Federal authorities who seized a popular hip-hop music site based on assertions from the Recording Industry Association of America that it was linking to four “pre-release” music tracks gave it back more than a year later without filing civil or criminal charges because of apparent recording industry delays in confirming infringement, according to court records obtained by Wired.
The Los Angeles federal court records, which were unsealed Wednesday at the joint request of Wired, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the First Amendment Coalition, highlight a secret government process in which a judge granted the government repeated time extensions to build a civil or criminal case against Dajaz1.com, one of about 750 domains the government has seized in the last two years in a program known as Operation in Our Sites.
Apparently, however, the RIAA and music labels’ evidence against Dajaz1, a music blog, never came. Or, if it did, it was not enough to build a case and the authorities returned the site nearly 13 months later without explanation or apology.
Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s legal director, said the site’s 13-month seizure by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau highlights the RIAA’s influence over the government. President Barack Obama has tapped at least five former RIAA attorneys for senior positions in the Justice Department.
They scratch the President’s back, the President gives them cushy jobs at DOJ. That’s who it works.
Crucifixion Al’s methodology, you may call it Chicago politics but it is essence of Communism. Al’ did the same to many oil companies, Gibson guitars are affected since the very beginning of the Obama Administration and this is just one more example. This is how Progressives work – intimidation, oppression, fakery.
This is only part of it.
Department of Homeland Security = One ring to bind them all.
We can’t get to our future of being a police state without the Department of Homeland security.
I’d like to know what they really do. I have a difficult time believing there are enough terrorists wannabees … then again perhaps there are.
It’s a self fulfilling prophesy. Keep hasseling the populace with bullshit like this and eventually large swaths of citizens can be labeled as “economic terrorists” thus ensuring the dhs with ever expanding funding and power.
Terrorism = Any act that uses fear to disrupt commerce, damage property, or infringe on the health, safety, or well being or another.
By the legal definition of terrorism yelling “boo!” in a crowded theater qualifies you for incarceration without charge. The average five year old does about a hundred things each day that could get him sent to Gitmo…
There should be consequences if the government seizes something and no case is forthcoming. It really is ridicules that the government can do something like that.
Look for Department of Homeland Security to seize the Elect Romney site because they might have music in the background on one of their videos. No need to build a case against them. The site just reverts back to the campaign, after the election.
It would be interesting that when a Major corp takes something to COURT…IF they lose, THEY PAY..
IF a company/corp brings charges against another person/company FOR NO PURPOSE except to ??????? then they SHOULD PAY, at the time of the inconvenience.
It’s interesting how the reporting on this has conveniently forgot just what political party has had it’s agenda set to “correcting” injustices like this. It’s only in stories like this that we begin to see just who our favored leaders have felt were wronged (which is certainly not the little guy). Cause if it was the other party we probably would have never heard the end of it.
So I’m just saying that it’s interesting how we haven’t heard any political names of those responsible for setting the agenda or any names of those responsible for twisting the laws/policies that ended up giving powers to the RIAA to do stuff like this. And although implications have been made pretty clear how wrong it all is, no one has really told us very much other than an apparent legal/political bullying.
But one thing does seem to be pretty clear to me, the reason we haven’t heard much more probably has a lot to do with political bias on behalf of the reporting. It could even be that the some of those reporting may actually support the RIAA!
“False Utterances” on the part of the RIAA ??? Should be grounds for a LAWSUIT !!!
“President Barack Obama has tapped at least five former RIAA attorneys for senior positions in the Justice Department.
First of all that should have been the headline and second ,please expand upon.
I don’t suppose the US government can be sued for Restrain of Trade, for blocking or seizing internet websites for months without filing any charges. Nor any big ass industry association like the RIAA or MPAA for conspiracy to effect Restrain of Trade, without proof any crime or criminal activity. The law only ever seems to apply, to the best interests of the biggest players. The little players get screwed, and the court system turns a blind eye at the offense. If Obama REALLY wanted to do anything about “Leveling the playing field”, for small business. He’s get government agencies off the backs of the small businesses, and not allow the interests of the larger ones to trump all else. Good luck ever seeing that happen.
I think the real reason the RIAA is doing this is that their members would have been put out of business long ago, by more competitive music distributing companies, that aren’t afraid of online sales, and a little profit loss. If the current label owners hadn’t been so protective of their position, by getting Gov.s to crack down on others trying to undercut their marketing monopoly. Far more efficient music distribution “labels” or companies, would have sprung up to sign on new artists, with far fairer contracts, so those artists don’t have to do concerts to make any money at all. And the price per song would likely be low enough, for online sales, that hardly anyone would bother stealing the stuff. And even though some always will. BIG DEAL! Just as long as they don’t turn around and sell it themselves. Which has always been illegal under copyright law, as far back as I can remember. Getting it for free however, has never been illegal, until only recently.
Even during Prohibition, it wasn’t illegal to accept free beer from anyone. You just couldn’t ask for money or accept voluntary payment for it. Some elder relatives of mind, told me about cops trying to trip them up that way. So it had nothing to do about the State losing tax revenue on free beer. Nor the legal brewers, losing profit from anyone making their own and giving it away. But along comes the music industry, and suddenly a competing music distribution system, that charges less or nothing, gets the force of law down on it. As if it were peddling Meth or Cocaine, to kids. Totally out of proportion to what’s going on. People getting LOCKED UP, not for selling music! But just for receiving it for free. And not being able to pay the RIAA creeps the money they feel or “calculate” they’ve lost from the legal sales. Usually it’s way more than a buck a song. Because their lawyers have got to eat too, ya know. Pul-lease! Why should any of this ever cost more than a simple traffic offense?! It’s so out of scale! You’d think they’re dealing with an act of terrorism. Actually the copyright laws themselves are being use to terrorize the people. Shouldn’t the RIAA and MPAA (and their lawyers) be held to the same standard of conduct as everyone else?
Maybe the world’s citizens should class action sue the RIAA for systematically destroying the enjoyment of music. Would that be a big enough lawsuit for them to BACK OFF? Too bad our elected representatives always take the industry’s side. Or such a suit wouldn’t be necessary, if it’s even possible.
Mark my word, one day the RIAA will just lobby for a government bailout, whenever they feel they’re not making enough profit doing business their way. And claim it’s only fair, because most citizens are stealing their music, somehow. So we should just automatically pay for it thru taxes. Because the world can not survive with music, that they control. Maybe we should just confiscate it from the labels, if it’s that damn vital. And give them so much (pennies) on the dollar, that they say it’s worth. The same way government does whenever it takes people’s private land for public use.
I believe that for at least the last 12 years and most likely longer the Legislative and Administrative branches of the Fed. Gov. has been the entertainment industry’s hoe.
Communism? Progressive? Get the fuck off your stupid drug.
Obama is a sell out to power and money, pure and simple.
Obama has proved to be an even worse disappointment than Bush.
We all knew Bush was an easily manipulated imbecile, more of a hand puppet for Cheney and Halliburton than anything else.
He was a real “deer in the headlights, reading “My Pet Goat” to kiddies and at a loss to do anything intelligent on foreign policy. He was so terrible at it that he doesn’t dare travel out of the country because there are arrests warrants out for him.
He let the know-nothing hawks take over his pulpit.
The hawks said: They’ll welcome us with open arms.
Surprise, they welcomed us with arms all right, but they were aimed at Americans with deadly accuracy*.
You don’t have to fall far if you’re an obvious ass-hole, but Obama rode in on hope and change and delivered broke and same-ol’ same-ol’.
That’s what led me to this.
Parties suck.
*) There were 4,408 total American deaths (including both killed in action and non-hostile) and 31,922 wounded in action (WIA) as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The civilian casualties are estimated at 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the Iraq War. The range given was 946,000 to 1,120,000 deaths to the Opinion Business Research poll.
There is no difference between the parties on this topic. Sorry, trolls.
Party? There’s only one party, the Big Business party, although they seem to allow Dems and Republicans to exist to cloud the issue.
I don’t think we tried anything like this hard to keep the whale oil lamp industry in business when we developed the light bulb.
Corpartist shill George W. Obama is change we can believe in!
Forward (2012)….slave!