How To Stop Domain Names Being Seized By The US Government | Hacker News Reader

How To Stop Domain Names Being Seized By The US Government

torrentfreak.com

77 pointsiwwr25 comments

http://torrentfreak.com/us-resume-file-sharing-domain-seizur...

"Rojadirecta is an unusual target for several reasons, not least because the site has been declared legal twice by Spanish courts. The site’s owners have previously fought a three year legal battle in Spain, which they won, but a single seizure warrant from US authorities has made this victory pointless."

"4: Avoid incorporating as a US business"

It's one thing if you are a big company, but if I was creating a startup and planning to incorporate in the near future do I (as a startup) want to consider incorporating in another country like Ireland?

good question. i'm wondering that myself.

Useful advice on how to actually get to the seized sites from a commenter there:

http://www.hm2k.com/posts/find-the-ip-address-of-a-seized-we...

That is really cool, but there are a couple of problems with this:

1. An IP can have many domains, (and a domain many IPs), so it may not resolve to the right page.

2. Many sites benefit from the network effect. Ten people seed, 100 download initially, then continue to seed, allowing 1000 to download, etc. Without mass adoption of snooping for who-is information people are basically going to move on anyways.

But I think I've thought a partial solution. What we want is two things: Have a significant portion of the semi-technical (a hacker's girlfriend or boyfriend, for example) internet population be able to get back to the site they want. Secondly we want the government to not be able to take down the server that we are communicating with once we found out where it is.

All that is really needed to make domain name seizure irrelevant is a little browser addon "IP History" or "Website Time Machine" or something that will passively remember where the IPs are of sites you've browsed. Each time you try to go to a URL the addon will make a check to see what percentage of the internet browsers have reverted to the old IP address. If this % goes greater than a threshold, say 0.5%, it can slide out a window saying "Some people have used the time machine on this page recently, are you sure this is what you want?"

It makes DNS a less distributed thing. I don't think manipulation would be all that much of a problem, (I can think or 3 counter measures right off the bat).

As for the IP problem, if this browser addon becomes widely used enough then it could support some sort of standard that admins could solve the one-ip-but-many-domains problem.

These are great recommendations and anybody starting up a web-based business should pay attention to them. I probably would have made a lot of unnecessary mistakes if I hadn't read this.

Nobody making a web-based business should care unless their business relies on showing people a bunch of ads on their way to pirate the latest movies etc.

Putting up a place on your website to receive DMCA takedown notices, having a policy in place, and responding swiftly seems like good practice for any app that accepts user-generated content.

Then where's HN's DMCA policy? Or are they just not worried that they'll turn into a link dump for tv shows and thus be targeted?

You can check if they have an agent registered by going here:

http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

It's a pain in the rear to find a given site because they give you PDFs and they're out of date, so I'm not going to look it up. You can find other hints on finding someone's registered agent here:

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/07/16/6-steps-to-find-a-...

So I don't know whether or not YC has one, but you do not get safe harbor protection if you don't have one. That means you can be blamed for something your users do.

Hopefully, HN's users won't make that into a problem, but as a pure business decision, it's unwise not to. Has anyone ever submitted news from the Las Vegas Review Journal? They're going around and suing people right now for that, looking in particular for people who don't have a registered DMCA agent and who can, therefore, be held liable for their users actions. HN links to tons of news sources. If that case pans out for them, I'd expect it to turn into a legal gold rush for enterprising lawyers. $105 to register your site is pretty cheap insurance.

IANAL. This is not legal advice. Copyright lawsuits are very expensive, due to the high statutory damages. Talking with a lawyer is cheap in comparison, so be sure to get proper legal advice before taking any legal action.

Nonsense. Read up on which sites the DHS has been shutting down and the sloppiness of their processes. Any site with any kind of user-generated content should seriously think of basing itself outside of the US.

Which specific sites has the DHS intervened with improperly?

They're claiming the right to shut down sites that link to infringing content, and using it to shut down hip-hop sites (and others).

From TechDirt:

"The Marketplace radio show from American Public Media spoke to Special Agent James Hayes from Homeland Security, who was apparently in charge of the "raids" (if you can call them that) that involved the seizing of domain names under the legally questionable theory that linking to infringing material is, by itself, criminal copyright infringement. I've yet to find any legal expert who seems to believe that the law actually says this anywhere."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110203/22422912958/homela...

The article you mentioned is real torrentfreak quality - some sexy hyperbole about Google being the biggest enabler for piracy, and an "innocent" victim.

The innocent victim is a link dump for mp3s from Snoop Dogg, 50 cent, Timbaland and a bunch of other artists.

Takes about 5 seconds to see their business model - get the traffic in by providing popular music they're going to have to remove... but not before they've made some money off it.

These guys have got it down to an art too - they actually upload the songs to a site that encourages "artists" to upload "their" songs and pays you when people download it inconveniently for free or conveniently via premium download accounts.

Apparently Snoop Dogg is so incredibly generous he wants them to be paid for giving away his music too - not just from the ads on their site, but from the download service as well.

But maybe these blogs are right and not just churning out fluff that converts well to ad impressions. I could be that jaded, maybe these really are impeccable sites, innocent victims, and not profiteering off piracy.

These sites would have no users if it wasnt for the highly valuable content that millions love and clamor for; content that cost millions to make and even more to market.

Overall by the looks of it, it's going to be increasingly hard to maintain and profit from sites like these. Maybe this will force us back to desktop software like limewire, but a modern version.

I've yet to find any legal expert who seems to believe that the law actually says this anywhere.

How about the judge who decided the 2600 DeCSS case? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/07/04/2600_withdraws_supre...

There were reports of one music blog where the allegedly infringing files had been provided by the labels themselves. I don't remember what blog it was, but they were reported to have hired a lawyer to fight it.

I have no way to check that, obviously, but it seems to me that it would be a waste of money to hire a lawyer if you had no case when you could simply register another domain outside of the USA for a lot less.

Also, there's the fact that similar accusations were made by Google/YouTube in their litigation with Viacom. You don't have to take Google's word for that, either. You can check the court filings and see that they did, in fact, remove the files that they themselves uploaded to Google from the litigation. Twice.

That was reported on Ars Technica, if memory serves, but I don't have a link handy.

> they did, in fact, remove the files that they themselves uploaded to Google from the litigation.

I meant to write "YouTube", not Google, there. But the point still stands.

The whole aspect of being guilty until proven innocent should give a future US-tied web businesses some pause to consider their choices.

The OP is paraphrasing:

First They came... - Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Only a moments thought should be enough to demonstrate why this should matter to anyone with a site 'web-based business' or no.

This is a perversion of the original meaning. The "angry TorrentFreak user's" version is essentially the same as:

First they came for the manufacturers of counterfeit products, and I didn't speak out because I didn't manufacture counterfeit products.

Then they came for those who served alcoholic beverages to six year olds, and I didn't speak up because I didn't do that.

Then they came for people who sold phony insurance products to seniors, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't selling phony insurance products.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Related article from a ccTLD perspective:

http://internetnz.net.nz/news/blog/2011/nz-right-choice-Kiwi...

"US authorities had begun another round of domain name seizures, this time against sites connected with sports streaming."

I'll just assume the fact that this is Superbowl Weekend is purely coincidence here...

It is sad, that a set of instructions on how to avoid unilateral seizure of your assets with no due process for engaging in speech on the internet involves "avoid any presence in the US at all costs, and follow US laws even if you are not doing business in the US."

It occurs to me that governments and computer programs are not that different. Both suffer immensely from code rot.

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