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| How To Stop Domain Names Being Seized By The US Government Posted: 05 Feb 2011 04:26 AM PST Check out TorrentFreak's new News Bits feed! .
The domains seized included HQ-streams.com, HQ-streams.net, Atdhe.net, Firstrow.net, Ilemi.com, Iilemi.com, Iilemii.com, Channelsurfing.net, Rojadirecta.net and Rojadirecta.com. These latest seizures were the final straw for one angry TorrentFreak reader. “First they came for the Napsters, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Napster. Then they came for the Torrents, and I didn't speak out because I didn't use Torrents. Then they came for the file-sharers, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a file-sharer,” the email began. “And then they came for me and for my sites, and there was no one left to speak out for me.” These words come from SearchFreak, an internet engineer and chief executive of an Internet business that provides services to millions of users. Outraged at the seizing of domains, in particular those connected to the twice-ruled-legal Rojadirecta, he told TorrentFreak that he’d deliberately built on the famous words of Martin Niemöller to inspire people to stand up for themselves on the Internet. “Niemöller’s reasoning is why I am going to provide a simple list of actions that should serve as a guide for any internet business looking to stay safe in light of ever more harsh copyright measures, born only for the interest of a small group of (mostly) American companies,” SearchFreak explained. So, without further delay, here they are. 1: Avoid registering domains that are handled by VeriSign or Afilias. VeriSign operates .com, .net, .cc, .name and .tv while Afilias operates .info, .org, .mobi, .in, .me, .aero and more. If certain SEO or brand related issues are holding you back from avoiding these TLDs, I have my own experience to share to the contrary. Google will not punish your site if you have a .ch or .eu extension. 2: Avoid using a US-based domain registrar. Do not choose the traditional GoDaddy's of the USA. Please choose a Spanish, German, Dutch, Romanian or even Chinese registrar for your domains. Recent evidence shows that courts in the US will order companies like GoDaddy to hand over your domains without even notifying you. 3: Avoid hosting your site with US companies. While you risk losing a domain name, you also risk being taken offline by, for example, an erroneous/competitor-directed or even justified DMCA request sent to your hosting provider. There are many examples where rights holders do more wrong than right, where entire websites are shut down because of a single post or message. If you care about your Internet business, you understand that even one day offline can cause a ripple effect that can take a month to recover from. Receive a penalty from Google and repeat customers can presume your site is down and shift to a competitor. 4: Avoid incorporating as a US business. No more Delaware. Even if you are a US citizen, you can safely choose other jurisdictions: register your company in Ireland, in offshore locations, in the Netherlands or in Spain. Just search on Google and you will find many options, especially for internet businesses. Most likely, you will also pay less tax. Google does this too. 5: Adopt a DMCA-like procedure to take down reported content. Are you running a YouTube-like website, a file cyberlocker, a UGC (user generated content) application of any kind or are you just a service provider for others? Then create a page on your website where you can accept requests for takedown of content using the guidelines of the DMCA. In order for the Safe Harbor in US Copyright law to be applied, you should also register an agent with the Copyright Office of the USA. It costs just $105. And come on, even YouPorn has a registered agent! You can do it too. When you receive a Take Down Notice, as they call it, please act on it. This offers the benefit of a history of respecting the law in its current form, however wrong or right you feel it is. This is important if you actually get into a lawsuit, as you will be able to present good evidence that you have acted within the constraints of the law. That's what the Liability Limitation Act is for; you might win the lawsuit with a summary judgment by the judge. 6: Legal uses of your product versus possible illegal uses. When the VCR was invented, the MPAA protested that it would copy them into oblivion. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios that the Betamax VCR had "significant non-infringing uses, and that the plaintiffs were unable to prove otherwise". Make sure your products also fit into this description – significant non-infringing uses. 7: Know the law, know the truth In the US, there is no clear evidence that linking to copyrighted content is illegal. My own analysis of the lawsuits that were directed at this important legal question show that all cases were settled or the defender (the site) lost by default (the owner was not present at the trial). In the European Union, the case of TV-Links.co.uk in the United Kingdom was won by the owner of the site. RapidShare has had significant success with copyright lawsuits brought against them by different companies. You will notice that RapidShare has taken care to abide by most of the steps above. 8: Unite, work together While you are competitors in your respective business niches, remember that innovation and access to knowledge that you deliver is being threatened by organized and powerful companies that are working together. Learn to do the same. Whenever in doubt, re-read the words of Martin Niemöller. SearchFreak is an internet engineer who studies IP law. He serves as a chief executive of an Internet business that provides web services to millions each month. He is also offering advice regarding Internet businesses and startups. Time permitting, he will try to help those in need. Email searchfreak11[at]gmail.com. |
| When Did We Become The Ones We Weren’t? Posted: 04 Feb 2011 11:01 AM PST Check out TorrentFreak's new News Bits feed! . I’m a Cold War kid. I remember the 1980s and grew up in a different world from today. Above all, international policy and everyday life alike was colored by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The threat of a nuclear war was present. Present in your daily life, present always. You weren’t entirely sure when you went to sleep if there would still be a world tomorrow. It’s hard to imagine if you haven’t experienced it, but let me illustrate with a song most people have heard, ‘Forever Young’ by Alphaville. A wonderful ballad which would make people dance cheek to cheek and then go home with one another. How many have taken the time to listen to what it’s really about? It’s enough to glance at the first four lines: Let's dance in style, let's dance for a while, The worldwide governmental assault on civil liberties and privacy right now is motivated by the claim that the world has become a more dangerous place since the 80s. Whoever suggests that is lying through their teeth. The worst thing that can happen today is that some nutjob blows himself to pieces on a bus on the other side of the continent. Now, while this would obviously be very bad, it doesn’t nearly play in the same league as the entire world ceasing to exist. The scare of this was present everywhere in the 80s, all the time, for some war hawk or some human mistake or misunderstanding to trigger the quite literal end of the world with just a 30-minute warning. Can you imagine when this race is won? Don’t try to scare me into giving up my rights by yapping “terrorism”. The world hasn’t become more dangerous at all! The people who were young in the 80s were dancing cheek to cheek to ballads about nuclear war and total annihilation. That’s how present the scare was. It is something of a coincidence that Forever Young was published in 1984 of all years. For in the middle of this, there was also a strong polarization. I grew up in Sweden, part of the West. And the entire identity of the West was “we are not them”. And “them”, that was the Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union, the Red Superpower. “Them” were the ones that spied on their own citizens and denied them basic civil liberties and privacy. The ones who tapped their citizens’ phones, who steamed open their letters. “We” were the ones who, no matter what, would stand up for people’s rights against their government. Of course, this might have been a delusion, but it was still our identity. I’m told that the East German government had guest books in every apartment complex. Anybody visiting somebody else had to write it into the guest books, so the government could keep tabs on who had been in touch with whom. It was horrible. The government owned the guest books. Currently, states in Europe and agencies in the United States are implementing telecommunications data retention, so that governments can keep tabs on who has been in touch with whom, when, for how long, and even from where. Where is the difference? Where is the difference? I’m looking at this over and over again, and chills go down my spine as I don’t see any. This technology is being used against citizens of Egypt today. Egypt is using off-the-shelf equipment built here in the West with built-in surveillance capability. The surveillance used in Egypt has been mandated by Western governments for use against Western citizens. We were not them. We all knew that. How did we become them? When did we become them? Have we forgotten how horrified we were? Have we forgotten that people could choose between the unsafe West Germany with its real terrorists and rampaging unemployment in the 80s, and the safe and watched East Germany where everybody was guaranteed a job and crime was virtually nonexistent, and how people risked their very lives to run west when the chance came? And that, unfortunately, they were too often killed trying? It was something people were even ready to die for, preferring a society with very real terrorists over a society that had eliminated them. We were defending liberties across the world. We were the shining beacon of people’s right to privacy. We were the opposite of Big Brother. And today, we are seeing surveillance in use in Egypt that our governments have mandated for use against ourselves. What’s used against the people of Egypt can and will be used against us. When did we become the ones we weren’t? — Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other Friday. He is the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at http://falkvinge.net focuses on information policy. |
This week, an ever more familiar picture started to emerge, the third such situation in well under a year. US authorities had begun another round of domain name seizures, this time against sites connected with | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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