Feds Seized Hip-Hop Site for a Year, Waiting for Proof of Infringement

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/weak-evidence-seizure

by chaostheory • 14 years ago

309 120 14 years ago

tyree732• 14 years ago

47 points and no comments? How can this be such an important story if nobody has anything to say about it?

moron• 14 years ago

What is there to say, really? As the article points out, the RIAA has a serious amount of influence on the government, and they can do whatever they want.

timmaah• 14 years ago

It has been on hacker news some months ago..

tnorthcutt• 14 years ago

The linked article was posted yesterday, so it hasn't been on HN for several months. Perhaps the topic of the article?

chauzer2• 14 years ago

There doesn't need to be a comment on every post. If the article said enough and people agree with it, it doesn't really require a comment that just says "Agreed." or "Great article."

jamesbritt• 14 years ago

A guess: It's getting points because many people have reposted it; all subsequent posts end up as up-votes for the first post.

I think people post things not only to have a discussion, but because they think they found something others should be aware of.

doorty• 14 years ago

Maybe they're speechless from the government and RIAA getting away with such a blatant violation of one's civil liberties. I hope this goes to trail so that the site owners are compensated and so that this never happens again. Shame on the government; They're supposed to protect the little guys.

chauzer2• 14 years ago

The RIAA labels should be required to pay the owner of the site for any lost advertising revenue, lawyer fees for the defendant, and any other costs associated with this case that wasn't paid for by the RIAA labels (the fed seizure, the prosecutor, etc... was paid for by tax payers). They wasted everyones time and money.

vaksel• 14 years ago

they should be hit with punitive damages as well

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Agreed. We have a great exemplar of a private interest abusing their connection with the government to damage someone else. And I don't care if its the RIAA randomly taking down web sites, or Zero Halliburton manipulating where the Army goes to protect Oil Well infrastructure that activity should open up the manipulator to large civil penalties.

I think I'll include that in my discussions with Congressional candidates this election season.

c0mpute3• 14 years ago

I am beginning to wonder if this is a sign of things where a startup/product dev has to start thinking of the following:

- Go to a p2p model where the app/service is distributed without a need to depend on a domain?

- Really start looking at countries/places to partner with someone to register to get away from a cancer that FBI is becoming?

Seriously, this kind of thing is what puts a muddy cloud on USA as a viable option. I know asian countries aren't a walk in the park (I am an India btw, so know the bureaucracy in India), but maybe a country in Europe can become a shinning beacon for internet liberties?? I almost feel the intelligentsia of USA want a place established with modern principles :)

hello_asdf4• 14 years ago

It's all about the vps services now. I have a decent one, in a country with almost no threat of being taken down :)

myko• 14 years ago

Which service and where is it located?

c0mpute3• 14 years ago

True! But where are these other reliable ones? AT least which country? I still have a feel we should find a model to distribute our risks.

patrickyeon• 14 years ago

Ugh.

> “Here you have ICE making a seizure, based on the say-so of the record company guys, and getting secret extensions as they wait for their masters, the record companies, for evidence to prosecute,” Cohn [the EFF’s legal director] said in a telephone interview. “This is the RIAA controlling a government investigation and holding it up for a year.”

I don't like these seizures either, nor that the RIAA has and uses its influence to tie up somebody's property this way without consequence. But the EFF seems to insist on going that one step too far when they make public comments. The wording ("secret extensions as they wait for their masters", "RIAA controlling a government investigation") turns me right off and makes them sound like cranks.

beagle3• 14 years ago

While I don't really like this kind of editorializing, I haven't seen a better explanation for why things work the way they do -- with RIAA/MPAA people often accompanying FBI raids, writing police training material on counterfeit CDs and DVDs, and NBC hosting federal governments' anti-piracy videos on seized domains.

Natsu2• 14 years ago

> "RIAA controlling a government investigation"

Several ex RIAA lawyers hold top Justice Department posts, as was pointed out by Ray Beckerman back when they were appointed.

> "secret extensions as they wait for their masters"

The case was delayed for about a year because they were waiting on the RIAA for proof of infringement after seizing the site based on an RIAA complaint.

But I can see your point about the way they phrased it.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

It's totally common to see the defendant and his lawyer sealed out of their own case.

malkia• 14 years ago

Oh, man! I thought they seized the PHP virtual machine named Hip-Hop. No seriously - at least for few seconds... This must be News Ycombinatorism that I'm suffering...

spoiledtechie2• 14 years ago

I think its time to start taking a stand against these types of seizures.

Is there any thing that can be done for websites against seizures like this?

Serious Question.

nextparadigms2• 14 years ago

Repeal the Pro IP Act passed in 2008.

ktizo• 14 years ago

Host in friendly territories and ask third parties to mirror in the less friendly ones.

spoiledtechie2• 14 years ago

I would like actual stand ups. We need to start doing something about this as a community.

stretchwithme2• 14 years ago

"ICE, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, has the power to seize web domains engaged in infringing activity under the same forfeiture laws used to seize property like houses, cars and boats allegedly tied to illegal activity such as drug running or gambling. But seizing a domain name raises First Amendment concerns — though nothing in the court records show that the government or the court was concerned about the prolonged seizure of the site that is akin to an online printing press."

Yeah, who cares about property rights? Wired seems to think that's unimportant. Freedom of speech is more worthy.

The fact is that "innocent til proven guilty" is being violated when seizures are allowed before a case is proven. And the police go shopping under these forfeiture laws.

http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/exclu...

nirvana19• 14 years ago

Regarding the shopping, the conflict of interest is astounding. Go after the guy with the money, because if you can make something stick, you get to steal the money, and keep it for yourself.

Judges are incentivized to sign these asset forfeiture warrants because doing so helps keep them in the good graces of the police who have a union that is very politically powerful when it comes to election time. I know of one case where a judge did so even after having proven to him that no crime was being committed.

It's extremely corrosive, and seems intrinsically corrupt.

rsingel• 14 years ago

As the editor of the piece, I'll completely agree with your assessment. Free speech rights are more important than property rights. The founders thought so too. But the implication that property rights don't matter at all to Wired because free speech rights are more important than them is logically flawed.

stretchwithme2• 14 years ago

Does the article state any concern about property rights?

nirvana19• 14 years ago

There's no provision in the constitution for stealing property that you think is involved in a crime (only for taking evidence of a crime. They could collect evidence without taking the domain, that is completely unnecessary.) Actually, there's no provision in the constitution for a federal police force of any kind, and for this very reason[1]. (Check the enumerated powers clause specifically. If you disagree, please give me which enumerated power enumerates a federal police force.)

I don't know what will bring the US federal government into compliance with the law, but it seems to me, over the 40 years I've been alive, they've just gotten further and further away from it, and more and more unaccountable as a result.

So, since most of HN seems to be liberals, and I know there are many such crimes that many liberals disagree with: such as the patriot act, the kim dotcom fiasco, airport porno scanners, domestic spying of all kinds, the drug war, even in states that have legalized it, etc. how do you propose to fix this?

Pick the crime the federal government is doing and continuing to do under Obama, and tell me, how do you propose to change things so that the federal government can no longer operate outside the law?

The argument for electing Obama to end the wars and close guantanimo, etc, made some sense if you believed these were Republican initiatives. But we have not seen them undone. In my life this has been consistently the case- Bush didn't undo the "you must lend to people who can't repay" regulations of Clinton with the unsurprising result. Bush didn't undo the prohibitions on firearms clinton put in place, in fact, he banned even more guns than clinton did (something many republicans refuse to admit.) Clinton didn't undo the damage of the Bush years, Bush didn't undo the damage of the Reagan years, Reagan did undo a little of the damage of the Carter years but did more damage himself. Carter- I give him credit- did try to undo a lot of damage and made some progress, but he and reagan are the exceptions... before and after them it hasn't really which "party" (or wing of the one party from my perspective) was in charge.

So, those of you who are younger. The Obama-Bush period is a perfect example. It is always like this. You can re-elect Obama because you think Mittens would be worse (he might be, I can't say, I think he would be just as bad.) But it isn't really going to change anything.

The game is rigged until something asymmetrical comes to change it. That might be a period of severe economic pain (say when the dollar bubble collapses.)

Whatever, if you want things like these domain thefts to end, and you're in your 20s, start working on how you're join to turn back federal authority.

The hippies of the 60s may have been socialist, but they were right about opposing the concentration of power.

The problem is, if google pisses enough people off, their fortunes will start to decline. Government is able to prosecute a drug war for 50+ years, one that pisses huge numbers of people off, but there's no seeming way to stop it.

I'm using the drug war as an example here because it has more history than these domain thefts or the copyright craziness we've seen lately.... and I believe these thefts are a direct result of the drug war's Asset forfeiture "laws".

[1] It would be very hard for the feds to ignore state law and raid drug dispensaries in california if there were no federal police agencies. Further, this is also why the federal government has no enumerated power to criminalize drugs, but states do based on their state constitutions. Desire to control the economy (via regulations) has caused many to defend the "regulate commerce between the states" as if it gave the power to regulate to the feds. (it doesn't, it gives the government the power to prevent states from charging tariffs on the goods of other states... "Regulate" at the time didn't mean what it is commonly used to mean now- at the time it meant "functional" or "keep functional" as in "well regulated militia". If you think about it "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" means the militia is not to be regulated (in the modern meaning of the term) because it needs to be "regulated" (in the "keeping function" meaning of the term)

adventureful• 14 years ago

20 years ago the TSA would have been a strong enough shock to the American public that they would have revolted. Now they accept that level of abuse. So the bar has clearly been raised to a very high level, and it keeps going higher. They're passing so many dangerous laws it's all but impossible to keep up with (and the taxes and regulations to go with them).

The monster in DC expends a lot of effort and money trying to keep the people asleep. It's the story about the frog and the boiling pot of water.

To roll it back would take a two term President dedicated to absolutely nothing else but that effort, and a Congress willing to go along. Scenarios like that only become possible during particularly extreme situations, either war or depression.

rhizome• 14 years ago

Now they accept that level of abuse.

That's unfair. The TSA was established by people hiding behind 9/11.

aqme28• 14 years ago

70 years ago Americans approved of imprisoning Japanese-American citizens simply for being of Japanese descent. It's hard to say how our views of civil liberties may have shifted, (except to say that if civil liberties have an enemy, it's War).

wallawe2• 14 years ago

>since most of HN seems to be liberals...

I tend to believe that the majority of hackers in this community are above the shenanigans of partisan politics.

With that said, great perspective above.

nirvana19• 14 years ago

I hope you're right and I was meaning to find common ground with the perceived majority to avoid the personal attacks I've gotten in the past (it didn't work, see the top voted response to me.) I apologize to any non-liberals who feel the characterization was unfair. But also, please recognize that I said "liberal" not "democrat", the former being a broad ideology while the latter being a specific party. If there is a better term to have been used there, I'm happy to learn it and use it in the future.

chc3• 14 years ago

Then you must not read HN very much. Political stories are constantly making their way to the front page, and the responses tend to be fairly predictable.

cynicalkane7• 14 years ago

There's this pattern I've noticed, where whenever a constitutional issue comes up on HN, nirvana makes this post that starts with a complete constitutional misunderstanding followed by a Randist rant. And it's always top-voted. Yuck.

For starters, the Constitution clearly states that Congress may make laws necessary and proper for all powers vested in the government of the United States, not just those in the enumerated powers of article I. Specifically, the executive branch of the government has the power to enforce laws. It's not really one of those things that's a matter of judicial interpretation--it's in plain text, black and white. The idea that the Constitution does not authorize a "federal police force", as the OP states, is so strange I can't really fathom how someone who's read the Constitution could come up with it.

Anyway, since we were talking about asset forfeiture, I'll add that it has withheld a number of constitutional challenges as well. I'm not an expert on this but I'd be shocked if the OP was.

nirvana19• 14 years ago

There's this pattern I've noticed, whenever I make an argument on HN and cite the constitution, people respond by characterizing me, rather than responding to my arguments. And its always the top voted response. Yuck.

>the Constitution clearly states... it's in plain text, black and white.

Sure sounds like something you'd be able to quote... and why didn't you? What possible reason could you have for choosing not to quote something that is "in plain text, black and white"? This makes me think that the purpose of those assertions is to pretend like you're making an argument, when your real purpose is ad hominem. You could have dropped the ad hominem and just given us the quote and an argument.

After all, its not like I didn't explicitly ask for such a quote in my post! (but ignoring that is necessary to pretend like I've said something I haven't your response is predicated on.)

I really think its a shame that you feel comfortable making ad hominem attacks like this on Hacker News, because by doing so you have derailed any possible discussion about the topic and made me the topic. I think this is anti-intellectual.

I think your down vote brigade is shameful as well. This response is being down voted for pointing out the ad hominem while the ad hominem is up voted. My original post has dropped 5 points in only a few minutes....

The sad thing is my crime is trying to find common ground with liberals. Which means it is nothing that I actually said that you object to, but the very existence of a different way of thinking.

poppysan• 14 years ago

Seems to me like every post Nirvana makes turns into a battle. I don't intend to pass judgement on the validity of the main point of his posts, but I think what sets people off is the unnecessary blend of either pro-apple rhetoric or libertarian talking-points (all stated as fact) that are controversial topics (by hn standards.)

While I disagree with his conclusions some of the time, the controversial topics + the ultra loquacious posts are always a blast for me to read!

derleth• 14 years ago

Now, please tell me where in the Constitution it states we can have an Air Force.

Black and white, chapter and verse, if you please.

nirvana19• 14 years ago

At first I thought this was a non-sequitor, but I see now you are trying to make the argument that my claim that there is no enumerated authorization for police is silly, because the constitution doesn't enumerate other things-- like the Air Force.

Let me introduce you to The Enumerated Powers Clause, specifically:

"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;"

So, clearly it is constitutional to have an Air Force (which is an "army" and in fact started as the air wing of the army) but it is not constitutional to have a "standing army" which is why the appropriations are limited to 2 years.

Interestingly, and going to my original point, one of the reasons for this was the past abuse of the existence of the army as a federal police force, that the revolutionaries wanted to avoid.

Unfortunately, this restriction has been dispensed with, so you can say that the existence of the Air Force is authorized, but not it being a standing army, by the constitution.

Here's a convenient list of the enumerated powers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_powers

jshen2• 14 years ago

The executive was intended to enforce laws, which is clearly stated in the constitution, so it seems clear that having a force to enforce such laws naturally follows.

nirvana19• 14 years ago

I don't think you're correct. The executive administrates laws, the congress creates them, and the enumerated powers determine which laws they can create.

Would you mind providing a quote for what you're talking about, so I can see it in context and understand what its saying?

tptacek17• 14 years ago

Not that I think that it refutes 'nirvana's argument, but you should be aware when you read him that he has an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Constitution. Here's a thread from a few months ago where I tried pointing out to him that he had a shaky argument because it contradicted Marbury v. Madison†:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3359194

The tack you'd expect someone to take when that argument comes up would be for them to say "no, you're wrong, I'm not contradicting Marbury v. Madison". The tack 'nirvana took was to suggest that Marbury v. Madison was a perversion of the US Constitution.

† Hint book: "establishes Judicial Review, the authority of the Supreme Court to interpret laws from the legislative branch".

nirvana19• 14 years ago

Pure ad hominem[1], also linking to a 140 day old previous thread where, instead of responding to my argument, you also engaged in ad hominem. You really think HN readers are so dull brained that you need to warn them about me, lest they be persuaded by my arguments? (Which, by the way, you've dishonestly characterized here. Not all of Marbury was a perversion, part of it was correct.) I think its interesting that there are actually people like you who follow me around on HN in order to chime in and bash me whenever I make a comment that expresses anything other than lockstep adherence to your ideology.

[1] though "not that I think this refutes the point" was a nice attempt to dodge that reality.

guelo• 14 years ago

Yea Obama hoodwinked a lot of liberals including me, I agree with you that Obama vs Romney is not much difference except that with a Republican congress Romney could do more damage, and Romney's judges would be more authoritarian. I think their used to be a difference between the parties before Clinton. Clinton's "third way" reformulated the Democratic party to be more corporate friendly and pretty much decided to abandon liberal principles. Previous generation Democrats, Kennedy/LBJ/Carter, were actual liberals who believed in egalitarian principles. The Clinton/Obama school tries to be more "centrist" which basically means conservative-light, and they have been helped in this by the space opened up by Republicans' shift further right. Actual liberals have not been in power for over 30 years.

nirvana19• 14 years ago

For what its worth, I don't think we've seen actual conservatives in power for 30 years either. neo-conservatism isn't very conservative at all-- for instance, conservatives really wouldn't care about gay marriage. opposing it goes against conservative principles.

Both parties have become authoritarian versions of themselves.

One point though- In the election of 2000 I often heard people say "If W gets elected it will be the end of abortion rights!" ... yet he had 2 terms and never actually did anything about abortion.

sneak• 14 years ago

> So, since most of HN seems to be liberals, and I know there are many such crimes that many liberals disagree with: such as the patriot act, the kim dotcom fiasco, airport porno scanners, domestic spying of all kinds, the drug war, even in states that have legalized it, etc. how do you propose to fix this?

I gave up and left the USA. I don't think there's any "fixing" it short of taking our productive energies somewhere that respects the rule of law.

beedogs• 14 years ago

I left the US, too, but they seem to be intent on applying the worst of their laws to the rest of the planet.

nextparadigms2• 14 years ago

They shouldn't be able to seize a domain like that without hearing the ruling first.

54mf2• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm being a bit glib here, but what's to stop the folks behind Dajaz1.com from registering, say, Dajaz2.com and picking up right where they left off? It's not like that domain name was primo real estate, and if they truly weren't breaking the law there isn't any reason they couldn't continue running their site, right?

nirvana19• 14 years ago

Well it would be trivial to then seize Dajza2.com as well, but they could easily get Daj.za or something else and use that-- which would be much harder to seize.

However the kim dotcom issue shows that even being located in another country, and the claim that you're "breaking the law" being very flimsy, is not sufficient protection in many cases.

It will be interesting to see if foreign domain names start getting seized by US officials.

54mf2• 14 years ago

You're absolutely right, but after so long some interesting issues start to pop up. If "dajza1.com" was able to be seized on the premise that they had released a specific set of songs, on what grounds could a new domain be seized? "ICE, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, has the power to seize web domains engaged in infringing activity under the same forfeiture laws used to seize property like houses, cars and boats allegedly tied to illegal activity such as drug running or gambling." If I own and operate prettycatcalendars.com and blackmarketorgans.org, the feds might have grounds to seize one, but certainly not every site I operate? What about a Facebook or Twitter account that is not connected to the infringing site?

(Most of these are rhetorical, and probably don't have very pleasant answers.)

[Edit] Come to think of it, I'm kind of pissed the site owners didn't just laugh at the seizure and immediately start up a new site, purely on principle. URLs are basically irrelevant these days, and ICE seizing them on the grounds that they're "tied to illegal activity" that adds up to copyright infringement at best sounds like a lot of dick-swinging by ridiculous executives in an industry well past its expiration date. They should be treated with appropriate insolence.

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

>It will be interesting to see if foreign domain names start getting seized by US officials. //

Or it could go down like in the UK and the ISPs could be ordered not to route traffic to/from the website - eg http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2172223/virgin-medi...

Nibblerama• 14 years ago

This sort of happened to me. I was running an emulated version of a popular MMO and the feds raided my home, took all my computers and seized my bank accounts.

This happened years ago, I was never charged with copyright infringement or money laundering for the donations I collected... but I also never got any of my stuff back.

Question is, if I was never legally charged with a crime, does it still give them the right to seize my things and never give it back?

carguy1983• 14 years ago

but I also never got any of my stuff back

Well, did you ask? And by ask, I mean have a lawyer ask for you.

rmc• 14 years ago

Yep, cops can seize property or enter property before they charge or convict someone. Usually they need some sort of court approval.

newman314• 14 years ago

This is akin to saying "Well, I think there is something wrong with the tax code so I'm not going to pay till I figure out what it is". Some time passes, I decide that "Oops, my bad", here's a payment but no penalty payment provided.

It is alarming and frustrating that the land grab for power is seemingly endless and yet we seem to be unable to do anything about it since the cards have been systemically stacked against corrective action (we need a President & Congress that are willing to fix things and that is about as likely to happen while getting struck by lightning).

EvilTerran2• 14 years ago

"Well, I think there is something wrong with the tax code so I'm not going to pay till I figure out what it is"

As an aside, Goldman Sachs and Vodafone have taken almost exactly that tack in the UK recently. In the Vodafone case, they dodged tax illegally for a few years, fought it in court for as long as they could (a few more years), then only had to cough up the original amount, with no interest or fines -- basically because they were pally with David Hartnett, the head of HMRC. Hence swindling the taxpayer out of billions of GBP.

gaius• 14 years ago

That's not really accurate - they merely interpreted ambiguities in the tax law in the most favourable way for themselves (and paid all the tax that was due... In Luxembourg, another EU country). Google do this (in Ireland). Hell, The Guardian, the most left-wing paper in the UK, does all its financial affairs offshore (really: http://order-order.com/2009/02/02/guardians-tax-hypocrisy-is...). They pay 0.3% of their profits in tax. 0.3%.

A similar case is ongoing now (Gregg's the bakers) but bizarrely public opinion seems to have come down on the opposite side this time.

loso• 14 years ago

I've posted about my disdain of the practices by the RIAA before and this is only just a digital example of what they have been doing for years. I've spoke about this before on this site so I will not be detailed as I have been in the past.

In the past, record companies would send promotional materials to the DJ's. Their objective was for you to play the material on your radio show, at parties, and on your mixtape. They would explicitly say mixtape because for a long time that was how hip hop was promoted. They would do this through a third party who would cover a region of the country, meeting all of the DJ's.

Every few months, the RIAA would send government agents to arrest people who were selling these same mixtapes. So even though you were getting the wink and the nod to put the music on your mixtape, they would then turn around and use the fact that their music was on your mixtape to try & sue or arrest you.

I was never arrested or sued but I refuse to help promote people who would pull shady practices like this. A big reason why I'm a programmer and not a DJ now.

Its no surprise to see them up to their same antics. I just hate how entrenched they are in both parties of government.

Feds Seized Hip-Hop Site for a Year, Waiting for Proof of Infringement

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