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US DOJ Drops Charges Against Two Seized Websites
angry tapir writes "The U.S. Department of Justice has dropped its case against two Spanish websites that stream sports events nearly 17 months after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized the sites and shut them down for alleged copyright violations. In a one-page brief to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the district said his office had dropped the case against Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org. ICE seized the two sites on Jan. 31, 2011, and the DOJ asked the court to order that Puerto 80 Projects, the owner of the sites, forfeit the sites to the U.S. government."
What about the lost money? Time to sue.
It seems that this tactic has some interesting consequences. The DOJ can seize the website, take it offline and make it unavailable to users. Thus removing all revenue streams. In the mean time, they wait. After a significant amount of time passes they go and "unsieze" the websites which now have lost revenue and users.
Seems to me like a use of the courts as a tool that they were not intended. What sort of remediation can the site owners take on the DOJ?
According to the WhoIs, the .com domain was registered by a company in Arizona (Domain Proxy Company). The .org domain still shows up at the DoJ. Not sure, but looks like these were within the legislation of the U.S., because registered there.
English not being my first language I read "forfeit the sites to the U.S. government" as U.S government want the domains to be dropped by their owners. Why would they comply when the charges have been dropped? O.o
http://washingtonexaminer.com/cbc-staff-opposition-to-obama-is-racist/article/1342346
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Or finally kick the US off the Internet. Seems to me it will do a lot better without them holding things back.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
DOJ: We don't want to bother or can't prove they broke any laws but you should just give us everything they have now that we've wrecked their business.
Since many of the problems and complaints people have with the DoJ's behavior have crossed directors and presidents, I do not think race factors in here. These are institutional problems that have been around for quite some time.
Hey Slashdotters, I wonder if we can get the Federal Government to protect us from terrorists? I was thinking we hire a lobby group together, start our own SuperPAC, stuff like that. I figure if we give "donate" enough money (more than the RIAA is giving Biden) maybe we can shift their law enforcement efforts to things like stopping is from getting killed. As opposed to stopping Spaniards streaming sports.
Alas, actually they do.
In the USA today, pointing to a black man (or Native American (by which I mean, early immigrant, since there are no "native americans")) and saying "he did bad things" will invariably produce an outcry of "RACIST!!!".
Not that it matters in the end. A white man accusing a favoured minority of misconduct will be assumed to be racist automatically.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It is THIS kind of behavior by the US government that is going to force the hand of the UN and convince all the members to want to take over control of the internet. Just because the US have a majority of the control doesn't mean we should be exploiting it to appease our own greedy corporate ends.
Somewhere in a US-unfriendly place for sure. But likely that US-unfriendly place won't be the most free country in the world and may want to shut you down for whatever reason (if you're hosting in Iran and say something bad about Iran, for example). So, you need to host in the US too, because the US will ignore their legal requests for takedown. Get domains from a few different TLDs that can always lead to your site, and you're good.
OK, we all realize that this is a good opportunity to express our true feelings towards the Department of Justice. However, how many of us are sublimating unacceptable feelings? The DoJ is led by Eric Holder, a black man, who was appointed by Barack Obama, another black man. People who are not racists do not have to explain why they are not racists. Whenever I see a long and exhausting Slashdot post claiming they oppose the DoJ but are not racist, I think: racist. So, let's just all consider our opinions twice before we click that "Post" or "Submit" button. Thank you.
Americans: obsessed with skin colour.
I heard he's also a white guy too, should you call him a grey guy?
Part of me wants to yell "Sue those fuckers for the lost time!"
But i know the money is just going to come out of our pockets while the DOJ members sit happily sipping their overly expensive tea.
Government officials have no consequences, and that really needs to end.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
The U.S. government makes an even more bold claim than that. They have argued with Megaupload that the government can continue to seize their servers even if the case is dismissed. I'm halfway surprised that the government bothered to drop the charges against Rojadirecta since they feel they can keep cases like this in limbo indefinitely without any consequences.
This is one more reason to abandon DNS and make up something a bit more robust. The whole internet seems much more frail than it was supposedly designed to be. Whatever happened to all that 'redundancy' and 'routing around damage' thing? You drop anchor on a single cable and can knock entire countries offline. How convenient is that for our authoritarian friends we so eagerly reelect time after time?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's gonna take about 30 minutes for those words to get to Mars to be relayed back to Earth.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In the USA today, pointing to a black man ... and saying "he did bad things" will invariably produce an outcry of "RACIST!!!".
[citation needed]
Specifically, I'm going to need a statistically significant number of incorrect accusations of racism for truthful accusations against black men. A couple of high-profile examples won't do the job, because there's numerous high-profile examples of black men completely falsely accused of heinous acts primarily because they were black.
To demonstrate that your "invariably" is an exaggeration is easy: Nobody has accused the ACLU of being racists when they condemned Barack Obama for ordering a drone strike against an American citizen without bothering to indict him for a crime first.
I am officially gone from
When the government takes land to build a road they must pay the owner. Taking a website without a court order/criminal conviction is expropriation, not a legal punishment.
That may be flamebait. If so, to bad. The DOJ is not the Department of Justice. ICE is not a government body, either - it's the enforcement arm of Corporate Amerika. Screw 'em.
AND, I'm an American.
"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 am not certain there will be much recourse for rojadirecta; ideally the outcome of this should be that the burden of proof to allow seizure be raised, unfortunately I doubt anyone of note cares as these sites were ran by 'damned foreigners'.
The more I watch this side show the more I think imperialism lives on, except the borders are all virtual.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Muslim countries think they are the freest in the world. You are completely free to live your life according to Sharia. They actually don't see punishing speech "insulting" to Islam as an infringement on freedom of speech. They don't see putting apostates to death as an infringement on their religous freedom. But copies of copyrighted works are freely available for sale everywhere, with no compensation to the rights holder.
In the US you can say anything you want about any religion and can't be legally prosecuted (although the leftist "hate speech" trend is getting us there). You can flip between religions as you like, no punishment whatsoever. But put some movies up at a web site and the FBI may come down on you worse than if you'd murdered someone.
And, of course, release US secrets to the world, and the US will want to prosecute while its enemies cheer freedom and openness. Release the secrets of those enemies, suddenly they're not so hot on freedom and openness.
Why do they wait 17 months to stream sports events? Seriously, you guys need to work on your prose style a bit. These huge run-on sentences are a pain to read.
It is terrorism with a global reach.
Not the terrorism that breaks things the way weapons do
but terrorism against others in that these actions are above
the law and are an abuse of power.
The scary part is that the same shield that protects these
terrorists is the same shield that would protect worse.
The scary bit here is that this is all too close and parallel to the
umbrella protections that the executioners of WW2 concentration
camps operated under and behind.
These camps did not start out as death camps -- they evolved as
middle level players began to optimize the solution. The camps
did not start out as the "final solution" they were handy and without
oversight by the public eye could and were devoted to evil.
Survivors of the WW2 terror are rare and today exceedingly old so pay attention.
Listen to the tapes found in a basement of iit.edu These Holocaust tapes tell
the story in first person and in some cases how "innocent" it looked from outside.
http://voices.iit.edu/
I am not a fan of WiKi leaks but there does need to be
some global way to let the public and other governments
exercise oversight.
With luck this posting from a coffee house in Syria
will look like it came from someplace in the West Coast
of the US.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Maybe obsolete is a better word than fail. It did serve its intended purpose, it just can't survive the street.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When is someone going to step up and sue the ever loving shit out of the DOJ / ICE for ruining their business? There's no due process or trial - just the whims of uninformed Luddite politicians.