Posted on 04/14/2011 10:21:35 AM PDT by JerseyHighlander
UPDATE: Lots of coverage of our efforts this week. THE HILL: Groups slam online piracy efforts; TECHDIRT: People Across Political Spectrum Come Out Against COICA Censorship Bill; CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY: Online piracy bipartisan domain; POLITICO: Groups blast Leahy piracy bill.
ORIGINAL: Brian McCarthy ran a website, channelsurfing.net, that linked to various sites where you could watch online streams of TV shows and sports networks. A couple months ago, the government seized his domain name and on Friday they arrested him and charged him with criminal copyright infringement -- punishable by five years in prison.
We just obtained a copy of the complaint (below) 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.
The government has two major roles...to protect Americans and our borders. Their role is NEVER to interfere with our liberties.
Instead the reality is they don’t protect our borders because politicians and big business interferes.
They infringe on our rights instead of protecting us.
It is important that each and every one of us vehemently tells our reps and the Feds to the xxxx stay out of our business and out of our liberties.
The single best thing that liberty minded Americans can do to push back against this bs is support EFF
http://www.eff.org/about. They are libertarian and fight against both government tyranny and against greedy corporate hacks such as LasVegasSun that have stepped on blogger toes including Free Repub.
You won’t get a bigger bang for the buck.
A hoax? figures. At least I said it's hard to believe:)
In comparision someone replied that this is the first step of Obama shutting down FR and declaring himself King before the election. Rush makes jokes like that regularly and many of his listeners believe anything he says.
I told him if Obama did that and we rebelled then France would get a UN resolution to setup a no-fly zone over the WH.
America is at that awkward stage... it’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.
.....Claire Wolfe
In which case they should get into trouble.
Right, that’s call stealing bandwidth.
They have got a bunch of links to sites cotaining links to various sites with copyrighted material.
And you know, as far as what they call a "linking website" I don't think the folks at Google are going to think very highly of this either...
.
I suppose you would like all those government workers to sit around and do nothing...when, in fact, they could be out arresting someone. <>
Did he copy content?
I just posted a link to credit a quote from an article in The Hill. Am I a criminal? What happened to the constitution? These people are Nazi thugs.
Correction of my reply:
If you steal their property instead of making copies of it, the deed should be prosecuted criminally. I agree with our forefathers on the issue.
As the law is now, a criminal can steal a rancher’s gate, pay less than $300 in total costs and have his misdemeanor record falsified to avoid detection. In other words, we have more serious problems than the civil complaints of arteests.
Never too early and getting too late every minute.
“I have nothing intelligent to add to this discussion except this admin is looking more and more like the Nazis everyday and I find it distressing.”
I’ll add a little more...I totally agree with you.
And, it’s very distressing.
“Matt Drudge needs to find an `undisclosed location` and maybe take his efforts offshore?”
If that is true, then so does Hot Air, Ace, RedState and a host of other internet sites, as well as Rush, Sean, Mark, et al.
IOW...everyone on the Right side!
A criminal conspiracy to violate copyright, however, should fall under the Department of Justice for the related conspiracy, racketeering, etc., laws.
..... IMHO, this has little to do with “upholding the law”; it is an intentional campaign of intimidation against the internet user community.
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