Feds Yank Another Site -- Even Without SOPA-gctid49581

[Ajamu]

Feds Yank Another Site -- Even Without SOPA | PCWorld

Analysis: The Secret Service takes down JotForm and restores it  without explanation; perhaps the anti-SOPA hysteria wasn't alarming  enough.

By Kevin Fogarty, ITworld                          
  Feb 20, 2012 11:24 am        

                                                                                                                                Top execs at the SOPA-promoting  RIAA said over and over that the process of addressing alleged  copyright infringements would be open and fair, not the  secret-accunited snakestions-in-a-back-room affair most SOPA opponents imagined it  would be.

 

All  opponents had to go on was the language in the act, which described a  process in which those claiming to own copyrights could make accunited snakestions  to law enforcement agencies, which would go enforce the law without  having to validate that the accunited snakestions were true or that the accuser  actually owned the copyright.

  That's all silly politics, right? Propaganda. Hating from the pro, hating from the con.

  The process would be ruled by the U.S. legal system, so enforcement  would not be random, mysterious, unexplained or capricious. Right?

  Apropos of nothing, JotForm is back online.

  Jotform is the digital-forms site that was shut down by the U.S. Secret Service on February 15 by  ordering domain-name registrar GoDaddy to remove Jotform.com from its  DNS entries, effectively making it disappear from the Internet.

  Jotform got no notice ahead of time that an investigation was going on or that its site would be shut down.

  Suspension Remains a Mystery

   After it was shut down with no explanation of why, according to a blog entry by JotForm cofounder Aytekin Tank announcing the takedown.

  Tank and everyone else assumed the reason was an allegation of  copyright violations in one of the 2 million forms users have uploaded  or created on the site, but didn't hear that from the Secret Service.

  Tank's contact at GoDaddy told him the shutdown was due to a Secret Service investigation and gave him a number to call.

  When he used it to contact the Secret  Service agent in charge of the operation for an explanation, she said  she was busy, asked for his phone number and promised to call him back, according to a later post from Tank.

  Thursday afternoon GoDaddy got word from wherever Internet-shutdown  orders come from that it could put JotForm back in its DNS listings.  

GoDaddy got no further explanations; JotForm got no explanations at all.

  "We will probably never find out the reason for the suspension," Tank  wrote in an email to customers. "It has been a very difficult two days  for both our users and for us. So, I hope this is the end."

  A Secret Service spokesman told CNET the agency was "aware of the incident" and was "reviewing it internally to make sure all the proper procedures and protocols were followed."

 

It  sounds as if the only protocol that was followed was the silent  treatment – an approach favored by authoritarian organizations that  consider it their right to enforce the rules but view any questions  about their methods to be interference from perpetrators who have no  right to know for what they're being harassed or arrested anyway.

  I'm sure there was more to it than that; it can't be that one Secret  Service officer made the decision that JotForm was probably guilty of  copyright violation based on anonymous accunited snakestions. It can't be that the  Secret Service would shut down an entire business so indolently that  the agent who made the decision didn't care enough about it even to tell  the alleged perpetrator it had happened, let alone why.

  Having the whole thing just go away so JotForm could pop up on the  'net again – still with no explanation for why it was disappeared in the  first place – makes the whole process more capricious, less predictable  and expands the degree to which the whole thing violates the  due-process rights of the web sites being shut down.

  That may seem like no big deal to many, especially when the topic is  music-, movie- and software piracy, a lot of which goes on online even  though it doesn't do a fraction the amount of damage copyright holders  claim.

  Easier Online, but Not OK

  But in the real world, how loud would the screaming be, how severe  would be the penalties for agents involved if the Secret Service rolled  up in front of a retail store, ordered it to close its doors, padlocked  the place, placed a guard to make sure it wasn't reopened and then drove  off without an explanation?

  Especially if no one from the agency would even take the time to say  why the store had been shut down, how long it would be padlocked and who  was accusing it of wrongdoing?

  Most especially if many of the evidence, arguments and justifications pro-SOPA forces present to defend their extra-legal view of the judicial system turn out to be either misrepresentations, or outright fiction?

  A number of agents would be looking for civilian work and a number of  the accusers would be lawyering up in preparation for civil suits or  criminal prosecutions for making false accunited snakestions and violating the  civil rights of their victims.

  Online, even in the wake of a massive wave of protest against both  SOPA and the attitudes toward enforcement it sought to encode, the  outrage is muted, repercussions are nonexistent and possibility that  anyone but JotForm broke the law isn't even discussed.

  Another triumph for RIAA and MPAA! The two continue to demonstrate  how effective they are at fighting dirty – crushing others into the mud  in order to enforce the whims of the powerful even at the cost of  violating the most basic rights of the accused.

  Read more of Kevin Fogarty's CoreIT blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld. Follow Kevin on Twitter at @KevinFogarty. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-tos, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook.