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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
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.
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.
What terrorists? You're more likely to die at the hands of a police officer than to die by a terrorist attack.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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!”
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
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.