blocking orders – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Who Needs SOPA: Judge Orders Every US ISP To Block Entire Websites Accused Of Enabling Piracy

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

Almost exactly a decade ago, a few months after the US Congress rejected the site blocking setup of the SOPA copyright bill, which would enable copyright holders to force ISPs to block access entirely to websites deemed as being dedicated to “piracy,” we wrote a post about how it wasn’t even clear SOPA was needed when courts were willing to issue such blocking orders already. That was in a case around counterfeiting, where Louis Vuitton sought, and obtained, an order from a judge that demanded that domain registrars and ICANN effectively wipe certain website domains off the internet entirely.

Fast forward almost exactly a decade and TorrentFreak points us to a somewhat similar series of orders that demand that every ISP in the US block access entirely to three websites accused of infringement by a series of movie, TV, sports, and news content providers in Israel. The three orders are all embedded below, though they’re all basically the same — but they order non-party ISPs to block access to three domains that are accused of showing infringing streams: israel-tv.com, israel.tv, and sdarot.tv.

For all three of the websites, no defendants showed up in court (not too surprising, given that the cases were filed in the US). Without a defendant showing up, the court ruled for the plaintiffs in a default judgment — which is pretty typical. However, what is atypical, is that the judge then basically set the 1st Amendment on fire, and basically ordered a ton of non-parties to do things to stop enabling any access to these websites. It first issues a permanent injunction for anyone operating or working with those websites, but then issues an order for EVERY single ISP in the US to block access to these websites.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all ISPs (including without limitation those set forth in Exhibit B hereto) and any other ISPs providing services in the United States shall block access to the Website at any domain address known today (including but not limited to those set forth in Exhibit A hereto) or to be used in the future by the Defendants (“Newly-Detected Websites”) by any technological means available on the ISPs’ systems. The domain addresses and any NewlyDetected Websites shall be channeled in such a way that users will be unable to connect and/or use the Website, and will be diverted by the ISPs’ DNS servers to a landing page operated and controlled by Plaintiffs (the “Landing Page”) which can be reached as follows:

Domain – zira-usa-11026.org IP Address: 206.41.119.50 (Dedicated)

The Landing Page will include substantially the following information:

On April 26, 2022, in the case of United King Distributors, et al. v. Does 1-10, d/b/a Sdarot.tv (S.D.N.Y., Case No. 1:21-cv-11026 (KPF) (RWL)), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an Order to block all access to this website/ service due to copyright infringement

It’s unclear who created this particular landing page, but it does not exist, and at least it doesn’t include the silly badges with eagles on it.

The blocking order shows a very long list of ISPs, covering nine pages. For unclear reasons, the list shows not just the names of the ISPs, but also the estimated population covered, the number of states they cover, and their max speeds. As far as I can tell, the list appears to come from BroadbandNow’s “Internet Providers in the United States of America” list. This is the first page that comes up if you Google “list of US ISPs” and it also displays the exact same data sets in the exact same order. The list doesn’t match exactly, though, so it appears to be a subset of the larger list — though the court order says that it should be considered to apply to any US ISP.

And Judge Katherine Polk Failla doesn’t stop there. After ordering every ISP to block these websites, she also orders all third party service providers to cease doing business with these three websites. This includes an incredibly long list of possible service providers (notably a list that is even more in-depth than would have been required under SOPA — which, again, Congress rejected):

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, that third parties providing services used in connection with Defendants’ operations — including, without limitation, ISPs, web hosting providers, CDN service providers, DNS service providers, VPN service providers, domain name purchasing service, domain names privacy service, back-end service providers, affiliate program providers, web designers, shippers, search-based online advertising services (such as through-paid inclusion, paid search results, sponsored search results, sponsored links, and Internet keyword advertising), any banks, savings and loan associations, merchant account providers, payment processors and providers, credit card associations, or other financial institutions, including without limitation, PayPal, and any other service provider which has provided services or in the future provides services to Defendants and/or the infringing Website (including without limitation those set forth in the list annexed and made Exhibit C annexed hereto) (each, a “Third Party Service Provider”) — having knowledge of this Order by service, actual notice or otherwise be and are hereby permanently enjoined from providing services to the Website (through any of the domain names set forth in Exhibit A hereto or at any Newly-Detected Websites) or to any Defendant in conjunction with any of the acts set forth in subparagraphs (A)(1) to (A)(6) above;

And, as if that was not enough, she also orders domain registrars effectively kill those domains as well and hand them over to the plaintiffs:

That all domain names associated with the infringing Website, including without limitation those set forth in Exhibit A hereto, as well as any Newly-Detected Websites, be transferred to Plaintiffs’ ownership and control; and
That in accordance with this Court’s inherent equitable powers and its power to coerce compliance with its lawful orders, and due to Defendants’ on-going operation of their counterfeiting activities, in the event Plaintiffs identifies any Newly-Detected Website registered or operated by any Defendant and used in conjunction with the streaming any of Plaintiffs’ Works, including such Websites utilizing domain names containing any of Plaintiffs’ service mark or marks confusingly similar thereto, Plaintiffs shall have the ongoing authority to serve this Order on the domain name registries and/or the individual registrars holding and/or listing one or more of such the domain names associated with the Newly-Detected Websites; and
That the domain name registries and/or the individual registrars holding and/or listing one or more of the domain names associated with the Newly-Detected Websites, within seven (7) days of service of a copy of this Order, shall temporarily disable any domain names associated with the Newly-Detected Websites, make them inactive, and channel them in such a way that users will be unable to connect and/or use the Website, and will be diverted to the Landing Page (as defined in Paragraph B, above); and
That after thirty (30) business days following the service of this Order, the registries and/or the individual registrars shall provide Plaintiffs with all contact information for the Newly-Detected Websites; shall transfer any domain names associated with the Newly-Detected Websites to the ownership and control of Plaintiffs, through the registrar of Plaintiffs’ choosing, unless the Defendant has filed with the Court and served upon Plaintiffs’ counsel a request that such Newly-Detected Websites be exempted from this Order or unless Plaintiffs requests that such domain names associated with the NewlyDetected Websites be released rather than transferred;

Again, this is way, way beyond what even SOPA would have allowed. But Congress didn’t do it — and for good reason. This ruling has some really significant 1st Amendment issues. Ordering the complete takedown of a website like this is the equivalent of shutting down a magazine — ordering that the landlord evict the publisher, that the printing presses be destroyed, that the postal service refuse to send copies of the magazine, that the local waste management company refuse to pick up the garbage, etc. etc. An order like that would obviously have tremendous 1st Amendment problems as an attack on speech, even if you recognize that some of the content was infringing.

Of course, given that the websites chose not to show up in US court, it seems unlikely that they will challenge the order. It is possible that some ISPs might push back on it, not because they want to support piracy, but because of the extraordinarily problematic general precedent of allowing a judge to order such an extreme internet kill order. Allowing these kinds of orders to survive creates tremendous instability for the internet, and hopefully some ISPs will push back.

Filed Under: blocking orders, cdn, copyright, dns, israel, new york, registrars, site blocking, sopa, website blocking
Companies: dbs satellite services, hot communication, screen il, united king film distribution

French Government Declares Independence From Free Speech: Broad Internet Take-Down Powers Now In Place

from the storm-the-bastille dept

As its plan to completely shatter the support it received recently by attacking the very same concept of free speech its enemies declared war upon with terrorist attacks on a parody magazine not so many weeks back, the French government’s ability to be laughable and simultaneously dangerous never ceases to amaze. What at once looked to be rather punctuated attacks on opinions and social media, and even cable news (which I consider a common enemy but for vastly different reasons) has now since devolved into the kind of massive overreaction against a third-party target that is, dare I say, quite American in nature. Apparently no longer content with the plan to police the ever-dangerous internet themselves, the French government has suddenly and, it must be conceded, shockingly announced that it now has veto power over the internet, requiring ISPs to censor sites at its whim. And, because cynicism is practically the secret sauce in these kinds of things, they’ve laced their claims of “combating terrorism” via censorship powers with a dash of “preventing child pornography” to boot.

A new decree that went into effect today allows the French government to block websites accused of promoting terrorism and publishing child pornography, without seeking a court order. Under the new rules, published last week by France’s Ministry of the Interior, internet service providers (ISPs) must take down offending websites within 24 hours of receiving a government order. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says the decree is critical to combating terrorism, but civil rights groups say it gives the government dangerously broad powers to suppress free speech.

The decree implements two provisions from two laws — an anti-child pornography law passed in 2011 and an anti-terror law passed late last year. A department of the French national police will be responsible for identifying the sites to be blocked, with the suspected terror-related sites subject to review by an anti-terrorism branch. An administrator from the CNIL, France’s independent data protection organization, will be charged with overseeing the process. Once a site is blocked, its page will be replaced with an explanation of why the government took it down. In the case of child pornography pages, the text will also include a recommendation to seek medical help.

Now, anyone reading this site already knows why anointing a government with these kinds of powers, whether by the excuse of child pornography or via the far more mangled conflation of speech and terrorism, is inherently problematic. We should simply be able to trot out examples of governments declaring non-offending sites as falling under these kinds of headings and rest our case. When we see France spiral into this kind of out of control fear-based tailspin, however (particularly after having gone through it ourselves to such a degree that we’re still trying to dig ourselves out of it), we should find it conscripting us to fight against a stupid history that is attempting to repeat itself.

What this move relies upon, as do most attempts to censor speech on the internet, is a misguided fear of the seduction of internet-based communications. You can see this especially in the perhaps well-intentioned proponents of censorship when they speak.

Supporters of the measure say it’s critical to preventing future attacks, pointing to the growing number of young French nationals who have joined jihadist movements in Iraq and Syria, as well as aggressive online propaganda campaigns from terrorist groups like ISIS.

“Today, 90 percent of those who swing toward terrorist activities within the European Union do so after visiting the internet,” Cazneuves told reporters last week, after presenting the decree to French ministers. “We do not combat terrorism if we do not take measures to regulate the internet.”

Just try to implement that mode of logic in any arena that doesn’t involve the internet and see how far it gets you. You’ll be laughed out of the conversation if you were to say, for instance, “A large percent of those committing terrorist acts within Europe attended a mosque before doing so. We do not combat terrorism if we do not regulate mosques.” It misses the point entirely, of course, because it punishes what is largely the innocent while doing very little to_actually_ combat terrorism. We might also find that terrorists largely wear silk, or listen to a certain type of music, or are part of any number of subsets of culture that we wouldn’t dream of censoring, regulating, or placing under the watchful eye of a French government that has appeared all too happy to blame everyone for the failures of both their own security apparatus and civilization as a whole. But with the internet? That we’ll censor, because the ruling class is still of an age that might find it scary enough to allow it to happen.

Add to this that the blocking attempt will be largely ineffective for those with the will to circumvent it and this essentially amounts to one part grandstanding and two parts setting up a precedent for government interference in speech in the future.

“In light of the recent arrests that have followed the Charlie Hebdo attacks — many of which are clearly overboard — I would say that France’s government needs to seriously think about whether this law will stop terrorists, or merely chill speech,” Jillian York, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said in an email to The Verge.

Others question the effectiveness of the measure. Felix Tréguer, of the French online rights group La Quadrature du Net, says the decree risks “over-blocking perfectly legal content,” adding that the domain name system (DNS) blocking that it calls for can be easily circumvented. “The measure only gives the illusion that the State is acting for our safety,” Tréguer said in a statement published today, “while going one step further in undermining fundamental rights online.”

A small ruling class exerting control over the rights of the many in favor of its own power? Where have I heard this story before?

Filed Under: blocking orders, censorship, child porn, france, free speech, internet, takedowns, terrorism