US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/us-judge-orders-hundreds-of-sites-de-indexed-from-google-twitter-bing-facebook.ars

by gigawatt • 15 years ago

434 216 15 years ago

arstechnica.com

scott_s• 15 years ago

I find Venkat Balasubramani's post linked to at the end of that article worth reading in full: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2011/11/court_oks_priva...

jinushaun• 15 years ago

As the article demonstrates, why wait for SOPA?

scottshea• 15 years ago

I am really curious how Google and Facebook will handle this...

madmaze• 15 years ago

Even if some of these websites sell fake/counterfit goods, they should only be taken out of the ads. Otherwise we are starting a trend of black-listing website once again. This could be another seedpoint for the freedom of speech and firewall-of-america discussion which was raised with SOPA

ebzlo• 15 years ago

Facebook? Twitter? De-index? It sounds to me like the judge doesn't know much of what he's talking about. Taking down the companies and their assets I'm all for, but de-indexing them from search results seems a little bit unnecessary, especially since they'll go away on their own once the domains are dead.

mindstab2• 15 years ago

Is there really infrastructure available for this yet? Also "All Internet search engines"... Possibly the judge underestimates how many there are out there who will never even hear of this ruling without horrible SOPA legislature and infrastructure in place. Till then they can't seriously expect random search engine in my bedroom to track all legal rulings in this space. This is fantastically impossible.

And it raises the point of how tricky it will be to even suggest enforcing SOPA with out providing massive centralized services listing blocked sites etc.

Joakal• 15 years ago

It is possible with Google to de-index websites. Look up Google chilling effects warnings. The judge can take it to mean that any search engines not complying are in contempt.

mindstab2• 15 years ago

Which now means with out central infrastructure, it's going to be mighty challenging for any new search start ups to not get sued in the states

_delirium• 15 years ago

I'm no lawyer, but to be held in contempt of a court order, don't you actually have to be specifically named in the court order and notified of it?

angli• 15 years ago

I'm totally against the idea to begin with, but wouldn't it just be easier to seize the domains and have them redirect to the "proper" site? Why get the search engines involved at all?

On a related note, does it become in the social/search/social search giants' interest to take on the cases and attempt to overturn these decisions at some point? It would provide better results, for one, as well as lessen the technical burden of suppressing these sites.

I expect that the times we live in are ultimately going to be a "trial by fire" for the tech industry. The result, I think, is probably that Google, Facebook, etc. conduct extensive lobbying, and other massive PR operations, to gain the support of both users and government officials. For the companies of the future though, this is probably great: a Congress where the size, economic impact and mindshare of tech is noted, and laws are passed accordingly.

stfu• 15 years ago

Does anyone know how this is handled at Google with their different data centers i.e. are the sites going to be indexed in the UK version?

danilocampos• 15 years ago

Look.

I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here.

And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state.

But what. the fuck. do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

yolesaber• 15 years ago

What can be done is encouraging more engineers and scientists to run for offices in the United States Government.

dantheman• 15 years ago

What can be done is to educate people and engage in a discussion on what the proper role of the state should be. For many, the government should have little to no involvement in technological and economic matters and focus merely on the preservation of individual liberties - if this view continues to gain momentum issues such as these will become nonissues.

rhizome2• 15 years ago

The US electoral process is prejudiced against any candidate with skills other than "people skills." Anybody who campaigns on a platform even implying the advantage of intelligence will be cast as an elitist. Boom, campaign-headshot.

dpatru• 15 years ago

China's leaders are engineers. It just helps them be more repressive. Rather than engineers, we need leaders who value liberty and want to reduce the size and scope of government.

The problem we have isn't that people in government aren't bright. They are. It's that they want government to solve too many problems.

When you have power, it's tempting to try to solve problems through imposition (by passing laws, e.g., network neutrality) rather than allow people to work out their differences peacefully (through the marketplace).

angersock3• 15 years ago

As long as we're busy chatting about pet languages, comparing work/life balances, and generally masturbating about startup culture, we (as a collective) aren't going to do a damned thing.

It's time to acknowledge that this behavior of our governments is beginning to violate a reasonable social contract, and if not that, certainly at least realize that our livelihoods are coming under attack.

It may well be time to start getting radical in our evaluation of our culture's place in modern politics--they are clearly not serving our interests (much less those of their own citizens!), and yet equally clearly are dependent on us for a great deal of their soft power.

Folks with more weight and pull in this area: start paying attention.

billpatrianakos• 15 years ago

You're very right but I believe there's an even deeper problem here. There will always be people trying to manipulate the system to serve their needs but I think we can start winning some of these cases by educating the public. A lot of the people deciding on these issues have no clue how the things they're ruling on works. This judge most likely doesn't know that he just opened the floodgates for abuse.

This judge was a guy most likely like my mother who uses google as her browser address bar. First navigate to goof,e type the web address in search then click the first result. He seems to have been thinking about the issue in terms of the physical world. If someone was using the Chanel name and logo to sell fake goods then an order along these lines in the physical world makes some sense.

A lot of people who don't quote get the web think of these issues with physical analogies in mind. The problem is that these physical world analogies just don't apply. They only sound good to the uninformed. So yeah, we need to be protesting but more importantly we need to be educating. There are far more people who make bad judgements based on ignorance of the web than there are that make bad judgements because they need to please their pay masters.

angrycoder• 15 years ago

Agreed. This isn't a tech problem, this is a social problem. There is nothing wrong with the current technology, we don't need more code to solve this.

maratd3• 15 years ago

I have an idea. Ignore them. Let them enforce their own edicts, rulings, and laws. If enough people disobey, it becomes impossible to enforce. That's why civil disobedience works. Now, if Google grew a pair and told the judge to get lost ... well ... I'll be mighty impressed and they would earn my respect.

lukesandberg2• 15 years ago

I don't think it is cowardly for Google to obey the law and court orders. At least they publish information about this kind of activity http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/...

rbanffy2• 15 years ago

The larger you are, the harder it gets to disobey their rulings. Google can fight if the ruling is illegal or obviously unfair, but they can't hide and pretend it's not with them after being mentioned.

JonnieCache7• 15 years ago

We need to invent the following things so we can be forever truly free:

1) A secure, peer to peer DNS system with no registrars and a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust.

2) An encrypted version of TCP that we can drop in without anyone noticing.

3) A way of distributing keys for our encrypted transport layer without certificate authorities and again with a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust.

4) A secure, peer to peer, federated social network with all the features that we and the rest of the world want and need.

Then we will at least have some breathing space while we work on that whole planetwide wifi mesh thing.

charliesome2• 15 years ago

We've already got Namecoin and Diaspora, but neither appear to be catching on.

jakeonthemove2• 15 years ago

But then you'd still be subject to existing laws - it's not like they're going away. With the same amount of effort, you could get the governments to stop making stupid decisions/laws or at least consult someone before they do.

But then again, they have tech consultants who never get a say because ruling in favor of those with money is better for the lawmakers' careers or pockets.

I do believe that most people are pretty comfortable with the current situation... when it'll start affecting more individuals, then the "anti-" movements will ramp up - it's always been that way...

angersock3• 15 years ago

I wouldn't suggest that we need a social network, but your first suggestion isn't too far from the truth.

The exact thing needed is very boring, very low-level, and very unsexy, and I believe can be summarized thusly:

We need a method for locating hosts on a network graph which does not have a central point of failure and which cannot be easily disabled.

We then need a method for authentically routing messages back and forth between these hosts without fear of man-in-the-middle attacks that can change the contents of the messages.

This is pure transport-layer engineering.

As long as we can locate anyone connected to our network, and communicate with them without interference, we can build whatever else we need to on top of that.

We shouldn't confuse our efforts by trying to make a social network, or new hashcoin lottery, or advanced supergovernment, or whatever else. We shouldn't worry about interception of message contents--that way lies madness; as long as I know my message reached somebody in one piece, and as long as they know that a message signed by me is from me, we can fix the rest later.

This is a pure, straightforward, fucking hard engineering problem.

naner• 15 years ago

You can't invent around policy problems.

10101001016• 15 years ago

Could it be that some or all of these things either already exist or are possible using existing "tools", but are simply not widely known nor in widespread use?

However statements like "all the features that we need or want" are troublesome. How can we possibly agree on those?

What if someone built the low-level, _boring_ "platform", and offered a _simple_ (as little code as possible), _old_, boring but workable conceptual vision, then let all the high-level enthusiasts address (argue about) usability and features?

lhnn• 15 years ago

http://tcpcrypt.org/

Passive encryption... not the best, it prevents lazy MITM.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

The P2P Yacy search engine seems to have been announced very timely.

viraptor• 15 years ago

I was thinking about 1) and it seems like a really cool idea. If you could also query the sites trusted by some person, that would be like a HN with domains only to some extent (and if you can have any domain you want, you'd probably use one per site, rather than making a hierarchy again). Realistically I probably need only 20 or so domains on a typical day anyways, so that would only require trusting 5 or so other developers.

joejohnson• 15 years ago

I think that 1-3 are necessities now. I don't know if 4 is.

lancewiggs• 15 years ago

Or just use a registrar and top level domain that won't respond to the take-down requests. .nz domains, for example, are protected by a rigorous process in a domain (New Zealand) that prevents this sort of thing.

granitepail• 15 years ago

If it were more usable, I'd point towards Freenet. They've been at building a system like this since 2000 -- it's just a shame it runs so slowly.

jamesgeck0• 15 years ago

Sounds like a great project for Mozilla to jump on. I'm slightly surprised they don't appear to have worked on this problem before. Or have they?

spoiledtechie• 15 years ago

Sounds like you know exactly what is needed. Why not start the process of making this happen?

Where would one need to begin to have a secure peer to peer DNS system?

RobertKohr• 15 years ago

1) Namecoin - http://dot-bit.org/

2) Tor

3) I think 1 & 2 should solve this.

4) This probably isn't that difficult to implement on top of Tor.

marshallp3• 15 years ago

the tech/science community is the most able body of people in the country. I'm sure if there coordinated effort was made, it could put technologists in every office in the country.

tokenadult• 15 years ago

the most able body of people in the country

Most able at what? Most people who are in elected office, or who have been in elected office, have a certain repertoire of skills in getting along with other people and in keeping track of mutual obligations that helps make the political process work. Some scientists or engineers who become politicians

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jimmycarter

http://mcnerney.house.gov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vern_Ehlers

http://holt.house.gov/

http://olver.house.gov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Foster_(Illinois_politicia...

http://sharp.sefora.org/issues/111th-congress-degrees-by-typ...

have had some degree of those skills, and some people with other academic degrees have gained understanding of how science relates to public policy.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9226.html

But scientists and engineers are still fallible human beings,

http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852

and the political process will still come under influence of concentrated interest groups

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html

regardless of which people fill the offices.

ajross2• 15 years ago

You appeal to a higher court. Courts make mistakes. The system is designed to handle that. Let it work.

Relax, basically. This won't stand. That's not to say you're going to agree with everything the higher courts do (c.f. the Citizens United ruling, yada yada). But you can be sure that smart people will look at the problem. Silliness like this won't stand.

jcr3• 15 years ago

I totally agree with you on letting the courts work, but you're missing an important point; who will pay to fight it through the higher courts?

We already know the court proceedings were "one-sided" so it's safe to assume no one showed up to defend themselves. For the sake of argument, let's assume the seized domains were actually selling copied goods. Whether one considers copied goods to be good or bad is irrelevant; the most we can say is there are laws forbidding the sale of copied goods. Given such laws, the "defendants" are best off hiding rather than coming forward to defend themselves in court and potentially facing further losses.

With this said, why should the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other other for-profit entities bear the costs of a protracted legal battle through the higher courts? Additionally, why should they bear the costs of compliance with the court orders?

It's not that the courts can't work, instead, it's whether or not making the courts work is worth the expense.

rorrr• 15 years ago

Vote them out.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

You would need to vote out the system of government that is implemented in the US. But the US political bureaucracy is itself reinforced by its deep rooted opposition to all other forms of government. Most US political leaders would rather see the US government collapse completely than fall to socialsim.

zeteo4• 15 years ago

What is the base for your unsupported assertion that the judge is a "dinosaur who know[s] nothing of technology policy"? If you had read the ruling, you'd have seen there's a lot of technical detail in it.

Plus, the article is probably also incorrect, see my comment below.

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

There's nothing about a person's willingness to take a meat-clever to the tech industry that inherently indicates he doesn't understand the tech industry. All he's saying is "my marshals can beat your technological imperative". That might be true, especially in the short run.

And talking about these types as ignorant is reassuring. But we shouldn't be reassured. There is no a-prior reason to expect we'll win here.

jeroen2• 15 years ago

Your comment below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3292687

It looks like you're wrong, though. See my response there.

cwe• 15 years ago

Start over on Mars

Tossrock• 15 years ago

Kim Stanley Robinson fan?

throwaway81• 15 years ago

What we need is competition. There needs to be a viable alternative to the US government. Small policy changes or people changes or party changes will not be sufficient. Big changes will not happen without outside competition.

Someday, some country is going to recognize that supporting free culture can be a huge competitive advantage. I would like to live in that country. I'd take a pay cut to move there. I think many would found businesses there. This will pressure the US (and others) to adopt changes.

However, if I am honest with myself, I don't think reactionary changes - the only improvements that will be made - will satisfy. I think we're all waiting for someone to step up and provide a viable alternative - a place more friendly to the 21st century. I'd love to help, but I'm not certain where to start. Many software companies might thrive in less copyright and patent friendly territories. Perhaps, at some point, one will step up and launch a government competitor. But that's probably not going to happen.

Seems more likely that some countries will recognize this opportunity and there will be a slow immigration of us Internet folks to this new promised land. Anyone else have a vision for how this will end?

VladRussian3• 15 years ago

somebody smart said that it isn't that new ideas win, it is a new generation accepting the new ideas replaces the old generation. Couple generations later (i'll be in my 70-80ies :) when current teenagers will be the judges, DAs, ... the issue of IP just willn't be an issue anymore.

botker• 15 years ago

http://seasteading.org/

rmc• 15 years ago

There needs to be a viable alternative to the US government

You mean other countries? Yes there is a world outside the USA.

I'm not certain where to start

Move to a country which you like?

anigbrowl9• 15 years ago

But what. the fuck. do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway?

The same thing as all the folks who know nothing of legal procedure but have decided to go ahead and condemn it anyway? Sorry to be blunt, but I'm with zeteo in thinking that both Ars and the blogger they cite have misinterpreted this ruling, and in being disappointed at the lack of contextual information on how the law works in this area. This is no more an attack on the internet than impounding a criminal's car is an attack on the motor industry.

MetallicCloud• 15 years ago

I disagree. To extend your analogy, it's like taking a sample of 300 cars, finding that 3 of them need impounding and then locking them all up, leaving the onus on the owner to go through the hassle of getting their car out if they weren't infringing.

gospelwut• 15 years ago

As somebody who works as an expert (I hate that word by the way, so I apologize) in the legal field, I can say this sentiment is pretty accurate. People think the that evil cabal of lawyers et al conspire against the little man to crush, oppress, and otherwise harm them through litigious means.

This is not the case per se.

There are lawyers filled with the utmost dickery, but that is not all of them. The fact of the matter is aformentioned dickerous individuals can take advantage of a system largely ill equipped to handle technology cases. Whether it be a jury that barely knows the difference between a hard drive to a floppy drive or a doddering, self-indulgent, and masturbatory judge--it's over their heads.

I do my "due diligence" to not contort facts and try to explain things as best as I can. But, despite my best efforts I always know that there will be some basic technical misunderstandings in the judges' opinion/ruling.

People keep trying to shoe-horn computer concepts into ancient, arcane notions they have about law and life in general. When nobody in the court room except the experts know what is going on technically--and admittedly are influenced by those that hire them (despite professional conduct), this essentially means whoever has the best narrative wins. Though, that fact might not be exclusive to computer-based cases.

People expect magic. Either you're talking them down about how these artifacts of X could mean Y but just because Z file i sin /home/bob doesn't necessarily mean it was Bob sitting at the terminal. Or, you get the other extreme, where you're defending yourself from an ignorant, nearly exceptional cavalcade of "How you can really know for sure?" type questions. And, of course, any expert if hired to do so can easily be that dick-for-hire.

I've had cases where I suspected the judge prolonged the costly trial simply to indulgent their whimsy. Oh, how fancy! You can pull up their deleted files and internet records? ENTERTAIN ME MORE!

anigbrowl9• 15 years ago

I've had cases where I suspected the judge prolonged the costly trial simply to indulgent their whimsy. Oh, how fancy! You can pull up their deleted files and internet records? ENTERTAIN ME MORE!

Tee-hee.

pasbesoin• 15 years ago

We make clear and take advantage of their position that there is no "right to access" nor "property" as traditionally defined, on the net. We do this by "disconnecting" them. No technical support. Their ISP's free to discontinue service to / their business relationship with them.

Cut them off.

Practically, this probably won't happen -- and there would always be sell-outs raising the question of additional actions/escalation against them. But, fundamentally, this is how I see it. Their own arguments admit our ability to exclude them. And we should -- "route around the damage", and all that.

Mind you, in the above, I'm not advocating anything patently illegal. I'm not talking about "hacking (cracking)" their systems, nor DoS-ing them, etc. Just, don't do business with them, and don't support them. Shun them.

stellar678• 15 years ago

How can a judge possibly be so daft as to put a judgement against companies not even party to the lawsuit?

If we find out these counterfeit goods are also coming over from China, should we tell UPS and FedEx they can no longer fly planes out of there?

10101001016• 15 years ago

So should they still comply with the order? Why or why not?

Why not issue an injunction to US-based ISP's or even IXP's to filter the IP addresses these domains point to, or even whole address blocks? Do you think they would comply?

charliesome2• 15 years ago

nitpick: both spellings are accepted

electromagnetic2• 15 years ago

I'm waiting for the day that a 15 year old files a patent on a new style of Capri's and ends up owning Levi, Wrangler, etc. for selling counterfeit products.

Oh wait, that would never happen. (Incidentally in about 98, before capri's got fashionable again, my friend took to folding and stitching her jeans, in a few weeks all the girls were doing it throughout the summer; about 4 years later she was pissed when Levi and Wrangler jeans started selling them, manufactured from regular jeans and stitched almost identically)

I dislike the whole anti-counterfeit programs because companies want you to spend $2000 for a leather bag with their name on it, but the bag is only really worth $20. They're not even complaining that you're not willing to pay for it (like pirating a movie), they're complaining because you're unwilling to spend a massively unreasonable amount on it.

There's no reason to target the counterfeitters as they're not hurting your business model. They're selling to people who know they're getting ripped off, but Gucci and what not are selling it to rich idiots who don't know they're getting ripped off.

OstiaAntica• 15 years ago

You can't copyright or trademark a fashion pattern, like your friend's jeans.

Fake products using a trademarked name is a different matter-- they are of inferior quality, and widespread distribution seriously damages the legitimate brand.

electromagnetic2• 15 years ago

Yes, the name ripping is their right to enforce, however the big brands also prevent knockoffs and imitations from being sold in major stores for threat of pulling everything with their name on it if the store stocks similar-look products.

rick888• 15 years ago

"I dislike the whole anti-counterfeit programs because companies want you to spend $2000 for a leather bag with their name on it, but the bag is only really worth $20. They're not even complaining that you're not willing to pay for it (like pirating a movie), they're complaining because you're unwilling to spend a massively unreasonable amount on it."

This just isn't true. Many times, the $20 bag uses inferior materials and doesn't go through the quality checks of the bigger companies. It's also about brand name. Some brands are worth more than others.

"There's no reason to target the counterfeitters as they're not hurting your business model. They're selling to people who know they're getting ripped off, but Gucci and what not are selling it to rich idiots who don't know they're getting ripped off."

It does hurt their business model. There are many people selling counterfeits as the original. If the company does nothing about it, people will not only expect to get it at the cheaper price in the future, but will complain if the quality sucks or it falls apart after a few weeks of use, which will hurt the companies image.

codyrobbins• 15 years ago

The problem here is the judge, not necessarily Chanel. There’s a number of interesting quirks about the fashion industry that may make you more sympathetic of their tactics.

First, fashion designs are not only un-patentable, but they can’t even be copyrighted. Think about that for a second: if you design a piece of clothing, it’s not your design—anybody can simply start creating and selling exact copies and there is nothing you can do legally to stop them. If you write a book, record a piece of music, make a movie, take a photograph, paint a painting, or write a piece of software, your creative expression is protected by copyright and nobody can copy the form of what you’ve done. This is not true for fashion designs.

People routinely criticize luxury goods for being emblazoned with logos, and I often hear geeks put down consumers of luxury goods for being stupid enough to buy things with someone’s logo all over it. But given the complete lack of legal protection afforded to the designers, the logos in part came about so that the products could be protected under trademark law instead: they’ve got logos all over them because there’s no other good, reliable way to protect their work from being knocked off!

Incidentally, another thing I often hear professed snickeringly as proof of the triviality of fashion is the fact that trends change so quickly—new designs are pushed out many times a year and maintaining a highly fashionable wardrobe is like trying to stand on quicksand. This, again, isn’t necessarily for any insidious reason or because consumers are stupid—it’s simply because the good designs are knocked off almost immediately and unless new ones are pushed out constantly it’s difficult to, in the consumer’s mind, differentiate oneself from and stay ahead of the copiers.

But even if the above weren’t true, most luxury goods are qualitatively better products anyways. They’re better made and better designed. I knew someone once who had a Louis Vuitton wallet that their mother had handed down to them, originally purchased in the 60s, that was still in 100% perfect condition after constant use fifty years later. Take a look at your wallet and think about whether you expect it to be in one piece fifty years from now.

A Chanel suit is made with a hell of a lot more than $20 worth of materials and time, but even if it weren’t it’s irrelevant. Everyone here A/B testing their SaaS apps at wildly different price points should know it’s meaningless what the marginal cost of the goods are—what matters is how much you can sell them for to maximize profit.

Second, designing clothes in actuality takes a lot of money and time. Fabric is, relatively speaking, an incredibly expensive raw material in and of itself, but on top of that is the fact that it’s bulky, produced overseas, and needs to be shipped around the world multiple times—from the mills to the factories to the retail floors. It costs a mind boggling amount of money simply to ship samples of fabric from the mills to the design studios alone. Then add in the fact that every piece of clothing you wear is not sewn together by robots, but by human laborers.

Given the inherent difficulties, I really can’t blame luxury goods makers for the very brilliant and successful legal and sales tactics they employ in order to make a business out of it. It’s really no different from what 37signals has done, except that doing it with a physical product is a lot harder. You write software: there is no physical overhead and everything you create belongs to you. Fashion is very different. Given the lack of legal protections for their products the fashion industry makes for an interesting petri dish for what repercussions we might see if software or other patents were abolished.

kevinalexbrown• 15 years ago

I think the appropriate (humorous) response would be to de-index federal government websites, or websites which were pro-SOPA, or refuse to provide services the judge, or those who work with him, use.

After all, it's aiding and abetting someone who's not acting in their interests ...

ImprovedSilence• 15 years ago

I'm curious, how are there not "offshore" domains yet, much in the same fashion there of offshore shell corporations for tax havens? Somebody tether me a server farm in the middle of the Atlantic, and tap on into the cables down below or something. Heck, got your water cooled farm right there. All jesting aside though, does anyone think domains name registration is going to start soaring in other countries because of all this bickering going on lately? I see business models waiting to be found here.

calloc• 15 years ago

Because ICANN is still governed by US rules, and while it would probably cause a LOT of damage they could seize any domain they wanted since they own the root DNS servers.

DanielBMarkham2• 15 years ago

So if I decide to sell my wife's (imaginary) 3 tons of Chanel goods, and open a site called chanel-goods-for-cheap, odds are my site gets lifted and I become a part of this action no matter whether I am selling counterfeit goods or not, right?

I agree with the attorney. Why get upset about SOPA? They can screw you over just the same way today without all the extra laws.

This will eventually reach the point, if left unchecked, where large corporations will completely own all of their internet distribution channels -- resale, wholesale, damaged goods, you name it. If it's got "Brand X" as part of the offering, folks over at Brand X are going to want to control it.

I really hate the fact that so many of these stories remind me of people running around waving their arms with their heads on fire. It's always the end of western civilization as we know it. But damn it, the problem is that there are many separate issues where there are real threats to common sense and to liberty. It's like living in a town where several large buildings are on fire. Being alarmed seems appropriate, but why bother? The whole place is hosed.

Jabbles• 15 years ago

Please read the article and stop spreading false information. It doesn't help.

Obviously the court's decision sets an awful precedent. But the third paragraph clearly states that Chanel checked that the sites were actually selling counterfeit goods. So your analogy doesn't work.

DanielBMarkham2• 15 years ago

As I understood the article, there was an open order that Chanel simply stuffed websites into. I'm not sure exactly what the qualifications of a "anti-counterfeiting specialist" are, but it certainly doesn't involve judicial review. From the article:

The case has been a remarkable one. Concerned about counterfeiting, Chanel has filed a joint suit in Nevada against nearly 700 domain names that appear to have nothing in common. When Chanel finds more names, it simply uses the same case and files new requests for more seizures. (A recent November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites; none had a chance to contest the request until after it was approved and the names had been seized.)

How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit. The other 225 sites were seized based on a Chanel anti-counterfeiting specialist browsing the Web.

I'm not sure how that can be misconstrued. Chanel pays an expert who puts together a list and they are automatically banned. Each site can then, and only then, try to get some review. Chanel picks and chooses who to take sites away from, then the site owners -- if they have the resources -- can try to get things sorted out. Seems pretty straightforward to me (if completely whacked) Yes, I extrapolate that situation into the future, but that's the purpose of commentary: to use analogy and extrapolation to show facets of the article that aren't immediately apparent to the reader. I never said that brands own the internet now. I simply said that if things keep going this way, this is where we are going to end up.

Natsu4• 15 years ago

> But the third paragraph clearly states that Chanel checked that the sites were actually selling counterfeit goods.

For 3 of the 228 sites, yes. That's about 1.3% of them.

They're probably right about them selling knock-offs, but they didn't check most of them. They're also bending the joinder rules in a way similar to certain copyright plaintiffs who had their cases severed for misjoinder. That said, there seem to be quite a few judges willing to bend those rules, too.

desireco42• 15 years ago

I don't think judges should be able to order unreasonable things like this one. From article it shows that they don't even have proof that some of the sites have done anything illegal. I understand Channel and sympathize with them, but this judge should never be able to order something like this.

dchest• 15 years ago

Reading this order: http://www.scribd.com/doc/73773870/Chanel-Inc-v-Does-11-Cv-0... I wonder who is responsible for de-indexing and/or removing the domain names?

Other points begin with "Plaintiffs shall...", "Defendants shall...", but in this point there's no party stated that must do the action:

"The Group II Subject Domain Names shall immediately be de-indexed and/or removed from any search results pages of all Internet search engines including, but not limited to, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and all social media websites including, but not limited to, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter until otherwise instructed by this Court or Plaintiff that any such domain name is authorized to be reinstated, at which time it shall be reinstated to its former status within each search engine index from which it was removed."

alttag• 15 years ago

IANAL, but isn't this outside the court's scope of authority, as many (most?) aren't parties to the case? As I understand the role of judicial review and precedent, I don't see how a party not associated with a case can be compelled to do anything without a due process opportunity.

10101001016• 15 years ago

Do you think they will resist the order in this case? Why or why not?

cube13• 15 years ago

Sigh. This is pretty much a classic case of "THE INTERNET IS NEW AND SCARY".

Assuming that Charnel's claims are accurate(that counterfeit goods were being sold), then the standard procedure 20 years ago would have been to work with law enforcement and the courts. If the defendants were found guilty, the counterfeit goods would be seized and profits off of them would be awarded to Charnel. With the invention of the Internet, the exact same thing should have happened. Charnel should have worked with law enforcement and the courts, and if the defendants were found guilty, the goods should have been seized, and the story should have ended. In either case, it would take a while(especially if the shops were in countries that had very lax copyright laws), but there should not have been really any difference between now and 20 years ago.

Only in this case, the judge, in his infinite wisdom, went the "OMG INTERNET IS NEW AND SCARY" route, and decided to just remove the sites from indexes. Aside from the fact that this doesn't actually fix the problem(hello, eBay), this is a pretty new(and dumb) "solution" to a pretty settled problem.

dsplittgerber3• 15 years ago

Not to be overly political, but:

This is what you get when you support a modern liberal state. It's always going to over-extend and over-regulate, because that's just the way the bureaucracy works - it's preserving itself by always finding new areas of society and the economy that "just have to be regulated for the common good".

It's a matter of basic principles, really. It's just never going to end unless you stand up for individual freedoms and very limited powers of the state.

kstenerud2• 15 years ago

If it's only a liberal thing, then why was the bill submitted with bipartisan support?

dsplittgerber3• 15 years ago

There is no difference between US political parties as far as being in favor of regulating areas of society and life is concerned.

jacoblyles• 15 years ago

Because the progressives won with FDR. Both parties are socialist now. Both are in favor of expanding the reach of the state in the market. We gave away the cake long ago and argue over the crumbs.

andrewfelix2• 15 years ago

What if they had regulations limiting the judges oversight? What if there was a regulation that restricted evidence accepted from corporations? What if there was a regulation that allowed for some kind of process of appeal in these situations?

You appear to be forcing your black and white political ideals onto something that is a little more complex that "Regulation Bad! Market Good!"

dsplittgerber3• 15 years ago

This is not complex at all. As long as new legislation concerning formerly unregulated areas of life is as easily introduced as today, and politics having as close a connection with money as it has, this is just not going to end, ever.

Good luck fighting the good fight, you're going to need it. The problem is a few meta-levels above.

gnaritas6• 15 years ago

> This is what you get when you support a modern liberal state.

Nonsense.

bobwaycott5• 15 years ago

This is such nonsense.

This is what you get when you support markets and capital over people.

You NEED a government to regulate for the common good, or else your individual freedoms will be happily dispensed with by the market as it seeks to further extract additional surplus value from your labor and profit as much as it can from your existence. The market is a greedy bitch and does not care about your freedom. Limited powers of the state mean you will take on the market yourself. You will lose everything.

Overextend != over-regulate. The former is the action of the ruling class on behalf of the market to protect capital and increase its spheres of influence. The latter is the action of the ruling class attempting to placate the people, sanctioned for a time by the market so as to bide time until the people forget why the regulation was created in the first place (so a couple generatons later, the capitalists can spin a yarn that the regulation should go and nobody knows any longer how royally they fucked things up to necessitate the regulation in the first place).

FreshCode• 15 years ago

Picketing around the Google search box doesn't seem like the way to fight counterfeiters, but I symphatise with Chanel on this. What would the ideal solution be?

lubujackson• 15 years ago

The ideal solution would be to seize the domains/servers/property of counterfeiters where legally allowable (i.e., in the U.S.). Where the U.S. has no jurisdiction (China, where the bags are likely made) they can follow the procedures of China. Unfortunately for Chanel, China doesn't seem to give 2 shits about people making similar-looking bags.

marshallp3• 15 years ago

hire more seo's. in the pre-internet days they hire more marketers/distributors, in the internet age they need seo;s

andrewfelix2• 15 years ago

Where's the oversight? Where's the appeal process? Who's deciding whether or not the evidence is solid enough to de-index a site? What about outlets that got dodgy handbags from their supplier amongst legitimate merhandise?

The precedent here is terrifying. They're shutting down entire businesses on some private dick's say so.

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

Why can't these companies simply give a unique ID to each item they sell and allow owners to register them online, just like the DMV with cars. In this way you will know what is fake, who bought what, ownership exchange etc...

kpanghmc• 15 years ago

That would solve the problem of people accidentally buying fake Chanel products. Is that really what Chanel is concerned about here? When I first read this article, I assumed that Chanel was trying to cut down on the number of people who deliberately purchase fake Chanel products since they cost a fraction of the price and are not easily discernible from the real thing.

jiggy2011• 15 years ago

I wonder if they are really losing sales here though, I imagine most people buying fake Chanel/Rolex etc wouldn't be able to afford the real thing.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

Can't they appeal this?

jakeonthemove2• 15 years ago

"All search engines and social media sites" - hehe, I can imagine the dialog: - But your Honor, they're based in another country! - I don't care if they're from Florida, they will remove the site or else!

But seriously, the Judge may be just as tired of it as we are, and just made a quick ruling to please Chanel, at least for another month or so...

marshray11• 15 years ago

Or he believed there were new laws coming, or the issue as a whole was over his head, he's just punting this up to some higher courts.

vaksel• 15 years ago

it's not like this stuff even works...most of these counterfeiters make their cash by spamming people

nathanb• 15 years ago

Just out of curiosity, were Google to simply not comply with this ridiculous abortion of justice, what would be the result? Could Google appeal any sanctions imposed as a result of their non-compliance?

What a mess.

marshray11• 15 years ago

IANAL, but it's unimaginable that Google, Twitter, Facebook, et al. would somehow be compelled by this with no possibility of appeal.

That kind of law hasn't passed yet.

maqr• 15 years ago

There is a strong need to keep a very public list of every host that is blocked in this way, so we can keep track of what's being censored. Has anyone set up a wiki or something similar for this purpose yet?

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

Sigh, don't panic, the system will work, just legislative time is not internet time. As far as I can tell by reading the order [1] the order is temporary, and as its from a district judge [2] really only holds for Nevada at the moment. If it gets to the appeals process and the circuit court upholds it, it will apply more broadly, up to the supreme court where it will apply to the US as a whole. However what that means with regard to Chanel I'm not sure as it really only means that from within the US are these things outlawed.

But having such cases is useful because it gives the system something on which to chew, and then publish opinions (not all cases get published opinions) which set case law. So the good news might be that it gets to the circuit court which then has a chance to publish an opinion that our courts can't make these kinds of claims, and that gets upheld in the Supreme court and life is better because all the judges have to follow along.

The system is cranky, and obtuse at times, but its remarkably resilient in the face of unexpected challenges.

That being said, for the folks who are complaining about the institutions in the US being subverted, I point out that nearly all the elections in this country are won or lost by at most a 10% difference in votes. Further, in general more than 20% of the registered voters don't even bother to vote. So one could argue that if 20% of the 99% really cared about stuff they could actully vote in whomever they chose to vote in and no amount of money, croniesim, or stupidity on the part of the voters who are being lead around by their noses could stop them. The math says it is impossible (short of fraud) but fraud on that scale is really really hard to cover up.

[1] http://servingnotice.com/sdv/038%20-%20Order%20Granting%20Se...

[2] Federal courts have 89 districts, feeding into 13 circut courts, feeding into the supreme court. http://www.uscourts.gov/Common/FAQS.aspx

zeteo4• 15 years ago

It's very unlikely that this article is correct. Here is the legal ruling:

http://servingnotice.com/sdv/038%20-%20Order%20Granting%20Se...

This is a temporary restraining order. Chanel is posting a bond for any damages to the defendants, should the trial prove them innocent.

Regarding de-indexing, there is only one paragraph (10) which says the domains "shall immediately be de-indexed and/or removed", without specifying who will do this action. This is vague, but I don't think it can be interpreted as an order to Google / FB because:

- the list of search engines / social sites is open ended

- the previous paragraphs require actions by the plaintiff or by the defendants (e.g. preserve computer files). Among others, paragraph (8) states that the plaintiff can use Google Webmaster Tools on these domains.

- the (temporary) transfer of DNS records is specified in small technical details (including multiple technical solutions for the redirection involved) in multiple paragraphs, while this arguably much more complex requirement receives minimum treatment.

While the language is indeed a bit vague in paragraph (10), I think consideration of all these factors seems to indicate it is the plaintiff and the defendants who are to take action to see the sites de-indexed (using, e.g., Google Webmaster Tools) and not the indexing companies.

tsunamifury• 15 years ago

Right, so couldn't this order more resonably be interpreted by saying the web sites need to post no-robots in their meta info to delist themselves rather than Google having to do it?

More like, stop having yourself indexed rather than de-indexing.

anigbrowl9• 15 years ago

Correct.

jeroen2• 15 years ago

The november 14 order mentioned in the article (see http://www.scribd.com/doc/73773870/Chanel-Inc-v-Does-11-Cv-0... ) contains the following text (on page 11):

(10) The Group II Subject Domain Names shall immediately be de-indexed and/or removed from any search result pages of all Internet search engines including, but not limited to, Google, Bing and Yahoo, and all social media websites including, but not limited to, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter ...

Looks like Ars got it right.

zeteo4• 15 years ago

Umm the date on my link is November 14th. It's the same thing, except I'm linking to the original PDF and you're linking to the Scribd version.

Have you read the details in the post you're replying to? It's exactly about the paragraph (10) that you're quoting.

roel_v• 15 years ago

Did you even read the post you're responding to?

kevinburke• 15 years ago

Practically, this ruling won't have much effect. There's a team of people at Google already dedicated to removing results like these from the index, as they aren't that great for users. Any counterfeit goods site with enough SERP already gets on their radar, and gets removed/demoted, without action from Us courts.

cheald• 15 years ago

No, practically, this ruling has a lot of effect. It establishes precedent for the courts being able to declare a web address illegal to publish. The judge effectively ordered that the website be scrubbed clean from the internet, and failure to do so could be construed as contempt.

He has declared that it is illegal to "say" those words on the internet. Besides being a gross violation of the First Amendment, letting this ruling stand would open the door for people to leverage this precedent against other "undesirables".

ComputerGuru2• 15 years ago

To all the people suggesting we approach this and other political problems from a technological/engineering perspective: how do you think it could be pulled off?

Put aside all the technical limitations - they can (have been or will be) solved. The real question is adoption. What's a darknet without Facebook, Google, etc. worth? Who will use it? There are already countless projects implementing parts of suggested darknets, some of them very cleverly. They've been around for literally decades. None of them are perfect, but they're not so fatally flawed either.

The fact of the matter is, the internet is one big, huge de facto standard. No one will use your pet project. No one will look at it. People would far rather shoehorn or build on top of existing infrastructure (thereby being bound to the limitations of the underlying architecture and design requirements).

Just look at IPv6. It's a new technology with the full force of all the giants in the industry.... and it hasn't gone anywhere.

Actually, IPv6 would have been a good place to add the support for decentralized everything, as it is pretty much the only "authoritive" replacement for the current generation of technology. But it doesn't and it's not.

You can build it, they won't come. History proves it.

TillE• 15 years ago

> Just look at IPv6. It's a new technology with the full force of all the giants in the industry.... and it hasn't gone anywhere.

One of my VPS providers recently started offering IPv6 addresses to all customers. Linode is starting to roll it out too. My residential ISP doesn't offer anything natively, but the router they provided lets me set up a 6to4 tunnel in a couple clicks, which automagically gives all my devices an address starting with 2002::/16. I can even go to ipv6.google.com on my iPad with no extra configuration.

Progress is slow, but it's hardly stagnant. A few months ago, I didn't have any of that. Ancient infrastructure is gradually being replaced by necessity, and then it's just a matter of configuration.

VladRussian3• 15 years ago

how it was managed before the Internet? Did they order to blacken specific phone number(s) in all instances of yellow books?

kogir• 15 years ago

It's counterintuitive, but things like this are actually good. We need more of them to happen, and for it to affect more people more often.

Right now the core of the internet is broken from a security perspective. DNS[1], BGP[2], and SSL[3], despite being key to daily internet function, are all completely inadequate for the important role the internet now plays in the world and society. The thing is: right now they all work, almost all of the time. Any change will be really painful. Even incremental changes like DNSSEC see scant adoption[4] and obviously needed changes like IPv6 are put off until the last possible second[5].

We need things to break before we'll see real change. And by break I mean really break. When enough money is lost because of meddlesome, malicious, or ignorant government and other intervention, we'll finally see real change. But not one second before. After all, if it works, don't fix it[6].

If you really want to see change, exploit these laws to take down legitimate and government websites. Post infringing links, ideas, etc, in the most visible places you can. Try to get major news and other sites that allow user generated content taken down. In the process you'll hopefully break things for enough people that we see change, or you'll at least demonstrate how blatantly inequitable most of these laws are. Both are good steps toward real change.

[1] http://www.dnssec.net/dns-threats

[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4272.txt

[3] http://www.darkreading.com/taxonomy/index/printarticle/id/23...

[4] http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110330006919/en/IID-...

[5] http://ripe59.ripe.net/presentations/botterman-v6-survey.pdf

[6] Yes, I know it doesn't technically work in all cases right now, but did you notice when any of these sites went offline? I didn't. I see an increasing frequency of these types of reports, but have yet to be personally affected.

Zarathust• 15 years ago

I posted a few sites on my facebook page, I'm waiting for the US to take it down

craigmc2• 15 years ago

I liked the use of the "whack a mole" analogy. Here (for those who don't know) is how this industrial-scale counterfeiting scam works:

1. Set up OSCommerce or Magento site with design roughly copied from legit rights owner. 2. Get local 'middleman' to donate paypal account in return for small cut 3. Buy a bucket load of adwords 4. Run massive scale xrumer / scrapebox / etc 'SEO' campaign 5. Repeat thousands of times over

Getting domains de-indexed via the DMCA process on Google, never mind taking after-the-fact legal action, is just treating the symptoms.

Given that Paypal and Google are at the forefront of this issue, they are where the responsibility lies in terms of preventing the sites from transacting: by denying them a payment method and heaps of traffic respectively. I am sure that both companies are working hard on this issue, but having looked at the problem over the past couple of years, it hasn't always seemed to be that much of a priority.

Beyond that it is basically a question of international trade treaties and better local law enforcement in the territories where the offenders operate (predominately China) - i.e. NOT an easy fix.

You can understand the frustration of rights owners who are obviously going to take every opportunity to use legal action domestically. If they get a fairly tech illiterate decision in their favour that has potential dangerous consequences for the internet at large, then this is as much because they are just swinging at everything (back to those moles) than any great desire on their part to restrict legitimate rights and freedoms.

Finally, it is important to realise that this is not a victimless crime. What brought this home to me was a few years back when I overheard a nurse in the neonatal unit my son was being looked after in at the time excitedly talking about a pair of brand name boots she'd bought on the internet.

I realised that she had absolutely no clue they were fake because why should she? She had found the legitimate-looking site on the first page of Google and had paid with Paypal.

This was not a transaction carried out 'out the back of a van', where caveat emptor might more readily apply. A lot (majority?) of consumers don't realise that for all the brand loyality they might have in respect of Google and Paypal, etc^, they are services that are easily misused by unrelated third parties and so should not be taken as any sort of 'trust mark' in they way that shopping in large well-known department store does.

^Amazon and eBay deserve honourable mentions as being popular conduits for counterfeit scams too (although eBay in particular deserves a lot of credit for taking the subject more seriously than most).

marshray11• 15 years ago

Finally, it is important to realise that this is not a victimless crime. What brought this home to me was a few years back when I overheard a nurse [] excitedly talking about a pair of brand name boots she'd bought on the internet.

"Hardworking baby nurse falls for scam on the internet."

ZOMG That's one of the stupidest justifications for fucking up DNS and censoring the Internet that I've ever heard.

A lot (majority?) of consumers don't realise that for all the brand loyality they might have in respect of Google and Paypal, etc^, they are services that are easily misused by unrelated third parties and so should not be taken as any sort of 'trust mark' in they way that shopping in large well-known department store does.

The nurse controlling your preemie's heart rate monitor is too stupid to know the difference between Google and Nordstrom's.

Oh give me a fucking break.

I had a preemie too. Those nurses are all sharp as tacks. She knew exactly what she was doing.

craigmc2• 15 years ago

Read the comment again dude. Never suggested that this (or similar) judgements are worth it. Also, I asked her, she didn't. Nor do the hundreds of thousands of other people who fall for these scams. Fact is though, unless the tech companies that are de facto facilitating these scams don't become better at preventing them, these judgements (and the sort of scary legislation that get proposed to deal with it) will become more common.

bane• 15 years ago

Well, at least DuckDuckGo wasn't named in the court order.

dholowiski• 15 years ago

When the kindle fire comes out and it's not available in Canada, it drives me crazy. When I had to wait years before Netflix was available in Canada I was really mad. When Apple launched iTunes music, the iPhone, TV shows and Movies in the US only I actually illegally obtained a US itunes account.

It sucks living in Canada. Most days. Not today.

jeswin• 15 years ago

Let me be the devil's advocate here. If the pricing is more for the exclusivity than its utility, you could argue that counterfeiting diminishes the brand. And while it isn't the general opinion, it is a fair argument.

Isn't this case similar to a DMCA takedown notice? IMO DMCA take-down notices make sense; it puts the onus on the content owner to correctly identify infringement and report to the website. (OTOH, SOPA is ridiculous.)

therandomguy• 15 years ago

Somewhere right now the world's greatest minds in the network/cryptography space are designing the next version of internet which will be beyond the reach of governments... I hope.

beedogs• 15 years ago

☐ Understands how the Internet works.

☑ Renders a (faulty) decision anyway.

VonLipwig• 15 years ago

Its backward decisions like this which make me want to make sure that future ventures are not using a domain with a US registrar. I would go further and say its decisions like this which make we want to avoid dealing with any business in the states at all.

The thing of most concern isn't the seizures themselves. It is the lack of due process. The litigant finds 3 websites from 228 are selling counterfeit goods. The litigant says the other 225 are also selling counterfeit goods.. the judge takes their word. Websites disappear!?

I don't have a problem with counterfeit websites being taken offline. They can ship goods which are dangerous to the public. What I have a problem with is the lack of due process and the ordering of international websites which everyone depends on to press the delete button also.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the lack of influence Silicon Valley apparently has on US law. The western world's internet is dominated by US tech giants. Yet US law seems to be moving against the tech sector. I say its about time Silicon Valley started lobbying Washington.

capkutay• 15 years ago

This is why we need more software engineers in the US. If we have people with law AND engineering backgrounds making policy, we would see a system much more rational/practical/just toward new technology. These types of issues only occur because current policy makers have little understanding of the consequences of their own actions (or perhaps they don't care.

yaix• 15 years ago

"poshmoda.ws" has a hidden domain owner. But the "toll free" phone number on their shows the obvious +86... Chinese copycat.

While I don't approve the methods they use to go after the Chinese copy industry, I also dislike a lot how China has built a huge industry that just profits of the good names Western companies have built up over decades, sometimes centuries of reliable products.

The Chinise gov't is no help here either. So, what do?

teja1990• 15 years ago

Why does Google/Facebook have to de-index? Its their site and they have right to do whatever they want. If Chanel has issues with counterfeits , they have to deal with that themselves ,petition with ICANN but not asking Google to de-index. I dont get why these people take everything for granted and think as if Google is doing some public service.

gst• 15 years ago

As a non-US-citizen I honestly don't see any major problem with that. com/net/org domains are handled by US companies and it's therefore clear for me that they fall under US jursidiction. If I want a domain that the US cannot take away from me I just get one under a local TLD (which the US does not have access to).

abrichr• 15 years ago

Would anyone be able to recommend a good non-US domain name registrar? I think I'll be looking to switch.

US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

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