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Environmental Enforcement Agents Targeting Guitars
tetrahedrassface writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal agents again raided guitar maker Gibson this past week, seizing several pallets of wood and computer documents. At the heart of the issue is the wood that is being used in guitars and whether or not it comes from sustainable sources. The company insists it is being harassed and made to 'cry uncle' to the government's enforcement laws. The article notes that exotic fret and tone woods are protected in order to prevent the equivalent of 'blood diamond like trade,' but the ramifications now extend to guitar owners. If you play a vintage guitar, or a hand-built guitar made of old stock woods that were legally obtained years ago, you better not fly with it. John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says, 'there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified.' Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, 'I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar.'"
Innocent until proven guilty?
Burden of evidence on the accuser?
Hope you enjoyed the "War on Drugs". Seizure logic is now your new normal.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Here's the conversation on the Gibson forums if anyone is interested...
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
The feds claim against Gibson is not that they are using wood from non sustainable sources, as stated above. Gibson has clear documentation showing that it is.The feds maintain that the issue is that the wood was not "finished" by Indian workers, as (possibly) required by Indian law.
Incidentally, the Indian government is not involved.
It's about time the EPA had its funding cut. There's nine billion that few would miss.
Why not cut the Department of Defense or the the FAA instead? I suggest this because they have just as much to do with the Fish and Wildlife Service as the EPA.
In case I am being too subtle, the FWS is not part of the EPA. In fact the service predates the EPA by about 100 years.
I am not a crackpot.
Forget it - this is asset forfeiture. The feds already raided Gibson once, back in 2009. They took a lot of ebony, but never filed charges. Gibson is still fighting the asset forfeiture case, and the burden of proof is exactly wrong: Gibson must prove their innocence of any wrong-doing. The feds want to keep the stuff; it would be auctioned off, and they would get to keep the proceeds. One of the theories explaining this second raid is that the feds are pissed that Gibson hasn't just rolled over on the first case.
Asset forfeiture is perverse: you aren't charged with anything at all - your *property* is. The Gibson case is entitled "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms". There is no presumption of innocence, because your property isn't a person, and anyway isn't being charged with a crime. The fact that this is naked theft is apparently beside the point - it is a very lucrative racket for law enforcement agencies at all levels.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Or fining someone $17,000 with clearly grandfather ivory keys (which everyone acknowledges are legitimate to own) simply because his paperwork was a little out of order?
Saying that the guy had his paperwork "a little out of order" is disingenuous. The person in question was trying to import 11 pianos, and had declared that there was no Ivory on them. However, that was only true because he had removed the Ivory keys and hidden them in his luggage, where they were uncovered by customs inspectors. And not only that, his company had asked officials about the importation requirements prior to this, so he clearly knew what he was doing, and was caught red-handed.
http://www.justice.gov/usao/gan/press/2011/03-09-11.html
Lagging behind? The issue here is a law that's two years old, stating that importers must abide by all of the laws of the country from which they are sourcing the materials. Sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but unfortunately, it's very much open to interpretation.
There are several problems here:
1. The government has confiscated over $1M of materials, *and not given a reason for it*
2. The government did the same thing two years ago re: Madagascar woods, and the trial is still dragging on due to government dragging its feet, missing deadlines, requesting stays, etc.
3. The government has claimed that *any* guitar sold by Gibson can be construed as obstruction of justice, and that this can be applied to the BUYER and the RETAILER. So, in other words, they've threatened criminal charges against anyone who buys a Gibson guitar. Because they have not stated a specific infraction, Gibson does not know which guitars this may apply to, and so must assume *all* of them.
4. Gibson assumes that this has to do with an Indian law stating that if any finishing work is done in India, that ALL finishing work must be done in India. Gibson buys half-finished fingerboard blanks from their Indian suppliers, but has all of the proper sign-offs and paperwork to show that this was approved by the government.
5. The government raided a factory using fully-armed SWAT team. This alone is a disturbing trend that must be stopped. They weren't raiding a pot house or a meth lab, they're raiding a guitar factory. Suits, pens and clipboards were much more appropriate than kevlar and automatic weapons.
Here's a video of the CEO talking about the raid. It's a bit long, but the guy seems genuinely baffled as to what could be the cause of the raid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_-taqM5Sk0
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost