[x-pubpol] Hip-Hop Copyright Case Had Little Explanation

[Joly MacFie]

* Incidentally my recent video of Andrew Bridges is at
http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3302

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/business/media/hip-hop-site-dajaz1s-copyright-case-ends-in-confusion.html

May 6, 2012
Hip-Hop Copyright Case Had Little Explanation
By BEN SISARIO


Over Thanksgiving weekend 2010, a popular hip-hop blog, Dajaz1.com,
was shut down as part of a sweep by federal authorities of dozens of
Web sites suspected of copyright infringement and selling counterfeit
goods. A year later, the government dropped its case against Dajaz1
and returned the site to its owner. But why?

Little explanation was given at the time, and the answer is still
unclear. But court documents released last week offer a window into
the investigation, and reveal some of the finger-pointing between the
government and the industry groups that push for copyright
enforcement.

Dajaz1 attracted an audience in part by posting links to songs before
their official release. In its original investigation, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland
Security, said this action violated copyright. But the owner of
Dajaz1, a Queens hip-hop fan who goes by the name Splash — and whose
real name, according to the court documents, is Andre Nasib — said
that artists and record companies had sent him the songs for
promotional purposes.

The papers, unsealed after a request by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, the California First Amendment Coalition and Wired
magazine, show that prosecutors in the case made three secret requests
for more time to file paperwork on the seizure of the site. As part of
those requests, the government’s investigator said he was awaiting
information about the content on Dajaz1 from “rights holders” and the
Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group that had
pointed the authorities to the sites in the first place.

The government apparently never received the evidence it needed,
because late last year it dropped the case against Dajaz1, which is
now back online.

But in a statement over the weekend, the recording industry group
suggested that it had done what had been asked of it: “Rights holders
and the R.I.A.A. were requested to assist law enforcement and made
every attempt to do so in a complete and prompt manner,” the statement
said.

Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement
said Sunday that government officials had followed all proper
procedures in the case of Dajaz1, which was one of more than 760 sites
seized.

Andrew P. Bridges, the lawyer for Dajaz1, wrote in an e-mail that his
client “appreciates” the case being dropped.

“That exoneration, however,” Mr. Bridges continued, “did not remedy
the harms caused by a full year of censorship and secret proceedings —
a form of ‘digital Guantánamo’ — that knocked out an important and
popular blog devoted to hip-hop music and has nearly killed it.


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