[x-pubpol] Unsealed Court Records Confirm that RIAA Delays Were Behind Year-Long Seizure of Hip Hop Music Blog

[Joly MacFie]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/unsealed-court-records-confirm-riaa-delays-were-behind-year-long-seizure-hip-hop

Now that the full court
records<https://www.eff.org/cases/matter-seizure-internet-domain-name-dajaz1com>
are
out, this seizure raises critical questions about the government’s use of
its new powers to shut down lawful speech in the form of domain seizures
for alleged copyright infringements. It also demonstrates the basic
unfairness of the processes and secrecy invoked here and possibly in
hundreds of other domain name seizures across the country.  For nearly a
year, the government muzzled Dajaz1.com – denying the blog’s author the
right to speak and the public’s right to read what was published there –
and then compounded matters by claiming extreme secrecy and blocking the
Dajaz1 and the public’s access to information about the case.

Equally troubling, the records confirm what was already suggested by the
initial affidavit used to obtain the seizure order: that ICE, and its
attorneys, are effectively acting as the hired gun of the content industry
at taxpayers' expense.  Instead of relying on rightsholders to determine
whether a seizure was appropriate, the government should have been
conducting its own thorough investigation.  If it had acted in anything
like good faith, it could have determined that the site wasn't a proper
target even before the seizure, or at least could have discovered and
rectified the mistake before a year had passed.

The whole story is, in a word, appalling.

-- 
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Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
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