Comment by nirvana | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nirvana | Hacker News Reader

I find this extremely alarming. I don't engage in piracy or serve files or anything like that. But I consider domain names to be a form of property, and to see the US government taking property without giving he owners recourse is extremely troubling.

The US system is founded in innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The requirements for this proof have been laid out and refined over 200 years. I think those requirements are not strict enough, but these seizures don't even include an actual trial, and thus deny the victims the right to defend their position, or make their case before a judge.

Earlier this year I heard about a hip-hop blog that was seized which engaged in no piracy... though it did offer songs that the record companies had given him as a form of promotion.

So, not only is this being done without due process, but it is being done incompetently to boot!

I have zero expectation that this won't become-- like the "drug war" and the "war on terrorism" -- an ever widening net to where it effectively becomes seizure of politically-incorrect domains (e.g.: write a post critical of the government on your blog? have no blog the next day...)

This is literally a form of government censorship of speech. Even if some speech is "illegal" (I don't think even pirate spreading domains are illegal, though there is a good civil case against them) the act of speaking is protected, and this right is acknowledged by the first amendment.

Indeed. Where's the due process? Where's the right to a trial? The right to face ones accusers and see the evidence presented?

You can sue to get your domain back, but that doesn't seem like a fair process.

They're seized pursuant to a warrant issued by a Federal court. The owner is more than welcome to challenge the warrant, but why would you? A DNS name is cheap and challenging a Federal warrant is not.

And this is the problem, the whole "we're the government, we'll do what we like, legal or not, and make the process of challenging it _technically_ possible, but practically unusable for regular people due to the cost."

This is to me, very similar the whole #OWS movement's complaint - justice for all _who can afford it_...

Where do I sign up to the "Occupy the Root Nameservers Movement"?

> This is literally a form of government censorship of speech. Even if some speech is "illegal" (I don't think even pirate spreading domains are illegal, though there is a good civil case against them) the act of speaking is protected, and this right is acknowledged by the first amendment.

No it's not. It's analogous to the police acting on a warrant to close a store front selling counterfeit goods. This is something that occurs constantly in large cities all over the country.

If a judge would ever issue a warrant to remove a DNS name based upon speech, and it's upheld, we have bigger problems than seizing DNS names.

I'm not sure what a "DNS name" is exactly. DNS stands for Domain Name Service, and I can't figure out for the life of me what it is you are referring to.

The burden of proof for these seizures was far less than a judge-issued warrant, which is the problem with which most of _us_ are concerned. Slowly eroding constitutionally protected rights reminds me of the boiling frog that never jumps out of the pot as the temperature is raised ever-so-slightly.

I think he meant DNS zone.

The burden of proof for these seizures was far less than a judge-issued warrant

Meaning what, exactly?

  It's analogous to the police acting on a warrant to 
  close a store front selling counterfeit goods

There is no warrant. This is not a civilian police force acting legally. This is an arm of the federal government acting unilaterally implementing authoritarian control over public communications and information.

I'm amazed that Americans are comfortable with their leaders going down this road. It's been done before and has rarely ended well.

There is no warrant.

Yes, there is. The issue is whether anybody should have the power to grant such a warrant, not that warrants were not obtained.

What warrant? Nobody is being charged with a crime. The government is just shutting down websites it wants to without any due process.

What warrant?

A seizure warrant, as signed by a judge. (Compare "search warrant", "arrest warrant").

Nobody is being charged with a crime.

That's not what a warrant is. Warrants are issued on the basis of probable cause. You probably understand this already with regard to search warrants: a prosecutor doesn't have to have filed charges against a person before the police can obtain a search warrant in the course of investigating the crime. The police only need to show that there is cause to conduct the search.

But more to the point of people not being charged: I'm not conversant in every relevant detail, but I presume the reason nobody is being charged in these cases is that the owners of these domains are unknown and outside of the US, besides. But again: nobody being charged doesn't mean warrants weren't issued for the seizures. The two are not the same thing.

It confuses me that this particular comment was found objectionable by at least six people. You guys are weird, sometimes.

Here is an example of a warrant of seizure issued by the United States District Court, Southern District of New York to "Any Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent or any other law enforcement officer authorized by law" to seize certain domains:

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/06/30/Warrant.pdf

I apologize for not expending the energy to produce a copy of every warrant for every domain ever seized, but I am not personally burdened with such indomitable doubts as to their existence that others seem to be.

Thanks for finding this. I was under the impression the FBI was just moving in like thugs.

Still reading this warrant, it is so vague what the charges are. And I wonder, among all the people that had domains seized, were any found not-guilty and had their domains returned? Somehow I doubt it.

Please don't assume every American is comfortable with this. On the contrary, I and most of my friends are fucking pissed. I've written my representatives, but I doubt it will do any good. I feel pretty helpless honestly.

Of course writing to your representatives will do no good.

This whole world is completely insane. "Your" representatives couldn't fix it even if they wanted to. Revolution is the only way out of this mess.

What kind of revolution? Why do you think this time things will end up different, when revolutions have brought us to where we are?

Revolutions (and maybe more importantly: the threat of revolt) have brought us quite far from the days of absolute rulers that could do whatever they liked to the population.

In other words: things will end up different because revolutions (amongst other change agents) have brought us to where we are, which still is a lot better than were we started.

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy."

This is something that occurs constantly in large cities all over the country.

From the horse's mouth: http://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/releases/2011/110316washingto...

19,959 seizures in FY2010, with an average value[1] of $9,425. In addition to things you might expect (footwear, pharmaceuticals, watches, optical media) this includes things like cigarettes and ball bearings. The report cites a 42% increase in seizures at express consignment/mail facilities due to "continued growth of websites that sell counterfeit and piratical merchandise", which goes some distance toward explaining why these domain seizures are being brought.

(Incidentally, there's plenty of ammo for "government gone wild" arguments in the report, but people that expect it to be about torrents will be surprised and/or bored. There's more to the world than the Internet.)

[1]:"Domestic Value", by which they mean the something like the street price, rather than the MSRP of the non-counterfeit good.

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