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."

Comments

No even a "we're sorry?"

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the lost money? Time to sue.

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[AliasMarlowe]

What about the lost money? Time to sue.

And for damaged reputation and lost customers, due to those went to one of the seized sites, freaked out, then never visited again. Definitely damage was done to Puerto80 Projects (their owner), but can the the DOJ escape liability by claiming the seizure was not unlawful?

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Better sue them for thousands of dollars for each potential lost customer! I estimate that they owe over 100 trillion dollars.

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[jythie]

Sadly, while the US can seize foreign assets, often courts rule that foreign companies do not have standing to sue. The standards for what constitutes having a local presence seem to vary according to which side the government is on....

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Better sue them for thousands of dollars for each potential lost customer! I estimate that they owe over 100 trillion dollars.

100 trillion dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days, dr. evil.

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[Hatta]

courts rule that foreign companies do not have standing to sue

Standing seems to get in the way of justice quite often. We need to strongly consider removing these loopholes in our justice system that allow the government to commit crimes with impunity.

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[Inda]

What lost money?

I used Rojadirecta before I found a better site. It was only when my 'better' site didn't stream a game I was after that I looked back to Rojadirecta.org and saw it was down.

Rojadirecta.se came to the rescue. I see there is a Rojadirecta.me too. When will these ban-hammer organisations learn? How long have we seen the same processes repeated over and over?

I don't give a shit about Hollywood or Poptastic music. I do give a shit about my sports.

If only they'd let me buy the stream on a Saturday afternoon. I only want to watch Tottenham Hotspur play. I cannot afford to travel to the game, even if I could get a ticket - their ground is full most weeks. I can afford a few quid to stream the game.

I pay for Sky Sports. I'm happy to pay for my sport. Let me give you more money, you fucking idiots.

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[fustakrakich]

Best of luck getting any real opposition into Congress that will do it. Nothing's gonna change while the voters have their heads up their ass and keep reelecting these buttheads

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[Hatta]

It doesn't matter that it's unconstitutional unless you can demonstrate how it directly harms someone protected by the constitution. I, as a citizen, have no standing to object to the lawless practices of my government unless I am a direct victim of those practicse.

What I am suggesting is that a justice system where lawlessness is tolerated directly affects everyone subject to that justice system. Every citizen should have a right to a government that obeys the law. That is not the case in America today.

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[Shagg]

It's difficult to blame the voters when every candidate on the ballot is a butthead.

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[f3rret]

Isn't the .com and .org TLDs American? They only seized the domains and not necessarily the server hardware, as I understand it. Besides if the sites were running off American TLDs and were hosted in the US then it's no wonder that a US agency could seize them.

Re:No even a "we're sorry?"

[fliptout]

IANAL, but I think the proper course of action in this case is to sue the US government in their home country. If successful, they could have US assets there frozen and seized.

Seizure without cause

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Seizure without cause

[FireFury03]

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?

I've been saying this for a long time - if you're hosting something, doing it outside the US is a good plan. If you can host it somewhere that's US-hostile, even better (so long as the US doesn't bomb the datacentre).

Re:Seizure without cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with a .org, .net, .com, etc US controlled domain even if their servers are hosted elsewhere in the world won't escape a similar fate.

Re:Seizure without cause

[Rich0]

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?

Intended by who? Somehow I suspect this was exactly what was intended by these kinds of seizure rules.

Winning court cases is hard. So, the solution has been to turn the process of justice into its own form of punishment. If you don't like somebody you accuse them of a crime, and seize half their possessions as evidence. Then you hold onto them for years, or drag them through a long and very expensive process. By the time it is over the person has lost their job, family, home, and is in a mountain of debt. At that point, does it really matter what the verdict is?

And seizure is often even worse - in many cases there may not even be an opportunity to mount a defense. The property is sezied, and the owner need not even be charged with a crime.

Re:Seizure without cause

[BigSlowTarget]

What remediation will happen? None. The government has sovereign immunity except under special cases. This would not qualify as you would have to prove they not only did not have a case but could never have reasonably thought they could ever have had a case. That isn't going to happen.

Re:Seizure without cause

[jythie]

Sadly, yep. The laws are functioning 'as intended'. Our legal system was never really designed to be fair or equal access, it has a lot of the 'individualism' mentality built into it, with justice going to those who have the money and power to utilize it. This is generally billed as 'freedom' since more of your fate is in your own hands.. or at minimal if your chances are not good you can blame the victim more.

Re:Seizure without cause

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. May be Kim Dot Com is wondering the same.

Re:Seizure without cause

[whoever57]

Winning court cases is hard. So, the solution has been to turn the process of justice into its own form of punishment.

Wasn't this one of the grievencies of the original colonists in America? Arrest someone and take them to England for prosecution, in the process, keeping them under arrest for months/years.

Misleading headline.

[Robert Zenz]

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.

Re:"forfeit the sites to the U.S. government"

[LordLucless]

It doesn't require any action by the owners. The US government (well, DOJ) contacts the registrar, and demands that they point the domain somewhere else. They don't touch the physical hardware (unless they're seizing that too) - the site is still operational, but cannot be accessed by its domain.

Lazy or corrupt?

[__aaltlg1547]

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.

Re:Lazy or corrupt?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once owned a computer repair store. I got a call from the bank, my account had been frozen and all assets drained by the IRS. No notice, no call, nothing.
The IRS claimed I owed taxes. I did not, I didn't even make close to enough to owe the amount they took. Three months later, it was found the IRS made a mistake. Did I get my money back? No. They refuse to refund me the money they STOLE, even after they admitted making a mistake. They offered a tax credit. Which did me no good as I was forced to shut the store down later that year. The government thinks nothing of destroying small businesses.

Re:Careful with the opposition here

[jythie]

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.

I'm torn on this.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

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.

Why not?

[jdev]

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.

Re:DNS = FAIL

[cpghost]

Yes, the hierarchical nature of DNS invites exactly this kind of abuse. However, to be fair: designers of the DNS never expected this kind of lawfare. They thought about cities being nuked etc..., not about a rogue government controlling the top-level of the DNS hierarchy.

As to countries going offline when a submarine cable is being cut, it's their problem: they were supposed to provide some levels of redundancy by connecting to multiple international backbones in the first place.

Varying definitions of "freedom"

[Quila]

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.