Feds Mistakenly Shut Down Popular Blog For Over A Year
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Almost every track posted to sites like these are released by the artists themselves (or by their labels). Many hip-hop blogs (including the two I linked) will not post songs if they weren't legitimately authorized by the artists (e.g. if a track was stolen and leaked on the web).
Something you won't ever see are full albums. These sites aren't designed to replace album sales, they actually encourage them. They will only link to individual songs or freely released mixtapes.
(Also, you'll note that a lot of the music posted is from unsigned artists. A lot of newer rappers actually rose to prominence after having their music posted on these sites.)
There are many, many sites that willingly infringe on copyright and the government has good reason for shutting down. This was not one of them.
PS. For more information on how music gets released to these blogs, read this excellent piece, also by Techdirt:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101222/02112912376/more-b...
Or maybe, the notion of copyright police is stupid. Have we caught all the bad-guys and evil-doers in this world, and all that's left is COPYRIGHT abuse? I mean, what about all those terrorists who hate us for our freedom. Yet, we have enough resources left over to shut down some poor dudes blog? I feel safer all-ready!
Getting rid of the freedoms, I mean. Then the terrorist will not have a reason to hate you anymore.
Sorry for the sarcasm.
Congress just got done bankrupting this country 800 times over, you think they are worried about some pennies lost by some company due to copyright? It's about power.
- Personal morals (i.e. voting against gay marriage or evolution because their religion dictates it)
- Pandering to corporate interests for campaign money (or votes in the case of strong unions)
- Supporting their constituents (or at least appearing to). This can take the form of pandering to corporate interests so that said corporations open up their new offices within said Congresspersons constituency (i.e. bringing new jobs into the area!). It can also take the form of voting on crap laws to look 'tough on crime' or 'tough on child porn' or whatever.
I doubt very much that many of the people in Congress see it as a 'power grab' even if that is essentially what it is.
How would an outside copyright enforcer know that? In a world where companies send takedowns to YouTube over videos that they uploaded, it seems like it's not enough to be legal — sites need a way to prove that they're posing authorized content.
"It's so hard for us to enforce our copyrights, so just give us the ability to point the finger at anyone, and have them (and their business) forcibly thrown off the Internet until they prove their innocence."
That's way too much power.
Those familiar with Nick Davies' Flat Earth News[0] will know that copyright is a prime candidate for a flat earth story. The lobbyist angle is so pervasive that it has, to the media at large, become a fundamental truth.
Correct.
Well, for one, there is no such thing as "an outside copyright enforcer." The only people allowed to complain at all about a song's presence on a website are the people who own the copyright. That's it.
Do they really? IIRC, every case of outsourced "enforcement" has resulted in failure. What successes should I be remembering?
For example, in NJ, if you're found in possession of a firearm, you are assumed to be in violation of this state's gun control laws unless you can prove that you acquired the gun in accordance with State laws.
How doing all this is legal is still beyond me. I hope someone SOMEWHERE is planning to sue the living crap out of these asshats.
It was, admittedly, way too optimistic for the government to assume every seized domain would work this way. But for them to assume this one specific one would work that way is actually depressingly likely.
Governments illegally seize stuff all the time, especially when investigating anything drug-related. They can seize and auction off your stuff basically even on suspicion of it being bought with drug money.
What happens if it wasn't? Well, they owe you money back if your lawyer is good enough to make that happen.
I dunno, if it was my site, I would ask that my lawyer sue to the government to get the site back, and make the government prove that another judge was already handling it.
It's almost comforting in a way - at least truly terrible laws don't just slip in unnoticed and get established without us noticing. Their bad effects get manifested almost straight away.
And then nothing changes anyway. Telecoms immunized, torturers not prosecuted, etc. Yay?
If C is too large, you could improve the scheme by adding another sign-off to increase it to (C/N)^3, as well as by punishing the original requester and anybody who approves along the way when a corrupt decision is caught.
Isn't the real story the government put a company out of business for no reason? They took a "top 10" website in a category and shut it down for a year, allowing their competitors an unfair advantage. No due process, no communication, not even a case number. They picked a random company and put it out of business.
I guess that's not protected by the constitution.
U.S. Constitution, 5th Amendment
Sadly.
And under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, taking away property without due process is forbidden.
There's some evidence around that the government does consider rap and hip-hop to be, in a variety of cases, a potential threat on the order of political speech. In particular, a number of artists have ongoing files with the FBI.
The supposed reason is that if you had to pick one artform with the highest potential to start widespread political action in a short time, it would probably be music. And one of the demographics that presents a significant potential political threat to established order (ie large-scale city riots) it is the audience for rap and hip hop.
The thing I couldn't believe was that I'd never posted a track I hadn't gotten approved by the artist; I'd estimate 70% was sent to me by promoters, artists, or the label themselves. If it wasn't, it was likely found on another blog and I only let readers download content that was available for free from the artist themselves.
Totally ridiculous. Trying to get a response for their grounds was impossible, and I eventually had to switch ISPs and rebuild all my sites.
Music blogger in general are huge proponents of driving money to artists; either by putting them on the map or literally driving sales. If you're lucky enough to collect attention on the aggregators you can be pretty sure that your posts will get traffic, so finding a young band with little exposure is hugely gratifying.
Then the record label gorilla lawyers get in the way. Really sad state of affairs.
It seems to me that the thing that is needed most is an even-more distributed internet system, so that things like DNS and ISPs cannot be controlled by governments.
A peer-to-peer DNS system and someway of easily setting yourself up as an ISP would mean that this type of intervention would be impossible.
There are really not that many ISPs and fewer yet you would have to control.
The lack of due process is what is most disturbing. Someone (the Government in this case) can accuse one of a crime, but they have to prove it. Hijacking a domain and not producing evidence on why it was hijacked and not following the proper procedure which is outlined by the law and finally hiding behind the Government blanket of 'no' is simply wrong and must not be allowed to happen again.
To me this read as abuse of power by certain employees of the Government. Not allowing due process is illegal and I hope that Dajaz1's lawyers will get to the bottom of this.
You could, quite literally, have your domain taken away tomorrow.
Litigating an entire case ex parte and sealing the record so that the accused never even finds out what they were accused of should be quite troubling to anyone who believes in due process.
seems like definition of due process has been changed, secretly to avoid unnecessary disturbance to the public peace and enjoyment.
The domain was taken by ICE and its owner was deprived of any use of it, all while it hosted an image proclaiming the former owner to be a criminal of some sort.
In short, a thing does not need to be tangible for it to be property.
Everything is not right here. This is pretty basic stuff though, an accused man deserves to face his accusers, who is accused? The whole story is just better when there is an actual victim of the government tyranny. I expect it has something to do with payola but .... the feds will never defend themselves and who knows how much traffic this site is going to get now.
I would expect lawyers to have some kind of recourse if things obviously are not going the way the law intended them to, instead of simply getting "no" for an answer. But IANAL.
Regardless, I think your thesis is false. A lot of the powers we've taken away from government lately (regulation of financial services, regulation of financial markets, regulation of campaign contributions) have made us worse off, and specifically have made it easier for RIAA to buy legislation like this.
The current form of government allows people to elect charlatans and fools. That's not because the population is stupid. On the contrary, a democratic system required the population to be unusually educated & informed, while always deciding to vote in our long-term interest. In other words, the democratic system requires the impossible.
Our civilization relies on extreme specialization and deep division of labor, not that everyone knows everything.
Regardless, I think your thesis is false. A lot of the powers we've taken away from government lately (regulation of financial services, regulation of financial markets, regulation of campaign contributions) have made us worse off, and specifically have made it easier for RIAA to buy legislation like this.
Regulatory capture means that regulatory framework aren't necessary free of corruption. It just means we ought to be smarter how we devise regulations or lack thereof, as sometime doing nothing is better than corporations gaining control of the law.
If anything, the government are in bed with the bankers.
So you would rather live under an absolute monarchy? An enlightened dictatorship? Oligarchy? Theocracy? Which form of government, extant or extinct, would you prefer over the western democratic republic?
We were supposed to have one of those, but the Constitutional limitations seem to have atrophied. See, for example, the overuse of the "Interstate Commerce Clause"; the rotting of the 10th Amendment; Kelo, Raich, and so forth...
Your parent post is absolutely correct about the major flaw in a democracy, and despite your insinuation, this is not, I believe, an unfixable problem.
The problem with every "clean slate" redesign I've ever seen is that it runs into bootstrapping issues. If bootstrapping a new form of government was so obvious or easy, it'd have been done by now.
This isn't going to be rehashing the Glass-Steagall myth, is it? See, e.g., [1]
regulation of campaign contributions
Isn't this in itself a repudiation of democracy? We're not talking here about Blagojevich-style corruption in the election process. If you're worrying about campaign contributions, that boils down to how much advertising a campaign can buy. If you're worried about a candidate advertising a lot, that's pretty much a vote of no-confidence in your fellow Americans' ability to weigh options and vote rationally.
Also, if you're one of those people horrified that corporations can now contribute to campaigns, can you tell me where the line should be drawn? I'm sure you don't object to my right to contribute to a campaign, nor my right to pool money with a friend to do so. If two of us can do so, why not, say, my whole club (e.g., my hypothetical flying club wants to have elected the guy who promises to grant a permit to expand the airport in town)? As this scales up, at some point we need a formal structure to organize things, which is legally recognized by a corporation; why can't my incorporated flying club make a contribution?
[1] http://blog.heritage.org/2008/09/22/the-glass-steagall-myth/
This same argument also disproves the idea of giving personal tax breaks on large incomes as apposed to corporate tax breaks for small businesses. AKA middle management don't create jobs so tax breaks targeting 'job creators' that include them are misnamed.
Edit: The above is a position piece just like those people at the Heritage Foundation are paid to create. There is nothing wrong with suggesting you find credible sources that are not simply spouting propaganda.
I didn't provide anything deeper because this has been rehashed many times, and those claiming that G-S is what allowed the crisis have never offered anything of substance in those previous discussions.
But if you insist on more meat, consider (from the original citation [1]):
the evidence so far shows that Gramm-Leach-Bliley has helped soften the blow to taxpayers by allowing commercial banks to take over trouble investment firms. Just look at which organization’s have failed:
Bear Stearns was an investment bank before it was sold to JP Morgan Chase (which includes a commercial bank).
Fannie Mae were Freddie Mac were government sponsored entities before the government bought them.
Lehman Brothers was an investment bank before it want bankrupt.
Merrill Lynch was an investment bank befor it was sold to Bank of America (which is a commercial bank).
AIG is an insurance company with no commercial banking division.
Remember, Glass-Steagal was passed to protect commercial banks from failure by forbidding them from investment bank practices like trading in securities and underwriting stocks and bonds. As you can see above non of the failed institutions are commercial banks that got in trouble through risky investment banking. Instead, it is the commercial banks that are providing some stability to the system by purchasing troubled investment banks. Without Gramm-Leach-Bliley they would not even be allowed to technically do this.
Or from a respected economist:
Many wise people are now recognizing that the repeal of Glass-Steagall was one of the few saving graces of the current crisis. [2]
Most of all, the Act enabled financial diversification and thus it paved the way for a number of mergers. Citigroup became what it is today, for instance, because of the Act. Add Shearson and Primerica to the list. So far in the crisis times the diversification has done considerably more good than harm. Most importantly, GLB made it possible for JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns and for Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch. It’s why Wachovia can consider a bid for Morgan Stanley. Wince all you want, but the reality is that we all owe a big thanks to Phil Gramm and others for pushing this legislation. Brad DeLong recognizes this and hail to him. Megan McArdle also exonerates the repeal of Glass-Steagall. [3]
[1] http://blog.heritage.org/2008/09/22/the-glass-steagall-myth/
[2] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/09/gla...
[3] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/09/did...
I'm sure you don't object to my right to contribute to a
campaign
And what's with the link to a citation-free Heritage blog post that, not surprisingly, begins with, "It has become an article of faith on the left [...]"? Next time, please link to an informative paper published by an organization like the AEA. Thanks.
One's ability to weigh options is predicated on the fact that people have awareness of the options and their implications in the first place. People don't have perfect knowledge even before millions of advertising dollars flood the market with misinformation about the options themselves, let alone the implications for same.
If you're truly interested in maintaining the integrity of our democracy and our discourse, it's hard to imagine why you'd be in favor of more unrestricted money. The fact is that vanishingly few people are wealthy enough to participate in this flavor of democracy, let alone make any sense of it.
"Isn't this in itself a repudiation of democracy?"
It's a strange sort of democracy you have here, where some voices are obviously more equal than others.
"This isn't going to be rehashing the Glass-Steagall myth, is it? See, e.g., [1]"
Wow. The future more than a little pwned this guy. What about the billions of dollars BoA and JP Morgan took from the gov't? How about WaMu? And in what universe CDOs, et al, not risky investments?
My understanding about Glass-Steagall isn't so much that it directly led to the crisis, although for all I know maybe there's some intricacy there that I'm missing. Rather it allowed banks to use depositors' money to play Wall Street, and during the financial/housing bubble over the last decade or so, this meant you could become fantastically rich. So you make money, you buy up other banks, and you become progressively closer to "too big to fail."
AIUI, more and smaller banks -> more resilience, more diffuse risk rather than big, big chunks of concentrated risk in a few, critical places.
My definition of democracy is that everyone gets an equal vote. I don't see where it relates to who can advocate with how loud a voice.
You haven't addressed my question about where, in the spectrum of single speaker to small groups up through corporations, the right to invest money in political speech ought to be curtailed.
So you make money, you buy up other banks, and you become progressively closer to "too big to fail." ... more and smaller banks -> more resilience, more diffuse risk rather than big, big chunks of concentrated risk
I appreciate your reply here. It's thoughtful, and you're the first one I've encountered that has actually tried to put some meat behind the standard talking point. So in my book, you've got an upvote for engaging in a principled debate, even if I disagree with you.
The thing is, G-S did not prevent banks from becoming too big to fail. It prevented them from diversifying. So if G-S were still in place, there's no reason to believe that the banks would have been any smaller. It just would have ensured that the banks didn't have sufficient diversifying to ride out any problems. If you look at my citation above, you'll see that this is exactly what happened. There were giant non-diversified banks that were failing, while those that did diversify, thanks to Gramm-Leach-Bliley, were able to weather the storm.
So how does it come about that you interpret support for restrictions on political campaigning as an attack on democracy? You can't have it both ways: either democracy is just about giving everyone one vote, in which case nothing wpietri [EDITED to add: or wonderzombie] said can possibly be taken to be at all opposed to it; or it's concerned more broadly with enabling and/or trusting people to vote rationally in the light of the best available information, in which case it's obviously not undemocratic (though it might turn out to be wrong) to want to regulate possible sources of misinformation.
> You haven't addressed my question about where [...] the right to invest money in political speech ought to be curtailed.
Your implicit argument seems to be this: If you can't point to an obviously correct place to draw the line, then no line should be drawn anywhere. I think this argument is hopelessly wrong; there are thousands of cases where you have a continuum with something obviously reasonable at one end, something obviously unacceptable at another, and no obviously correct place to draw a line.
However, here is one proposal that seems reasonable to me: Individuals and corporations can both invest money in political speech, but the amount any individual or any individual corporation is allowed to put in is limited to (some credible estimate of) the largest amount a not-entirely-crazy person on a roughly-median income would be prepared to put in. (The problem with letting corporations run political advertisements isn't that there's something especially evil about corporations; it's that corporations have a colossal amount of money and a great deal to gain or lose from political outcomes, and that their interests are not obviously well aligned with those of the general public. If IBM or General Motors or ExxonMobil can only spend $5k/year on politics, they can't do much harm.)
If you believe that the additional political speech that greater donations would allow, would break the democratic process, then you have little faith in the ability of voters to weigh the facts and cast a rational vote. If you don't think that voters can do this, then it seems to me that you don't believe that democracy can really work.
I'm not saying that the people who want to limit political contributions are opposed to democracy. I'm saying that it reveals that they have little confidence that democracy can work.
Your implicit argument seems to be this: If you can't point to an obviously correct place to draw the line, then no line should be drawn anywhere.
No. I'm saying that for such restrictions to be implementable, there must be a line defined somewhere. If you want to make a rule, you've got to add something to it that still allows me, or me and my buddies, or whatever, to still make political contributions.
Secondarily, I'm hoping that expressing that distinction might reveal more about what these people are trying to accomplish (or not accomplish, as the case might be). Sort of a black box test.
Individuals and corporations can both invest money in political speech, but the amount any individual or any individual corporation is allowed to put in is limited to (some credible estimate of) the largest amount a not-entirely-crazy person
So you're prohibiting me from pooling money with friends in order to send a message of our own. Is that your intent?
(Please note that there are several different people in this discussion. My opinion is not necessarily the same as wpietri's or wonderzombie's.)
I think that how well democracy works depends on all kinds of things. How well informed voters are is certainly one of them. Voters, being human beings, are demonstrably vulnerable to misinformation. Therefore, it is possible that taking measures to reduce misinformation may make democracy work better.
And I am entirely at a loss to see how anyone can seriously regard this sort of position as not believing that democracy can "really work", whatever the hell that's meant to mean.
> for such restrictions to be implementable, there must be a line defined somewhere.
For sure. But how do you get from there to suggesting that anyone who thinks there should be some limits is somehow obliged to have a specific place where they think the line needs to go, still less obliged to tell you where that place is?
> might reveal more about what these people are trying to accomplish (or not accomplish, as the case might be).
Jiminy.
> you're prohibiting me from pooling money with friends in order to send a message of our own.
I'm not prohibiting anything, and the proposal I made would obviously not have the effect you describe -- and this sort of rhetoric is one reason why I don't in the least blame anyone who declines to answer your tell-me-where-the-line-goes demands.
However: my suggestion is that you and your friends are welcome to send your money wherever you want, but that any single legal entity acting as a single entity only gets to play with as much money as a typical person could afford to use for influencing the political process.
The sort of corporate activity that some people worry about is not remotely like you and your friends pooling some money.
Nicely put!
Just going to point out that a corporation isn't just a "large group" - it is a government-created entity that enjoys vastly reduced liability for individual members of that group.
I thought that a major reason for the 1st Amendment was to allow for us to stand up on soap boxes and pontificate to anyone willing to listen.
What if I have a vested interest in the outcome? You don't see this going down a black hole of game theory?
Your apparent theory that too-big-to-fail corporations should be allowed to play heads-I-win-tails-you-lose with taxpayer money (and then buy politicians with the winnings) is comical.
Isn't this in itself a repudiation of democracy?
No, it's honoring the practical core and the historical roots of it.
If you're worried about a candidate advertising a lot, that's pretty much a vote of no-confidence in your fellow Americans' ability to weigh options and vote rationally.
If you actually believe that advertisements are about delivering information to inform a rational decision-making process, I can't help you.
tell me where the line should be drawn?
Personally, I'm for public funding of elections based on achieved milestones. With pretty modest amounts of funding. Forcing information on people made sense when information was scarce and difficult to get. Any voter with an internet connection can be as informed as they want to be today. Anybody who has an opinion can publish it with worldwide reach.
why can't my incorporated flying club make a contribution?
Maybe because the end of your slippery slope is oligarchy and/or crony capitalism masquerading as representative government?
I don't recall advocating that those corporations should have been bailed out. Indeed, I believe just the opposite. The market was malfunctioning back in '07, but the way to solve that problem isn't by rewarding those doing it. The correct fix, painful as it might be, is to allow it fail.
Maybe because the end of your slippery slope is oligarchy and/or crony capitalism masquerading as representative government?
Perhaps my previous statement clarifies that I'm not a supporter of corporatism at all. I'm opposed to the government grabbing additional powers. That's it.
Glass-Steagal would only be good because it keeps FDIC-insured money from being used for gambling, which is what securities trading is. One could argue we don't need FDIC insurance, and in fact, we shouldn't have regulation and monopoly of currency by the government.
As far as campaign contribution regulation, it's a violation of free speech to tell me how I can spend my money to talk. I can go on if you really care to know how CFR is a bad idea.
I want this country to "not suck" and respect the freedoms of its citizens. Several simple, yet fundamental things need to change:
-Repeal the 17th amendment -Our voting system for the legislature -The scope of federal government needs drastically reduced.
or maybe, we need to figure out a good solution. problem is, that's not easy and requires domain knowledge and critical thinking. its a lot easier just to say, well i have this one solution that will solve all the problems.
* I mean this in a literal way, that government should be no larger than necessary and no more intrusive than required. The goal is to get to a point where we can engineer intrusive, large government structures out of the picture. For example, if we were to have state and local governments running the last mile telephone network but allowing services to be provided by a host of competing businesses, we'd have a freer market with less regulation. But it would require some use of eminent domain to achieve in a way that neither party would support.
Additionally one thing I have found interesting is how folks who supported Obama during the campaign when he promised to reduce the impact of state secrets, create a more open executive, etc. have more or less continued to follow him (more often than not) as he has done the near exact opposite of his promises. Sure we can argue why Gitmo is still operating as a prison, but the executive has made an about face on the "war on terror" (after about a day in office) which quite astounding, though not as surprising as the willingness of Democratic supporters to go along with it.
Of course the excesses of the Bush and Obama years are probably why we have both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall St, but that's a discussion for another time.
This is an example of government corporatism, acting at the behest of a single entity.
Socialists are supposed to hate business, right?
Oh that guideline would never be abused, would it?
Brief searching online only turns up people talking about this document, but I can't seem to find it. Are you sure it exists?