Court: Domain Seizures Don't Violate Free Speech

Since last year we've been following the story of how domains are being seized by the U.S. government for allegedly facilitating online piracy. The seizures received a legal challenge back in June from the owners of one such site, and now a U.S. federal court has returned a ruling in the matter: "District Court Judge Paul Crotty decided to deny Puerto 80's request, which means the domain will remain in the hands of the U.S. Government. The Judge argues that seizing Rojadirecta's .com and .org domains does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. 'Puerto 80's First Amendment argument fails,' the Judge writes. 'Puerto 80 alleges that, in seizing the domain names, the Government has suppressed the content in the "forums" on its websites, which may be accessed by clicking a link in the upper left of the home page. The main purpose of the Rojadirecta websites, however, is to catalog links to the copyrighted athletic events — any argument to the contrary is clearly disingenuous.' The judge further ruled that the claimed 32% decline in traffic and the subsequent harm to Puerto 80s business is not an issue as visitors can still access the site through foreign domains. Puerto 80's argument, that users may not be aware of these alternatives, was simply waived."

Big shock: Govt court rules in Govt favor

[hsmith]

Color me surprised that the Government sides in its own favor in its own cases.

Re:Oh come on

[mcmonkey]

How can forcefully seizing a domain name, which is not criminal in any way, not be a violation of freedom of speech.

Easy. The motivation for seizing the domain was not speech.

If I take my manifesto and print it on the side of my car, and then go out and run red lights and ignore all sorts of traffic regulations, plow through a couple farmers markets, when I get pulled over and my car taken away, I can't plead freedom of speech.

Perhaps if I otherwise obey the rules of the road and it's obvious I'm getting pulled over strictly for the words written on my car, then I can make that case.

I don't know all the gritty details of this case of domain seizure. I'm not going to posit whether the seizure was right or wrong. But I think it's clear what prompted the seizure is not "speech."

And no. Just because something can be spoken or put on a t-shirt does not make it speech. I am free to stand on a street corner and speak a series of 1s and 0s that when encoded in a computer can be interpreted as video. That does not mean linking to a copyrighted video for which I do not have the copy right is protected by free speech.

(Now if I linked to an audio file of me speaking those 1s and 0s, and just happened to include information on how to encode that audio of me speaking in to a playable video file, then you have an interesting case.)

There may be many reasons for this seizure to be wrong or illegal or unprecedented. But Free Speech doesn't seem to be one of them.

Re:A comment.........

[sortadan]

I read enough to get my blood boiling as this topic always does.
[rant]
For all the world ICE looks like a puppet for the RIAA / MPAA and operates with little to no oversight or recourse for those they choose to target. It should be front page news that domains are being seized with nothing more than a bit of false/misleading testimony from an ICE agent, and a signature from a judge that knows nothing about the inter-webs and the magical tubes that are stealing things. All this is going to do is make honest businesses fear having their domain and servers under US jurisdiction.
Hosting with we-dare.net or other offshore locations is going to become par for the course for small upstart companies ("engines of the economy") until they get acquired by google or microsoft and have an army of lobbyist, lawyers and a patent trove to fend off the bull shit that now stands between a good idea and the marketplace in the US.
[/rant]
It gives me hope that people like Sen. Wyden [senate.gov] are out there fighting the good fight though...