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Judge Orders Hundreds of Websites Delisted From Search Engines, Social Networks
An anonymous reader writes "A federal judge has ruled that a number of a websites trafficking in counterfeit Chanel goods can have their domains seized and transferred to a new registrar. Astonishingly, the judge also ordered that the sites must be de-indexed from all search engines and all social media websites. Quoting the article: 'Missing from the ruling is any discussion of the Internet's global nature; the judge shows no awareness that the domains in question might not even be registered in this country, for instance, and his ban on search engine and social media indexing apparently extends to the entire world. (And, when applied to U.S.-based companies like Twitter, apparently compels them to censor the links globally rather than only when accessed by people in the U.S.) Indeed, a cursory search through the list of offending domains turns up poshmoda.ws, a site registered in Germany. The German registrar has not yet complied with the U.S. court order, though most other domain names on the list are .com or .net names and have been seized.'"
Average person doesn't understand internet. Shocking details and film at 11.
It's a little more complicated than that. Average person doesn't understand internet, but makes decisions which require such understanding and have wide reach and consequences.
The average person doesn't understand the human body, but only surgeons get to operate on them.
They're banning illegal counterfeit goods to protect consumers. I think that all you whiners need to DRINK YO PRUNE JUICE.
So they're saying that businesses can sue their competition out of search engines. This can't end well.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
The largest irony is in people saying how Google or US doesn't censor search results, but like this court order and the various "x number of search results have been removed from the page after complaints from copyright owners" text in search results. Different issues, but just as much censoring.
That's irrelevant to the general problem. Yes, they are counterfeit goods in this case, but this country LOVES precedent. But where does it stop? Can I bring down a website because it is opposite to the views of Congress? If this is going to be continued, there needs to be strict legal guidelines to prevent abuse of power from ANY power. This is what is worrisome.
So they are taking the domains and blacklisting them.
Good luck for the next guy who buys these domains, what a way to ruin a business, buy a domain that is court ordered not to appear in any social networking or search.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Often, when a court does something like this it's because the real world analogy makes sense, but doesn't translate well into electronic contexts. Here it seems to be the opposite: the meatspace equivalent would be to not only shut down a business that is selling counterfeit goods, but also to order that the business be delisted from the Yellow Pages, at the expense of the phone book publisher. I'm confident that this judge would not have done that, but probably imagined that the company is responsible for its presence in search engine results the way it would be responsible for buying advertising space.
.sig withheld by request
WASHINGTON — To mark the official beginning of the online holiday shopping season, known as Cyber Monday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), the Department of Justice and the FBI Washington Field Office have seized 150 website domain names that were illegally selling and distributing counterfeit merchandise.
source
Not only are there multiple alphabet soups working in collaboration on this, but taxpayer dollars, to use a talking point, tax payer dollars are being used to protect the profits of companies that a) people buying cheap counterfeits don't usually have money to buy the high dollar stuff or choose not to and b) many companies hide their profits overseas to avoid all the tax's imposed on them while simultaneously lobby congress to make import/export easier with the slave friggin labor used to make these fucking pointless articles of consumer whoredom. National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, ie, America production and creation capacity has been reduced to rubbish so we'll sue/block/censor anything that threatens the bank accounts. I'm not a 99%'er and all that jazz; this is a problem between stupid electorate continually rel-electing politicians who do not represent the people and are easily bought out. There are of course many more problems than this, but to boil it down this story is just icing on the turd-cake that will be served to future historians who write about the downfall of America.
Boggles the mind on one hand, on the other hand, well, nothing new under the sun, eh?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
An American, thinking that the US = The World?
What a surprise.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
This is why you never register your domain in the U.S. For maximum safety, host it overseas too. See http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/2008/03/dont-register-or-host-your-domain-in-us.html
There is no such thing as "less harmful" where censorship is concerned. We know for the experience every society has had with it going back to the start of the written word, that once you start censoring it never stops. Today its websites that might be violating copyright, tomorrow its anything a senator does not like said about him, the day after its whatever some corporation does not want you be able to publish.
All public censorship is harmful, and it should always be opposed vehemently.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
But, apparently, enough of the other 97% still click the link.
Yes, and at least US still has freedom of speech!
Disclaimer: Free Speech valid only in participating areas and Free Speech Zones. May be revoked at will for reasons of fear, political power, religious, ethnic or economic sensibilities. Not valid in airports or theaters. Subject to taxation and regulation. Can be exercised only with permission of media owners when applicable. Not for use afte 9:00 PM local time in town squares, plazas or Wall Street. Identification required. May not be used in the face of law enforcement. May not be used to express politically embarrassing information in wiki form in front of the world at large. Penalties will be incurred if anyone considers said free speech to be promoting of terrorism, or is considered annoying to monied interests, or is enacted by too many people in a public place. Does not apply in the context of an employer/employee relationship. Free speech may not be encrypted in certain areas; check your local laws. Subject to revocation at will by government and corporate interests. Additional fees may apply.
That depends entirely on how the judge implements enforcement of his ruling.
I disagree.
The search engines are publishing the existence of the counterfeit wares sites upon the request of the people using the search engines. The judge is telling the SEs that they are not allowed to report facts (that is, the existence and location of those sites).
This is censorship any way you slice it, even if you agree with the motivation of the judge.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
As usual, people aren't thinking the security through. If we are going to create a new mechanism whereby judges have the capacity to censor out counterfeit traffickers, then all this work that we're going to do to, will also create a mechanism for censoring out Coke. You can say that would be an illegal use of the mechanism, but nevertheless it will exist, and therefore the Internet will need to protect against it.
BTW, another weird thing about blanket censorship like this, is that "all search engines and all social media sites" were not party to the lawsuit. At least 99% of them (probably closer to 100%) weren't served, were not represented in court, etc. Yet somehow they have a judicial order forcing them to alter their own data. Not that any of those parties (at least the big ones who got named) would really give a damn about the counterfeiter, but it's slimy (and possibly not binding) to impose on them.
Free speech with the purchase of any congressman.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
They're banning illegal counterfeit goods to protect consumers
Protect consumer from what? What is so dangerous in a cheap counterfeit Coco Channel purse or a Rolex replica?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
On the off chance that you're not trolling in a phenomenally stupid manner: Take your cultural relativism and your totalitarian apologetics and shove them where the sun doesn't shine.
My "less harmful" was meant primarily in the sense that a posteriori censorship of known content is more specific (less likely to result in an unintended match) than a priori censorship based on keywords or similar patterns. But if you want to look at it from a moral perspective, then yes, Google's censorship of sites selling illegal wares is still less harmful than China's censorship of peaceful dissent.
People keep using these words but do not seem to understand what they mean.
A judge ruling in favor of a company seeking to protect their trademarks is not government censorship.
A judge ruling that search engines must de-index sites offering counterfeit wares is stupid and practically unenforceable, but not censorship.
From Mirriam-Webster
Judge: a public official authorized to decide questions brought before a court
Censor: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
Law: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority
If the judge isn't applying the rules made by the government then whose rules are they? Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Personally, I can't think of any.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
They're banning illegal counterfeit goods to protect consumers.
No they're not. The way you do that is by tracking the sales, seizing the goods, and putting the vendors in jail.
What the judge is doing is banning speech. Banning a person who should be tried and (as far as I can tell) found guilty of trafficking in illegal merchandise from speaking. But it's so easy for the government to sit on it's fat ass like Henry VIII, wave a greasy drumstick in the air, and proclaim the Internet Death Sentence. By contrast, having actual law enforcement officers tracking down actual physical crimes, then wading through the slow and expensive process of having a real trial with an actual defendant is just far too much work.
Electronic justice is like clicking through channels on teevee. You can do it while stuffing your face with bon bons. No defendant to object, no defense attorney making arguments about how various things are illegal or unconstitutional. It's so much easier, don't you see? And that's what we want -- easy pseudo-justice that favors big lobbyists. In fact, after polling all the power-brokers in the halls of Congress, a recent study found 100% agreement -- easy pseudo-justice that favors the corrupt is Good For America.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I will stand up an say it: no type of content should be illegal to distribute or possess. Sorry, I know it really hurts the "think of the children" and "oh my God terrorists will know how to make nukes" crowds, but we are supposed to be the country where people are free, inclusive of being free from censorship. Once we get into the business of prosecuting people because of files on their hard drives, documents on their bookshelves, or thoughts in their minds, we cease to be a free society (so I guess we are not a free society).
Palm trees and 8
By GP's logic then I could make the argument that the particular kind of censorship in the US that is being critiqued in this thread is also a cultural phenomenon above all else, and that it should be best approached from that perspective of non-judgmental understanding of "US culture" despite anyone's objection that the "culture" is a result of brainwashing, and that the torrent of +5 Insightful morally indignant posts we see in this thread being directed at the US is in fact a manifestation of their ignorance of US culture.
Do we want to go down that path?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
My view on the child pornography issue is this: the danger lies with people who abuse children. Possessing child pornography does not prove that one is a child abuser, nor does fantasizing about child abuse. In the computer age, where data is rapidly copied between systems, distributing anything indicates nothing at all.
We live in an age of rapid, global communication -- the old economic arguments about possession fueling production simply do not apply anymore. The fact that most people find child pornography to be disgusting is no reason to make it illegal to possess. New technologies necessitate a new approach to prosecuting child molesters, and we need to make sure that we are actually prosecuting child molesters and not just picking up low-threat people who have some child porn on their hard drives (which in all likelihood was downloaded without any transaction or trade).
Palm trees and 8
A Rolex replica doesn't perform like a Rolex under real conditions. For example Rolex has fantastic quality water seals and is safe to use under high pressure diving, or in the shower (which is rare for a watch). The fakes will not hold up to that kind of use.
And this is dangerous exactly how?
It's cheap (thus won't bankrupt you and let your kids starving) and, in the greatest majority of cases, the owner knows it is replica anyway - so it may be less tempted to take a deep dive with it (how many of the replica buyers are deep divers anyway?)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
If by "yell fire in a crowded theater" you mean "argue against conscription for a brutal and pointless war in which millions died, an obviously political form of speech" - which is what the case that phrase came from was about - then I think you'll find a lot of people do. Strange that.