Rep Zoe Lofgren Asks Reddit Users to Crowdsource Domain Name Seizure Legislative Proposal

jupiterkansas · 1 month

There need to be severe penalties for false takedowns, such as what happened with Dajaz1. This should apply to DMCA takedowns over copyright violations as well. And the penalties need to be enforced vigorously so that innocent people are protected.

ZoeLofgren · 1 month

I understand that many feel that eliminating the Pro Ip Act would be a better solution. I voted against the Pro Ip Act but the vote was 410 yes to 11 no in the House and I do not believe it is likely the act will be repealed any time soon. I am, in fact, working on a copyright reform bill. Should I post that for comments when I have finished my initial work on it? The comments about protection of innocent third parties when a site is seized are important. What ideas, procedurally, do you have to protect innocent third parties in such cases? Thanks for paying your ideas and time!

Tipaa · 1 month

People are meant to be innocent until proven guilty. Taking a website down or seizing a domain name should be a last resort opposed to a standardised knee-jerk reaction: taking a website down can be equivalent to shutting down a whole business franchise. One day of downtime can cost millions to a business, especially one with high traffic. I'd rather see that alleged copyright infringement is removed from the public version of the site than have the entire site shut down and/or domain name seized. The rest of the website that didn't contain the alleged infringement should remain up and ready to serve. Both parties then need to preserve the alleged infringement in private - this prevents the material from spreading if it is an infringement, but allow the website owners to keep the content until it is shown to be infringing on copyright.

Domain seizure affects more than just a forum page with a pirate MP3; it affects company email, private remote file access and search engine results. Plus, people with a static IP address for a site can skip DNS entirely, rendering it ineffective.

Also, how is a domain name itself a copyright issue? The content should be the issue, not the domain name. A domain name is a name, not a part of the website's content.

Finally, please stop the patent trolls. They are stifling innovation with a shotgun technique. The big companies can afford to take a small hit, settle, or most likely scare them off. The smaller business owners or individuals selling items can not afford to risk a court case, since many wouldn't afford a lawyer as good as the trolls can afford, and most couldn't afford court fees + large license fees. This is why they are trapped in to settling for (relatively) smaller sums that would still pack a punch. The punishment for crying wolf either needs to be greater, or small defendants need some kind of level playing field.

BettyDevi · 1 month

I support the idea of notifying site owners of any possible violations and allow them to be corrected in a specified amount of time before any action is taken. Thank you.

TMarkos · 1 month

While I applaud the effort, I think domain-name seizure rules are sort of nonsensical in our global internet. Anyone who is doing anything which warrants actual seizure has already taken that into account when choosing their domain, and will be under the jurisdiction of parties friendly to their cause or indifferent to our government's.

Still, since we're doing this - any framework for domain seizure should operate on the assumption that a domain is a primary business asset and that its seizure represents an overwhelming loss for the affected party. By this logic, offenses would need to be shown which are:

Significant
Unambiguous
In Bad Faith

Parties wishing to seize a domain should be made to follow a framework whereby their intent to seize is declared and the offenses justifying the seizure are enumerated via formal communication to the offending party. If no remedy or sufficient response has been made in a period of time (let's say a few weeks) then they can go to the courts and prove the damages with evidence. If the court agrees, the domain may be seized at that point.

This process is transparent, creates public records and leaves no room for shadowy seizures without forewarning or cause.

aroberge · 1 month

Domain name seizure is possibly an appropriate measure in copyright violation cases.

Domain name seizure, the way it has been done, violates the principle of being deemed innocent (of a crime) until proven guilty.

Furthermore, by unilaterally declaring that .com and .org domains are subject to U.S. law, the U.S. is exceeding its moral authority (and possibly its legal authority as well) since it was assumed initially that these domains were NOT country specific: .gov and .us are assumed to be country specific. (There is something similar that could be said about the sudden declaration that .edu domains are under the control of the U.S. and, with a few exceptions, reserved for U.S. educational institutions: this was never understood to be the case when .edu was created.)

Copyright violation should first and foremost be a civil matter. Once a proper court proceeding (where a defendant has been given the opportunity to present his case) has found that a site violates the right of a copyright owner and that the court has found that part of the proper remedy should be a domain name seizure, then a request could/should be made to U.S. (or other country...) authority to seize the domain.

Given that defendants may be in another country, civil court proceedings should only be deemed valid if the defendants are given the opportunity to present their case either by video or by documents submitted to the court via email.

False copyright claim should result aumatically in awarding of legal costs to defendants AND a fine equal to three times that amount.

willcosmo · 1 month

Representative Lofgren, I speak for the Reddit Community as a whole when I say that we REALLY APPRECIATE your willingness to highlight this issue. The fact that you are even considering crowdsourcing as an option proves that you truly do represent the people. :)

Keep up the good work.

Edit: spelling.

jupiterkansas · 1 month

Always consider the worst case scenario. Let's say you seized google.com. That would include Gmail and Google Docs and Google Play and basically everything Google does. After all, there is probably just as much illegal activity going on under google.com as any MegaUpload.

Consider what would be an appropriate process for taking down the largest and most popular websites on the planet. Then apply those same protections to the smallest or most heinous websites that exist.

And even then I would say you're not doing enough to protect innocent third parties that use that domain.

_decius_ · 1 month

Rep Lofgren - Thank you for coming to this forum and asking for comments on this important issue.

A website is a forum for expression, both by the operator and potentially the users as well, so any takedown has first amendment implications. It is important to consider the first amendment rights of the website users as well as the website operators. In general, websites should not be taken down unless the operators (and not just a user) of the website are likely guilty of violating the law. In cases where websites have both legitimate and illegitimate uses and users, efforts should be taken to minimize the impact of seizures to users who are actually violating the law. It may not make sense to take the entire site down in such a case - in fact I think that sort of action should be an absolute last resort.

Approval from a court should be required before any site is taken down. (Earlier this year a startup called JotForm had its domain pulled by the United States Secret Service for no apparent reason and AFAIK with no judicial process whatsoever - this shouldn't be happening.)

Takedowns should only take place if there is no other way to stop the criminal activity on the site. A standard similar to that for a preliminary injunction might be appropriate in the case that a website needs to be taken down - law enforcement should demonstrate that a criminal claim against the website operators is likely to succeed on the merits based on evidence already assembled, the harm associated with keeping the website up is greater than that associated with taking it down, and there is no reasonable alternative that would have a more minimal impact. Website operators should have speedy access to a forum in which to contest any of the facts that led to the approval for seizure (including the assertion that there is no alternative to total seizure of the site). Reportedly Dajaz1 spent a year trying to contest the facts of their seizure - that sort of delay is far too long.

As you can see from the comments on this forum, there are a variety of related intellectual property issues that Reddit users are concerned about. A theme that appears in many of these posts is a concern about the lack of effective deterrents for fraudulent or inappropriate DMCA takedown notifications. Although the DMCA allows for misrepresentation claims, AFAIK only 3 have been made during the existence of the statue. Certainly, the number of inappropriate DMCA takedowns is vastly larger, leading to the perception that this deterrence tool is not working.

I think this community is broadly concerned about the use of inappropriate copyright claims as a censorship mechanism, regardless of whether or not they involve the DMCA's takedown provisions. Many of the concerns about the DMCA relate to the way that the anti-circumvention provisions threaten computer security researchers, reverse engineers, and other technical professionals whenever they do something that large tech companies dislike - regardless of whether they've done something results in actual copyright infringement. The EFF published a paper titled Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years Under the DMCA which documents many examples. Some of those examples involve activities that are prohibited by the law. Others involve misrepresentations. It is difficult in our legal system for an individual citizen to contest a legal misrepresentation being made by a large organization due to the expense associated with defending one's self in court.

Thank you for your time.

branawesome · 1 month

For my own ignorance I gotta ask...

1) How does the current system work when it comes to domain name seizure and what are the flaws?

2) How can we be sure this "war on pirates" won't end up like the decades long, hugely wasteful and un-winnable "war on drugs"?

3) Would it be more efficient to work to build a solid framework via some kind of "Internet Bill of Rights" instead of piling little law after little law into this unstable mound of grey areas that is full of holes?

ZoeLofgren · 1 month

excuse typo... I'm at home without spell check or grammar correction! ...that would be thanks for paying attention and for your ideas and time.....

Takefear · 1 month

Although I do not particularly agree with the siezing of domains such as http://www.megaupload.com/ I can see that the laws surrounding such domain name seizures and actions taken on the internet should be written in black and white, and should be constantly changing, as the internet is a creative medium that is constantly evolving and changing on a daily basis, that said, I'm not sure if it would be practical to be redrafting laws everytime a new phenomenon appears, such as a new facebook or youtube.

I can understand that there are reasons to sieze domains of those who are infringing copyright, and hosting downloads of media, but I believe that there should be a much more democratic method to contacting the site owners and trying to work out a way of solving the issue before seizing the domain and slapping a big image of something relating to the U.S legal system blah blah blah.

And that leads me on to another point, nobody owns the internet, so I feel that it is unfair that a country from half way around the world can have effect on my site within an instance, because if the situation was translated in to a real life scenario, such as stolen goods from america are taken to lets say france, the U.S can't just waltz in and waltz out acting like they own everything, because they don't, the same should apply on the internet, either with region specific moderation of content on sites, which would definately be a preference of mine.

Already mentioned, how is a domain name a copyright issue? The content should be taken down not the site, so either tools are developed to take down content or not, it definately needs to be aranged and discussed as a method that is not whipping out your e-penis and saying "look what I can do".

ZuchinniOne · 1 month

Its really quite simple. The process to take down a domain should be legally equivalent to the process for shutting down a brick-and-mortar business.

Inuma · 1 month

Firstly, thank you Representative Lofgren for understanding the public need for discourse in a very important topic!

However, I must say that this problem goes back to 1976 and one word to represent the problem: privatization.

Let me explain. For the past 30 years, copyright has been growing out of control since the creation of the 1976 Copyright Extension Act that allowed lobbyists to have control of copyright. For this reason there are a number of areas that need to be addressed that go far beyond domain seizures. So let’s first take this moment to pinpoint the part of the problem that comes up with domain seizures.

The PRO-IP Act of 1998 allows law enforcement to lay claim over domain seizures even though that is not their domain. While judicially, domains are protected free speech, we have already had a number of victims who have been claimed in domain seizures. Dajaz1, Ninjavideo, Megaupload, Torrentfinder, and over 800 websites have been claimed with nary a word on adversarial hearings or judicial proceedings beginning. This points to a number of problems. First, there is no database to indicate what is under copyright and what is not. Second, our judicial system is burdened by either lack of knowledge on this subject or little attention to the severity of the issue. Should a California judge be able to take down a website with a New York domain? Should two judges in two different districts be able to discuss this issue before allowing law enforcement to forum shop? Further, with no database, no one is able to defend themselves in a court of law without a very large amount of money that will be seized before guilt can be alleged. This means that people that are poorer (Hana Beshara, Yonjou Quiroa) are more vulnerable for something as legal as streaming movies than a Kim Dotcom who can fight with an army of lawyers against corporate interests.

So we’ve established that we need a review of laws and that our judicial system cannot hope to keep up with the number of copyright laws that have made the US less innovative in the last 30 years. What are other problems? The other problem that I’ve seen is that copyright is used more by corporate interests than by the public. We now have bots that can take down content on Youtube which makes it a far less valuable site. People have no public defenders and have few options to fight back against copyright holders for copyright violations. This provides a massive perverse incentive in the fact that copyright holders can use the judicial system to wear down individual defendants in a very successful “divide and conquer” strategy. With few ways for people to fight back, you have a number of corporate and governmental influences that can try to maintain control of the internet through back channels such as Time Warner Cable discussing with the Recording Industry on three strikes policies for alleged copyright infringement. The privatization continues by not allowing a public a say in policies that will greatly harm their ability to speak on the internet.

So what are the solutions? A bill should have the following capabilities included:

Democratic body for public outreach – The public is the one that should benefit the most from copyright law. If there is anything to affect them, they should have a say in how they will be tracked or monitored online or what infringements have harmed them. Similar to the Consumer Financial Bureau, there can be a new governmental body created specifically for the public to come to their own conclusions. This body can be made up from members of respected communities such as the MPAA and the EFF as well as a majority of members that come from the public. All members of this body take words from the public and hold votes on legislation that are accountable to the public for the reasons for certain stances on issues in regards to technology. The body could have 100s of members for various jobs which would include copyright history and training for Congressional staff, public outreach, polling, legislative proposals and exceptions to copyright. The body answers to the public, not the Library of Congress, therefore, whatever the public wants to be the function of copyright would work far better than people having to ask for DMCA exceptions from the government as required by DMCA right now.

Judicial education – This is indeed important. For the past twenty years, there has been a considerable rise in court cases where judges do not truly understand the problems inherent in copyright cases, stating how certain people need to pay more money for infringement based on statutory damages. The Democratic body would have the ability to help judges in looking up cases on copyright by being one of the ultimate authorities in this regard. Instead of merely hearing from copyright holders about how their rights are infringed, you would begin to have a better approach of the market realities inherent in the digital era. Digital goods can no longer be equated to theft when they can be copied infinitely. Songs can no longer be considered “property” to control Youtube. Further adjustments could come in the form of lay judges being added to copyright cases so it is no longer merely one judge who has total control of a case and who is responsible for deciding who is at fault in a copyright case as if both sides are equal. Judges should be taught that any case brought after law enforcement has decided to “play cowboy” should be thrown out and a heavy punishment assessed for n

While I have only discussed two issues, this is far from the only two in regards to domain seizures. As seen, law enforcement’s behavior has been fairly malicious or uncaring in regards to 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendment rights in regards to domain seizures. We cannot forget that ICE took down 80,000 websites “by accident” or how they have ignored adversarial hearings until the evidence piled up against them is too large to ignore. Punishing the ones carrying out these orders should be used to cause them to think twice about bringing faulty cases to court. There were laws for this in the past, and law enforcement needs to be held accountable for their actions. So we should look into revising the Rules of Civil Procedure as well as the punishments for supervisors on this case. Perhaps cases of gross negligence can be punishable with a deduction in apportionment money in next year’s budget as well as a dock in pay for all IPR representatives could serve as a wakeup call that law enforcement of intellectual property crimes can be done without infringing on civil liberties.

So what happens to small businesses that have become the victim of copyright infringement? The fees assessed by wrongful suits can go to fund the smaller businesses and create better businesses that work for the public domain. The fees assessed can work to create a database of copyrighted works as well as those that are placed into the public domain so people can decide what works are useable and which ones are a hassle to work with. Copyrighted works could have a renewal license every 5 years for corporations and every 10 years for individual authors. Since the resources of both are quite different, the need for corporations to upgrade far more than authors reflects that difference. Also, copyrights can no longer be considered “works for hire” by any corporation. This leads to corporations needing to devise complex shell games to deprive authors, actors, and the public of revenue and keeping it for themselves. This shell game needs to end with public auditing done for these corporations and the revenue they’ve deprived artists of.

Finally, we should come to the idea of punishment for wrongful content takedowns. This is the process of chilling free speech online whether it’s a video discussing copyright or a song that has dance steps. Copyright has become a tool for chilling free speech in a number of ways. The punishments for a person for infringement should be minimal while the punishment for a corporation should be stronger. A corporation that is wielding a copyright as a weapon in court should be able to put that copyright on the line. Further, if through the entire court process, no “market reducing” infringement is found, then the punishment should be court costs and heavy statutory damages assessed per infringement on the one using the copyright. The copyright Is also forfeited and placed automatically into the public domain with the copyright holder having to go through the Democratic bureau to attain the copyright (only two chances). Should the Democratic bureau decide that the copyright is not infringing, then it all works are put into the public domain to be used by everyone.
These are the main areas that need to be looked into in order to allow copyright to become a far better public tool for discourse. I hope that one day copyright can instead become a subsidy to allow more creative works such as represented by the Republican brief recently displayed but until that time, I’m willing to change copyright into a tool for allowing more democratic voices into what it should be. This conversation has been desperately needed for the past 30 years. I look forward to a bill reflecting the public needing more input into how they are governed.

Thank you Ms. Lofgren for your time!

10b-5 · 1 month

I can't help thinking this is a really bad idea, seeing how /r/fia went off a tangent.

I think using crowd sourcing as a place to understand trends and philosophies to rely upon is a good thing, but reddit has many times proven itself completely unable to understand the synergies and compromises that go into legislation.

There was a bit of mixup between /r/law and /r/fia a while ago where the lawyers tried to hint and guide the /r/fia people to better understand how legislation has much wider ranging effects than what a narrow view of their own interests would indicate, but it never really seemed to do the trick, as /r/fia is still going down complete extremist and unrealistic paths.

Circlejerks are fun to watch, but not really what you want writing your laws.

jonas3d · 1 month

Like many others here on Reddit have stated. I think its only fair that it should remain innocent until proven guilty. The website owner should be given a chance to resolve the issue before their domain is seized. Penalties could be included if DCMA take down notices are ignored a certain amount of times, but that doesn't mean their domain should be seized. It could be they complied and another instance of the same content was uploaded.

In any case, seizing the domain should be the absolute FINAL step. For any eCommerce site, their domain is their biggest asset. Take amazon for instance. if you seized their amazon.com domain, they would be severely crippled. Domain seizure should not be taken lightly.

There should be a very public system for all DCMA take down notices, as well as the domain owners response to the take down. Eliminate all the shady things happening, with lawyers just sending out DCMA's with out a second thought. I'd recommend a public site with all the records. Lets make this information public.

I think the penalty for false claims should be just as bad or worse then the penalty to an actual offender. The system has been abused. Its time to punish the abusers for doing so. They will quickly learn their lesson.

volitans · 1 month

I don't have anything to add that hasn't been addressed by those that have much more knowledge than me, but kudos for doing this experiment. Gives some hope for this country...

ObliviousReporter · 1 month

We need to get a grip on investigative seizures. It's all already there, but the FBI doesn't like to play by those rules. The search and seizure request needs to be specified under guidelines designed specifically for the internet. Furthermore, decius has a great set of points. Websites are already subject to the first amendment, and some smaller (pretty draconian) acts are being abused during sentences, as was the case of J. Tenenbaum.

More than the notices themselves, we need VERY STRONG ratification on the acts which dictate the reasonable fines or otherwise punishment that can be delegated to offenders. Tenenbaum downloaded a few dozen songs; he is now paying a fine of a 1/2 million dollars.

Also like decius states, there is more or less a hapless workaround for using digital copyright claims as a means of censorship. In other words, the digital copyright process needs an extra step in the approval process...maybe a simplified removal process.

ZuchinniOne · 1 month

By the way ... is there anything you can do about this guy David Kappos: Head of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Clearly he is out of touch with reality.

jdgalt · 1 month

Unfortunately, the US is not the only country that has seized or blocked domain names, and most of the others are not about to adopt (or comply with) any due-process restrictions on doing so.

While copyright (and the variety of methods, such as DRM, that are now misused to enforce so-called rights the content provider doesn't even own) badly needs to be reformed, it seems to me that the right answer to domain name takedown is technical, not political. The DNS system needs to be changed technologically, so that rather than having a central authority which controls DNS servers, DNS information is "crowdsourced" (decided and stored by everybody on a peer-to-peer basis, thus making it impossible for any authority in the world to make a site disappear if it has plenty of fans willing to share their pointers to it).

The Internet, after all, has no owner; it is a joint effort of all the participants. Let's keep it that way and make censorship impossible permanently.

WaffleMaker · 1 month

I dunno I think the idea to shut down a whole domain because of copyright claims seems to be like cutting off your arm when you get a paper cut. While yeah it fixes the paper cut issue it doesn't solve the reason why you got a paper cut in the first place. I think copyright laws and the way business's handle online property needs to be reformed first.

fucreddit · 1 month

I feel suggesting anything would be condoning actions that to most Americans are deplorable. With this reasoning, "oh it's happening so we might as well legislate it", I laugh at all the instances in the past where tyranny is furthered by well meaning apologists who did exactly that. Instead of using all your resources and limited powers to fight this, you choose to strike the transgression permanently into law.

minibeardeath · 1 month

I think that the best way to curb false copyright claims is that who ever makes the claim must put down a deposit that is refunded if the claim is true, but if the claim turns out to be false, then the deposit is paid in full to the accused party. Also, the fee should be set-up like our tax system. This means that the first 10 copyright claims will cost $X per claim, the next 10 will be $2X, the next 100 will be $5X, the next 100 will be $10X, etc. The goal of this tiered fee system is so that individual copyright holders will not have to take out loans to fight infringement, but that major holders (e.g. Sony music group, paramount studios, etc) will have to put down deposits worth several thousand dollars for most of their claims, and thus will risk losing a not-insignificant amount of money if they make false claims.

The scale that I gave is just an example, but the real scale should be somewhat logarithmic, so that after a few hundred claims, the fees are $10,000+. The fee structure should also apply to DMCA claims, and could be adjusted so that claims against the same infringement, but on different websites could be grouped as one (eg if the same video is uploaded to youtube, and vimeo it doesn't count as 2 different claims).

Nomad47 · 1 month

When one of these sights is seized it is often the case that an innocent third party’s intellectual property or work product is seized as well. I think that we must do every thing we can to protect individual intellectual property rights and work product and copyrighted material from seizure by the government. This must be done in conjunction with revised patent laws that allow for secret patents that can be filed to avoid disclosure to your competitors. Is there some way to mark private data to be returned to a user in the event of a sight shutdown?

jupiterkansas · 1 month

There are a million copyright infringements every day on Facebook due to people uploading copies of photos they do not have permission to copy. This piracy is so thoroughly rampant that nobody talks about it. Most people probably don't even know it's infringing. Legally speaking it's equal to copying a movie or a song or a book. Is the solution to shut down Facebook?

If you can think of a way to draft legislation that would end or drastically reduce infringement of photography, then you can apply that to music, books, and movies too.

If you can't draft such legislation, then there is no hope of drafting legislation that will protect any other form of digital media. It would be easier to make such activity legal.

Photographers aren't going to sit around waiting for you to figure this out. They're going to go find other ways to make a living. Creators of digital media need to stop hoping the government will make the internet go away.

Mustang97 · 1 month

Limits on subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction must be limited in scope, narrowly tailored, and clearly defined in the bill: For international seizure requests, the jurisdictional standard must be higher than "its on the internet" or "third party servers are located in [insert U.S. state here]." (How the FBI obtained jurisdiction for the MegaUpload/KimDotCom raid in NZ still baffles me!) For domestic U.S. seizure requests, the appropriate jurisdictional standard must be narrowly tailored to exclude federal jurisdictions where the harm simply ended up, produced collateral economic effect, or was viewed on the internet. Again, there must be clear and well defined standards for which courts have power, and which activities confer federal power, so as to prevent forum shopping from plaintiffs, and so that a defendant could reasonably anticipate being hailed into court from a federal jurisdiction (as opposed to MegaUpload, a NZ corps, having to defend itself in New York). Basically, there needs to be a recognition in the bill that the U.S. courts may not have jurisdiction over every infringing activity in the world, just because harm occurs to a U.S. corporation due to an alleged, infringing activity over the internet.

I strongly believe the bill should also take steps to preempt and abolish criminal penalties under other copyright provisions within the USC. No one should ever be threatened with jail for simply copying and distributing a torrented song.

Lastly, I suggest imposing or revising reasonable damage caps, limited only to the fair market value of the actual infringement. It is beyond ridiculous that one illegal Justin Bieber-type song could assess for $22,500. Today, we have college kids being slapped with $675,000 judgments for 30 downloaded songs. Damages should be capped at the fair market value of the infringed work, and should not include punitive damages nor incidental market damages since such activity is not malicious, and the collateral economic harm is not contemplated by the downloader at the time of the activity. The plaintiffs should be required to pursue every wrongdoer in a torrent pipeline, and not simply obtain an outrageous judgment from one college kid for the economic harms contributed to by thousands of others.

Thank you for your bill and thank you for using this creative forum. I wish other Congresspersons would do the same as it could revitalize Americans believe in the legislative process. Redditors also strongly support the recommendations of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (I am not from the EFF).

jupiterkansas · 1 month

Many issues regarding domain seizures can be eliminated by reforming copyright law. Current copyright law is a patchwork of fixes that are at odds with the internet, are impractical, and are unenforceable. You can violate the law just by hitting CTRL-C, and millions of people do it on a daily basis. Reading a few books by Lawrence Lessig is a good start.

TheMightyElk01 · 1 month

holding a global item such as a domain name responsible for the actions of people using it is akin to closing Disneyland because someone had a bad experience. being in contact with the domain registrar is important and through that contact formulating a plan of action to help resolve the situation is what needs to happen. in many cases the activity deemed "illegal" is generally not. I agree with the one point that we need to have a reform of our copyright laws on the content floating around the net. our current laws are just too convoluted and corporations with questionable motives should not be the ones solely in control.

aristotle2600 · 1 month

The USA PATRIOT act is hereby repealed.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is hereby repealed.

If these are not the first two lines, stop pandering and wasting our time.

ToptopBottom · 1 month

Whatever the bill and related legislation ends up saying, it would be hugely beneficial if some sort of watch dog body were created such as a commission that would be populated with non elected, un-biased industry folk. It would be this commission's job to report on the transparency and openness of any sort of government intervention into the internet.

cmdshftn · 1 month

The acquisition of a domain name, whether considered lawfully as property or license, is an investment of time and resources on behalf of an individual or business and is often a prominent, even key, component in the infrastructure of a service rendered commercially. The infringement claims involved in such cases may or may not be relevant to the entire use of the domain, nor the entire subset of the consumer base of the services, nor even be the explicit action of the owner/licensee of the domain. As such, equating not only the investigatory seizure of a domain name but disabling of such services to the seizure of a vehicle driven by a suspected intoxicated driver, or a firearm suspected as used in a shooting, is invalid but also woefully disassociated to any other standard of evidentiary disablement. While the seizure of a domain name, termination of license thereof, and related desired effects should be maintained and available as a resort in proven cases of willful infringement, this should not be done without undergoing a process of notification to the owner/licensee of the complaint, an opportunity for compliance or response and settlement of the complaint, the reasonable opportunity for notification of third parties associated with the use of any services or goods provided by the validity of the domain, and finally, judicial review of the infringement with opportunity for multilateral representation (complainant, respondent, affected third party or consumer amicus).

RaineDragon · 1 month

I would like to see a system which specifically targets the party who is doing the infringing over the site manager. If the person who owns the domain is breaking the law by putting copyrighted material up, then by all means, send them a notice, and if they fail to comply in 30 days (or whatever a reasonable time period is), go after them for the violation. But, if it's a case where the site allows users to create content, or upload content (like social media) then I think the law needs to be written in such a way that the domain can not be seized except under certain circumstances. I think that the copyright holder needs to first notify the owner of the site and ask them to remove the content, and give them a reasonable time frame to comply based on the number of items which need removal. This puts the burden on the site owner to manage their users (banning them from adding content to the site, if they keep breaking the law, for example).

In the event that a site like facebook is taken to court for having illegal content, I think it should be the person who added the content who is responsible, not the site that is hosting it, unless it can be proven that they intentionally didn't remove content that they were asked to remove.

notacrook · 1 month

I think first and foremost this is a great step (consulting the people who actually use and understand the technology), but the problem runs deeper: the people making our legislation know so little about technology and the issues that they inevitably craft bills that attack the American populous.

Copyright infringement has been very effectively labeled as theft (which is another conversation), which legislators see as a simple good vs. bad. Add that to the laughable protocols established to deal with infringement and the total corporate compliance of the courts - the average american has no protections or rights.

I want to see Congress explain how fining someone $1.5 million dollars for 24 songs (which cost at most $2 a song) is legal, acceptable, and the status quo. You wont punish bankers for tanking our economy, CEOs for ravaging our resources and coastline, and the 1% for willfully avoiding paying taxes - but standing behind a $1.5 million dollar fine for Mrs. Jane Doe of Minnesota is acceptable and good policy.

cymbal_king · 1 month

I'd really love to participate in this discussion and help draft legislature, but i really don't know as much about how the internet works as some of these other guys. Now, if there are any bills on science or medical research, I'd be happy to weigh in.

rs16 · 1 month

Contact the owner, give them as much notice as you would for seizure of any physical property.

Have notices on a government website, allow anyone to see that a website will be taken down if they simply check a specified .gov website.

callisterp · 1 month

Legal remedies or police powers authorizing domain name seizure or blocking need to be very limited. Four things to consider if you want to keep the net "free" while providing some relief for egregious copyright violations on web sites:

Do not permit jurisdiction smiply based upon the domain name residing on a US server or being accessible on such a server. The constitutional issues are complex but essentially when a plaintiff can't establish jurisdiction over a prospective defendent because the latter does not even have "minimum contacts" in the US that would satisfy the due process clause of the constitution, the plaintiff can try to sue property or thing itself that is in the US to establish ownership. This is known as "in rem" jurisdiction. We have experience with domain name seizure under the Anti-Cybersquating Protection Act using this kind of jurisdiction. However, there the actions concern trademark infringinement in the domain name. The basis for establishing jurisdiction and seizing the name are related. This is not the case in legislative attempts to extend 'in rem" jurisdiction to instances of copyright infringement on or through medium of a web site. Constitutionally, this kind of in rem jurisdiction probably doesn't pass muster. See Shafer v. Heitner. Furthermore, it creates havoc among the various domain name providers and registrars that make up the web. There have already been instances of such parties receiving conflicting orders from courts residing in different countries. See Global SantaFe v. GlobalSantaFe.com. Finally, you will be inviting costly constitutional appeals if domain name seizures are authorized simply on the basis that the domain name resides on a US server. Even worse, many defendants will be in no position to assert their rights in US courts.
Don't couple domain name seizure with any type of power to order any internet service provider other than a top-level domain service to block a domain name. The problem with SOPA was that orders (with a relatively low threshold to obtain) could be sent to every ISP, domain name service, search engine, advertising service etc. This would have been an administrative nightmare, extremely costly, and for small defendants, with limited resources, difficult to counter. Limit the remedy to order to the top-level domain name providers and save a lot of time and expense for everyone.
Don't create incentives for third party providers of internet services to "take down" material on their own intiative. SOPA would have limited the liability of ISPs who acted proactively if the believed it was to protect copyright, etc. At the same time the ISP is liable if it doesn't respond to a take down notice. Further complicating matters, ISPs have business relationships or are owned by content providers--e.g. Comcast. It is very imprudent to give ISPs immunity for acting on their own to takedown material or block domain names on their own.
Don't extend domain name seizure or blocking as a remedy for slander. Within the US, traditional remedies in court already work quite well. Standards for slander vary widely from nation to nation. Many of them are used to suppress free speech and the press. We would be creating bad precedent by seizing domain names in response to slander. We need to be advocating for a vigorous and open web internationally. It's in our interest to do so.

In conclusion, be wise, create a very limited remedy. Not every copyright violation and slander will be righted, but we need the tradeoff of a free and open web. Finally, there are many factors which affect behavior on the web besides US law. International law, private agreements between ISPs and users, ethical norms, culture, market forces and the architecture of the web, all affect copyright compliance issues. A multi-prong approach to compliance is best rather than overzealous legislation.

GeneKernan · 1 month

How about a bill, or preferably, a Constitutional Amendment, banning official immunity?

mmasnick · 1 month

Unfortunately, seizure and forfeiture law is a huge mess. It might be nice to actually dive into that swamp, but that opens up an entirely different set of issues.

A few key things that could possibly be done to deal with the specific issue at hand:

A law making it clear that copyright cases and domain names implicate the First Amendment, and as such seizures concerning copyright are subject to the higher standards found in Ft. Wayne Books v. Indiana. That case noted that you needed to have an adversarial hearing before you could seize obscene works. Those who have argued that doesn't apply here say that it's because "obscenity" is a subjective standard, whereas copyright is not. Many of us don't think that' true, and believe that copyright questions require similar judicial review of a full adversarial hearing. Codifying that clearly in the law could help. This Lemley & Volokh paper may be useful on this subject: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/copyinj.htm
A clarification of the Civil Forfeiture Proceedings section put in place via ProIP, such that it is meant to only refer to goods actually used to specifically violate criminal copyright law -- rather than "any property" that can "facilitate" -- which is way way too broad.
A requirement when seizing/forfeiting property over criminal copyright claims that the government show how the property and/or parties in question actually meet all the criteria of criminal infringement. Part of the problem with the rojadirecta case was that the government couldn't show how criminal infringement was done. They showed that copies were made by users but that it was indirect infringement for the site (for which criminal copyright does not apply). And they showed that the site made money. But you have to show both infringement and that the infringement was for profit for it to be criminal. The government never could do this, which likely is why they dropped the case. But it seems like they should have been forced to identify a single party who committed criminal copyright infringement initially and then (as per the above) been able to allow them to make their case that infringement did not occur prior to seizure.
Some sort of law making it explicit that ex parte seizure is only appropriate in cases where there is a clear danger that the property might be destroyed or otherwise harm the case. In the domain seizure cases this was never shown, even though various cases on seizures and forfeitures have said that the intention is only to preserve evidence (see: Heller v. New York). Similar to the above, perhaps a law making it explicit that copyright cases are subject to Heller...
Even when property is seized, the process needs to be much faster, allowing for an adversarial hearing as quickly as possible, not allowing the government to drag its feet as it did with Dajaz1 (and still does with others). On top of that, the proceedings should not be allowed to be done under seal such that even the lawyers for the domains in question have no access to the court overseeing the judicial process.

ZoeLofgren · 1 month

Update #1: Thank you all for your recommendations and your time! If the Reddit community has any other suggestions, please add them by the end of this week. After Monday, I will be organizing these and other ideas to consider how I might structure domain name seizure legislation. My plan is to bring the legislation back to the Reddit community after it is drafted for comment again.

ZoeLofgren · 1 month

Update #2: My team is currently reviewing all your comments and working on a domain name seizures bill. I will link to a draft of the bill on Reddit when the draft is complete. Many of you were generous with your insight and suggestions. Thanks again for your comments and your time - the Internet is well-served by your passion!

makssiful · 1 month

I believe domain name is part of intellectual property, and if it's illegal to take someone's intellectual property without due process, it should apply to this issue as well. If a law should be set, there needs proper provision to estimate damages done to either party, the site owner and the plaintiff, before the judge signs any action, to see if there immediate need to seize or the plaintiff is suing out of external reasons such as stamping competition. I would write more about this but I'm on a phone in a buffet so I must eat.

You can also address it as the first amendment: whose rights are infringed and what can be done to minimize damages to both parties.

computersurveyer · 1 month

Domain Name seizures should be made completely illegal, with no compromises or exceptions, the government has taken down countless websites across the internet with absolutely no due process with only a judges signature on a piece of paper with most of the evidence for the take down coming from the biased entertainment industry all of the evidence from them was negative and all of the positive uses for these sites as well as the owner and users of the site’s constructional rights being ignored. The government should not be able to shut a website down with just a domain seizure, these seizures as you know can have a devastating effect on the website, the websites reputation as well as the integrity and freedom on the internet and if they were by mistake the website will be permanently damaged. When domains are seized that domain can never be used again, the registrar of that domain and the registry of that top level domain loses money, so far so many have been seized that these companies have lost enough money to employ a lot of people, as well as the ISP and whatever the advertiser made off of that website, so this is also hurting the economy somewhat as well as innovation. I urge you to not write a law that gives domain name seizures due process but to write a law that makes them completely illegal for all purposes, (possibly amend or repeal the PRO IP ACT). If you were to make a law that gives them some due process in the eyes of the government this would make domain name seizures more legitimate and most likely they would be more likely to occur. The government would most likely start threatening website owners “you better remove this content from your website or else” website owners would most likely to be afraid to post something that “may infringe” for fear of the government giving them some type of warning, overall this would make the internet a worse place overall hindering freedom on the internet and speech as well as expression. The DNS (Domain Name System) used to be very stable up until 2010 when these seizures started, now there seems to be some corruption going on with them, before 2010 the internet was a much better place when your domain was your domain and the government could not ruin your website by simply seizing domain names. If the government really needs to shut down a website for something drastic like child pornography there are other ways to do it like taking the servers or contacting the host or shutting down the internet access to it but domain name seizures are irreversible, and I also don’t think that it should be so easy to shut down a website. If shutting down sites is not very easy it will be greatly discouraged and freedom on the internet will thrive. Domain seizures are also useless because the content is still there and can be accessed by an alternative domain or ip address, so if a domain name is seized to child pornography that content is still there and it did nothing to help. I think it is absolutely necessary that you make a law that makes domain name seizures in all forms illegal, this will provide a solid platform for internet freedom and everything that that supports and it is guaranteed to be just as supported from the internet community as SOPA was opposed. Making some modifications to the PRO IP Act would not only make freedom on the internet better but it would also help innovation as well. I really appreciate that there is someone out there that cares about internet freedom, and is willing to do something about it and has the power to possibly to something about it and I would just like to say Thank you!

baybic · 1 month

Copyright should be fixed first

AD7863 · 1 month

Do not succumb to mega-corps because they write fat cheques. Follow this one rule and you'll be mostly fine.

rowenacherry · 1 month

With the greatest respect, Congresswoman, you appear not to consider the small or independent businessmen and women who create desirable content and who are content owners.

For many authors, musicians, photographers, models, the cost of Court proceedings are out of reach. Profit margins are slender, one cannot compete with a "free" version of one's work, no matter how reasonably one prices a legal copy, and international lawsuits are very expensive.

Too many of your constituents (in the broadest terms) do not understand that when they pay for a license to read an ebook or listen to a tune, they do not own the copyright to the ebook or the tune. They do not have the lawful right to upload the content to a "sharing" site, and to make that content available --free-- to hundreds of thousands of downloaders.

Too many "innovative" sites have business models that rely on their users committing copyright infringement, even if they disclaim responsiblity themselves.

Many internet sites, and big "Tech" businesses do a very poor job of communicating to users that they do not have the right to upload copyrighted content for others to download. Moreover, many of those sites either ignore DMCA notices, or ignore the OCILLA provisions of the DMCA that state that repeat infringers ought to be banned. If an OSP or ISP does not comply with Safe Harbor rules, they should not enjoy Safe Harbor protections.

There are sites that will sell subscriptions to links (allegedly hosted elsewhere and not uploaded by the people selling the subscriptions) to copyrighted works. Often, they will post ebooks before the day those ebooks go on legal sale to the public. They will post every ebook in an author's series.

The small business people are the people who need Congress's protection more than anyone, but of course, they are the minority, and the majority whom you serve would like to violate the rights of all content creators, regardless of whether they are millionaires or (in some cases literally) starving artists.

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