New US crime. Copyright linking.
p2pnet view P2P | Freedom:- This strikes really close to home —-
“Brian McCarthy ran a website, channelsurfing.net, that linked to various sites where you could watch online streams of TV shows and sports networks”, says a new item on Demand Progress.
Headlined ‘Newly Obtained Homeland Security Documents Reveal Radical Shift In Internet Policy’, a couple months ago the US government “seized his domain name and on Friday they arrested him and charged him with criminal copyright infringement — punishable by five years in prison”, it says, going on >>>
We just obtained a copy of the complaint … that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made against him — and they don’t even allege that he made a copy of anything! Just that he ran what they call a “linking website” which linked to various sites with copyrighted material. Under that sort of thinking, everyone who’s sent around a link to a copyrighted YouTube video is a criminal.
This is another shocking overreach by DHS and ICE — a steamship-era department that’s proving once again that it doesn’t understand the Internet. We need to push back — and fast — before they try to lock up more Americans.
PETITION TO JANET NAPOLITANO, DIRECTOR OF HOMELAND SECURITY, AND JOHN MORTON, DIRECTOR OF IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT: There’s nothing wrong or illegal about posting a link to a website. This is another shocking overreach by DHS and ICE: You need to drop the charges against Brian McCarthy right away.
If you’d like to sign the petition, click here.
But why does it give me pause?
I run a site packed with links and I’m also the defendant in a Canadian defamation lawsuit in which ex-Green Party of Canada official Wayne Crookes claims linking to an article is the same as publishing it.
The Supreme Court of Canada is presently deciding whether to allow Canadians to continue to enjoy online freedom of speech, or whether to allow Crookes to lock it up, tight.
I said to Dan Burnett, my pro bono lawyer immediately after December’s hearing, justice Louise Charron pulled it all together when she stated >>>
It seems to me that if we accept the position you’re putting forth [Crookes' lawyer] , then no one should ever hyperlink. Maybe I’m a chicken, but I would not dare create a hyperlink because there might be some defamatory material, and I’ll be stuck defending myself in court, and I cannot afford it : We’re sentencing the hyperlink to death, it seems to me.
The Supreme’s decision could arrive at any time this year, but if Crookes wins, it’ll turn the net in Canada into a mockery with the repercussions ricochetting around the world.
By the same token, if US president Barak Obama lets ICE get away with its effort to shut down sites anywhere on the say-so of a tiny handful of vested interest corporations, the results will be the same.
Definitely stay tuned.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
Demand Progress – Headlined ‘Newly Obtained Homeland Security Documents Reveal Radical Shift In Internet Policy, March 12, 2011
same as publishing it – Wayne Crookes: Epic Fail, December 8, 2010
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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March 11th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
we don’t give a shit about linking, we run our own servers off free fiber, extend it with free wifi for everyone, not like joe blow who runs this one out of germany, don’t have balls to run it in his own country or don’t know how, FREEDOM RULZ
March 11th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
homeland security is nothing but a private corporate illegal elite trash can as is all legal system, made by elites for elites.
we don’t give a shit about linking, we run our own servers off free fiber, extend it with free wifi for everyone, not like joe blow who runs this one out of germany, don’t have balls to run it in his own country or don’t know how, FREEDOM RULZ
March 11th, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Bub, the only reason Jon runs his servers out of Europe is that he can’t afford to run them here. So get your head out of your ass and realize that he’s not some poor slob that you can run over with your words. He’s a man who believes in his convictions and who runs this website for the sole purpose of educating and informing the public of the misuses and mishandling of information by the corporations whom you seem to revile as much or as little as you do him.
If it weren’t for people like Jon, then morons like you would run rampant and there are enuff of your type hiding behind the moniker of anonymous coward or readers write or even sam I am, and no matter what you call yourselves, defenders of freedom of speech, purveyors of the truth, the bottom line is you are nothing more than a new type of corporate troll. So go back under the bridge from whence you came and play in the mud of ignorance, denial and ineptitude.
March 11th, 2011 at 8:02 pm
@ Logan: Cliff’s actual company, multibox.be, is based in Belgium. But you’re right. He put a roof over my head, so to speak. And now he’s having his own problems — http://www.p2pnet.net/story/49857
Cheers!
March 11th, 2011 at 8:34 pm
The copywrong forces are once again pushing to try and get government to handle their problems. It’s cheaper on them if the taxpayers pay the bill.
However if they have their way, unopposed, then it is the end of the internet for the small guys and users. No one will post a link anywhere for fear that someone else with a different mindset will object and tote them to court with not civil charges but criminal ones.
The evidence barrier for criminal court was too stiff for the copywrong groups and so they went with the lower requirement that civil court has. This is another attempt at an end run around that little problem of “proof” in the courts while shifting the burden of payment to the tax payer.
ICE is doing a lot of reaching for straws in the attempt to placate the copywrong forces. The stretch is so much out of the bounds of law that once it is called to court to make good on the threats by someone with some money at hand it will by that time be so far out of reason that they will have a very hard time in court of even coming close to justifying it legally. Maybe that’s a good thing to ruin it’s reputation as a legal force. I’m sure all they will do is shuffle heads around, rename it with another silly acronym and continue on as if it was instantly reborn with the same duds running the same sorts of operations. The only good thing that might come out of such a move would be for the heads to realize that listening to the copywrong forces is the death knell of their jobs.
This is another attempt at getting their way. You’ll notice that none of the “education” attempts have changed anything in the last 10 years since sue’em all started. In fact most of society now thinks that it’s ok to download, just not ok to sell what’s been downloaded. In that statement society is choosing what is right and what is wrong, despite what the copywrong groups would have you believe. They understand inherently that selling such is wrong. They also refuse to obey what the copywrong forces are trying to make law and if it is law will now and in the future refuse to obey. It’s called civil disobedience and it won’t go away any more than it’s gone away for drugs or for any other item that society refuses to agree with. I’m not saying drugs are right; I’m saying that enough of the population of the US demands drugs and are willing to pay for them. Because of this drugs are available at any small town and that war was long ago lost.
Here you have a group that want to continue to gate keep and charge more than the traffic will bear and bitch and moan about pirates without ever an internal look at what’s driving the event. Since admitting fault and admitting the directions have changed in what society seeks as entertainment would but them in the back seat with other norms that have also changed. Pirates is a very convenient excuse to not have to fix what is wrong and not have to self examine what the problem is. If you don’t examine, you never have to acknowledge that new ways to do things must be developed.
So in the end, it’s always pirates and how do we control that, which leads to such blatantly illegal methods being used by law enforcement.
March 13th, 2011 at 5:47 am
We need to ddos ICE.
March 15th, 2011 at 11:57 am
we need to launch ACTUAL low orbit ion cannons to take out these corporate structures, preferably during primary business hours for maximum effect.
March 16th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
“ex-Green Party of Canada official Wayne Crookes claims linking to an article is the same as publishing it.” -Article exerpt
Let me see if I can equate this properly;
User: “Can you believe this crap? *link to mein kampf*
DHS/ICE: “ZOMG! YOU KILLED JEWS!” *arrest user*
Perhaps an absurd interpretation at best filled with an extreme and oversimplified, but how many times have we made seeming innocuous precedents that were not utilized to the fullest extent they possibly could?