By now, you’ve heard how the United States Department of Justice seized the domain names of several commercial websites that were accused of engaging in counterfeiting. Among these were some file sharing sites. If the seizure shocks your idea of fair play, you’re not alone. How exactly did the U.S. government seize these domain names, without giving the site owners a chance to defend themselves?
Ars Technica has a fascinating article detailing the seizures. In short, the government filed an affidavit to support the seizure request. In that affidavit, the government trotted out data and statistics it had received from those in the movie and music business. As Ars Technica reported,
[Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent Andrew] Aeynolds doesn’t attempt to hide his obvious reliance on the content industries; his affidavit is littered with comments like, “according to the MPAA…” and “based on my participation in the investigation and my discussion with MPAA representatives…” In the end, ICE got its way; a US Magistrate Judge signed off on the seizure order, and the domain names rapgodfathers.com, torrent-finder.com, rmx4u.com, dajaz1.com, and onsmash.com were seized and redirected to an ICE warning image.
Even more disturbing, the seizures do not appear to be part of any criminal case. If they were, then perhaps an argument could be made that the seizures were similar to a seizure of physical property as part of a criminal investigation. As Ars Techicna noted, though,
the case was closed after the order was executed. In searching the federal courts, we can find no evidence that these five sites are actually being prosecuted. The domains were simply seized, and while it did happen with a court order, the sites were not given any chance to respond and none appears to be forthcoming.
Wow. Don’t confuse my feelings on theft of an author’s work. It stinks. If we want content creators to keep producing content, we need to find a way to make sure that they get paid. Freeloaders are only shooting themselves in the foot in the long run.
But is this really how we want our government to go about doing business? Should our government be able to seize a domain name, without giving a site owner a chance to defend himself?
Shame on you, freeloaders. But even more so, shame on our government officials. You’ve stained the reputation of the United States, and conveyed to the world, rightly or wrongly, that our leaders whore themselves out to an industry willing to pay enough money.
Now that I’ve effectively insulted those on both sides of the argument, let me know in the comments if I’m missing the boat here. Where do you fall in this debate?
Undue process: how Uncle Sam seized BitTorrent domain names [Ars Technica]
Google Turns On the Torrent Censor
In December of 2010, Google announced that it was planning to make “copyright work better online.” One of those steps was to remove “terms that are closely associated with piracy” from autocompletes, making it slightly more difficult for those looking for ways to find less than legit files to use their service. It seems that Google has made good on its promise, removing several search terms — and portions of search terms — from both autocomplete and Google Instant.
While some may cheer this move on Google’s part, there are several parties who are finding this censorship to be unfair. 40Tech has taken an anti-piracy stance on more than one occasion, but we are also not fans of censorship. Companies like RapidShare, Megaupload, and BitTorrent are most definitely used by those participating in shady file-sharing, but they are also used for legitimate, and often useful, purposes, yet these sites can no longer be found via Google’s autocomplete or Instant features. Is it fair that they be given selective treatment when, as a representative of RapidShare states: “A search engine’s results should reflect the users’ interests and not Google’s or anybody else’s?”
The selection of banned terms seems to be arbitrary, as not all well-known torrent sites are affected — you can still find The Pirate Bay, for instance. Anything using the search term “torr,” however, has been removed, along with several other terms and bits of terms. This is unfortunate for anyone doing some quick research on the torr symbol (a non-SI unit of pressure), or the high-IQ society Torr.org, or Torr the thin film and nanotechnology company, or anyone with the last name of Torr — which shows that Google’s approach is somewhat less than perfect.
Image from TorrentFreak
At this point, only autocomplete and Instant are affected. You can still find whatever you might be looking for when you press enter — but good luck if you are looking for something legitimate that incorporates one of Google’s banned terms and are hoping for some suggested results.
What do you think of Google’s approach here? Is it a good thing — or is it yet another form of relatively pointless censorship? Will making torrents a little bit harder to search for on Google actually have any impact on piracy at all? Let us know in the comments.