as those touting WikiLeaks or pro-Manning sites. I have no reason to believe this ability won't be abused until it *IS* a violation of the 1st amendment. At that time, it will already be too late, and the US will no longer be a safe place to talk or use the Internet.
How about instead of taking down copyright violators - a crime which doesn't hurt anyone(least of all the people who think they're being stolen from) - you stop the top politicians who insist on embezzling countless millions in campaign funds, and directing other public funding to corporate contributors? The people you *should* be arresting, those 1% that are gradually ruining the lives of 95%+ of us, are the fat-cat CEOs, Representatives, and Senators - and their Old White Guy buddies.
Fuck this country, I'm leaving. Enjoy your martial law and Corporatocracy.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
According to the /. article the judge's argument for his ruling turns around rojadireta's cataloguing activity. For this the First Amendment question is whether publishing catalogs is protected free speech.
There is also a legal question of if cataloguing, itself, may be interdicted, and another if catalog delivery vehicles, the means used to convey catalog content to recipients, may legally be siezed by government authorities. Internet domains are the internet world equivalents to newspapers, newspaper boxes, newspaper dellivery systems, and to missionaries who pamphlet on streetcorners, too.
May the government sieze these? For example the trucks, vans and bicycles of newspaper deliverers? May they sieze newspapers, themselves, for example, to prevent distributions of a literary supplement, because the supplement catalogs book titles and bookstore locations, on a theory that the cataloguing of those may alert shoplifters and direct them where they may go to find to steal? Is an assertion that such siezures will prevent a percentage of the shoplifting of the catalogued titles the publication of the catalog may contribute to legally sufficient to justify siezures of catalogs?
Is there a difference between paper published and electronically published and electronically distributed copyrighted content in this regard? Are Apple's i-music domains, which catlaog copyrighted music, siezable on the precedent this case (if established by affirmation in appeal) may set?
Maybe I'm missing something.. but doesn't it seem like the First is the last amendment you'd want to argue in this case? What about the fourth? Or the Due Process clause of the 14th?
I mean, nobody involved in the site has been actually charged with a crime.. so isn't the idea that the domain was being used to support a crime invalid? If you want to take it, you need to press charges.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
In other news, the same judge says gagging the mouths of anti-government activists is not a violation of their 1st Amendment rights because the said activists still have the option of using pencil and paper. Any claim to the contrary is disingenuous.
Should be on the Supreme Court. He clearly has demonstrated that he's 100% pro-corporate mafia and anti-First Amendment. He'd be a perfect fit for SCOTUS, don't ya think?
I really wonder how much the entertainment mafia pays these judges to casually ignore decades of judicial precedent as well as our Bill of Rights?
When the time comes that squelching speech doesn't violate it in the eyes of the federal courts, we have no rights at all and only 'privileges' given out, and removed, at their whim.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
OK let's compare internet freedom: Belarus government block the site, USA government seizing domain.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
Appalling to see how sold out, buyable the justice system is, in america.
but whaddya know - it couldnt end up in any other way, when you put everything to sale for the highest bidder, in a systme like capitalism.
actually it is still much better than what it could - if the 'free marketers' got full swing back in its development, we could have private army, private judiciary, private police by now.
Read radical news here
Thanks for mentioning this. Here's some more info for folks on that argument:
The power that allows Congress to have a copyright law is in the original Constitution.
But, after that, the Constitution was amended with the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech") effectively nullifies the copyright clause.
Note: Even though the amendment rescinding Prohibition specifically mentioned the Prohibition amendment, there are a bunch of other famous/infamous clauses (like the 3/5 clause) which were superseded but weren't specifically mentioned in the superseding amendment.
This is the argument, though probably most people don't agree with it.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog