ICE Arrests Operator Of Seized Domain; Charges Him With Criminal Copyright Infringement

ICE Arrests Operator Of Seized Domain; Charges Him With Criminal Copyright Infringement

w ww.techdirt.com

While Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group has been seizing lots of domains under questionable legal theories, it has been slow to follow through on any sort of actual lawsuits. However, with one of the domains seized a month ago, channelsurfing.net, ICE has now arrested someone and charged him with criminal copyright infringement, such that he's now facing five years in jail (as well as fines). This is interesting, because when that domain was seized, we had noted that channelsurfing did not appear to host any content itself, but merely embedded content from o

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
torrentfreak.com

I have posted similar information to this in a past, back when the Swedish Government first went after ThePirateBay, for this very similar thing. In the case of TPB, they did in fact find a single stored file that broke copyright law and made the case from there.
However, in this case there has yet to be any proof of content hosting. In this case, the US Gov. Gestapo is setting yet another precedence where the very foundation of the internet lives...links.
If it is proven that the servers for this site do NOT in fact hold any infringed data (and as long as it isnt planted on them), then they will have to break or rewrite a lot of laws to prosecute this case.
The very foundation of the internet (the world wide web) is links. Everything is a link to something else. That is why it was designed, to link and share data over distances between multiple unjoined (is that a word) locations.
Copyright infringement laws only stand when there is physical evidence of retained material in the possession of an unauthorized person(s) or device(s).
If in this case, no breech of copyright infringement is found and they prosecute at a criminal level anyway, then DHS is in direct violation of the law for unjust prosecution. As well, if all physical materials (servers, hard drives, laptops, etc) that are confiscated during this process are not returned in tact, then they are also in violation of search and seizure under the US Constitution.

w ww.techdirt.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

First a quote from the accused:

“The thing about my site is we never streamed anything, we always linked from other sites like justin.tv, veetle, vshare.tv, zonein.tv and others,” TorrentFreak was told.

And now from the accuser:

“Brian McCarthy allegedly sought to profit by intercepting and then streaming live sporting events, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet to make a quick buck through what is little more than high-tech thievery,” Southern District of New York Attorney Preet Bhara commented.

“This arrest sends a clear message that this office, working with its partners at HSI, will vigorously protect valuable intellectual property rights through arrests and domain name seizures,” Bhara added.

source

So, it seems that in their very own words, they are admitting that this is based on a corporation feeling cheated out of money and not because he was hosting copyright data. The very words had to have been bitter on his tongue as he said them.
"Allegedly" - yay for innocent until proven guilty
"Streaming" - this is the grey area where hosting and linking are vastly different
"Thievery" - there is no crime without evidence, and the only evidence that can convict in this case would be finding the files on the hard drives

Additional information to be found in a different interview with TorrentFreak paints an even bigger picture of how out of control DHS is getting and how profound their desire to shutdown the flow of information along the wire.

Make no mistake about this one folks, if they can prosecute a site for hosting weblinks without being run out of town, then they can effectively shutdown the entire internet for any reason they want, justified or just having a bad day.

So I could be arrested and thrown in jail just for posting a link to something that might be illegal now? I suppose I should stop linking to youtube then.

why is this not happening to google ,
its run on the same principal

before you know it listening to radio is C infrigement