

Federal officials take down 132 websites in 'Cyber Monday' crackdown - billyarzt
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/269333-feds-take-down-132-websites-in-cyber-monday-crackdown

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usea
_As part of the operation, federal law enforcement officers made undercover
purchases of products such as sports jerseys, DVD players, clothing and
jewelry from websites suspected of selling counterfeit products. If the
copyright holders confirmed that the products were unauthorized, ICE obtained
a court order to shut down the sites._

I am confused due to the way this is worded. Does this mean that sites selling
second-hand, authentic goods (not counterfeit) could be taken down if the
copyright-holder did not "authorize" the site to sell their goods?

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ghurlman
If they were selling them as "new", sure.

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esrauch
Can the MPAA stop someone from selling a sealed DVD as "New" then if they
bought it from Best Buy first?

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bri3d
In the US, they probably can't. If the DVD is imported, they almost certainly
can.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale_Corp).

Omega was able to successfully prevent Costco from selling genuine, certified
authentic Omega watches intended for different foreign markets as "new Omega
watches" in the US.

So yes, if you bought a sealed DVD from a Russian Best Buy equivalent
(ignoring the region coding issues) and sold it in the US, you'd probably be
in trouble.

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lancewiggs
Why not take down eBay then? I'm sure officers could easily fulfil the same
criteria of being able to buy "counterfeit" goods from there. Amazon too no
doubt. Letting authorities get away with this sort of shoot-first approach is
a very slippery slope. The Dot Com debacle is simply a bigger version.

Sure - these may be bad actors, but we don't really know that do we. Where is
the due process? Where is the investigation uncovering a warehouse full of
goods? Can any of us trust our business to a .com domain name any more?

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wmf
eBay has its own takedown process and follows US law because they are US-
based. They only seize domains for sites that are outside the US (but their
domains are registered in the US) and do not respect US laws. There are still
huge due-process concerns, though.

~~~
lancewiggs
eBay has plenty of foreign sellers, but yes, they work with the authorities,
not against them. So, I have to say, did MegaUpload and Kim DotCom. What's a
foreign business to do?

The underlying issue is that a .com domain name is no longer safe, and I
suspect the new top level domains will be in the same bucket.

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hughesey
Once seized, they generally point them at the server at 74.81.170.110 which
hosts their seized image. Thus using a simple reverse IP lookup we can see a
list of all seized domains:
<http://viewdns.info/reverseip/?host=74.81.170.110>

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ImprovedSilence
wow that's pretty cool. Looks like everything from that list was in November.
Also looks like the majority of the sites were selling prescription drugs.

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rsingel
those dates do not reflect when a site was initially seized. For instance,
Filespump.com was seized in 2012 and lulzsec.com was seized in March. Both say
November according to this list.

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hughesey
Dates are when the domain was last checked by the site.

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nekojima
What about those folks who bought from these sites in the preceding days and
weeks before this action was taken? Shouldn't sites be taken down as found,
instead of waiting for a "special" day, if they allegedly violate laws.

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jlgreco
They know full well that these take-downs are nothing but token gestures. That
means two things: 1) theatrics are emphasized. Taking them all down at once is
more theatrical. 2) If they take down sites weeks before a major shopping
holiday, they will be back _well_ before the holiday hits. They are doing the
equivalent of spritzing febreeze around the apartment right before people come
over to visit.

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enraged_camel
I'm not sure how valid your argument is. Christmas is almost a month away, and
that's plenty of time for these websites to spring back up.

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jlgreco
Well I suspect the idea is most people buy things before Christmas, not
during. The perception seems to be that the single largest online shopping day
in the "before Christmas" season is this "Cyber Monday".

Maybe the most active shopping day is the second Tuesday of December, or
something else relatively obscure, but since theatrics are valued it would
still make sense to hit on the day most people think of as "the big day".

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joshuahedlund
> It is the third straight year that the government has seized websites on
> "Cyber Monday"...

Did not know this.

> ICE's _Homeland Security_ Investigations unit coordinated with officials
> from Belgium, Denmark, France, Romania, the United Kingdom and the European
> Police Office to take down the sites.

A great example of mission creep. Counterfeit goods have nothing to do with
terrorism.

~~~
tshtf
ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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charonn0
Still mission creep, though.

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tptacek
Counterfeiting has always been part of ICE's mission and the "homeland
security" dig is a cheap shot, since ICE got absorbed into DHS; it wasn't an
effort spun up by homeland security.

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ams6110
ICE is a merger of the former INS and Customs. Prior to DHS Customs had
nothing to do with immigration, and that job is now split between ICE and CIS
for reasons that don't seem apparent.

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rwmj
Be nice if they could pay a bit more attention to the things that matter to
the little people, like fraud and spam.

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city41
If they have the ability to do this, then what would SOPA have bought them?

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benhebert
Do the websites allegedly selling counterfeit products have any way to defend
themselves? Or does the copyright holder just say, this is mine and they get
shut down without any verification.

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wmf
They can sue to get the domain back, but it's usually not worth it. Or if
you're lucky they'll give the domain back after a year:
<http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?company=dajaz1>

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ambiguator
Whatever happened to innocence until proven guilty?

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ams6110
Doesn't apply at the border

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pav3l
Not sure what they achieved. Tomorrow the same people will register another
132 domain names and continue operating as usual.

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evan_
But they're down today, on the (if you believe the hype) biggest online
shopping day of the year.

~~~
benhebert
It's like busting the drug dealer on the corner. Taking down small level
offenders, doesn't solve the problem.

