The Motion Picture Association (MPAA) and other film industry groups spoke out this week, praising the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for their Operation in Our Sites initiative, in which the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency seizes domains suspected of copyright infringement without any warning or due process.
The ICE domain seizures began last year, and have continued despite some serious mistakes and criticism from multiple politicians who have raised concern that the actions may violate the constitutional rights of the accused.
Washington DC political website The Hill reports that the MPAA, Screen Actors Guild, and major film studios penned a group letter expressing their support of the ICE actions.
“Operation in Our Sites has not only put illegal sites out of business, but has raised public awareness about this specific form of crime on the Internet,” the letter stated. “Most importantly, these enforcement efforts have resulted in most of these entities ceasing their illegal activity.”
That would be good if there was evidence that all of the domains affected by Operation in Our Sites were carrying out illegal activities; however that doesn’t seem to be the case. Torrent-Finder, seized by the ICE in November, is a search engine and has no copyright infringing material on its servers, while music blog RapGodfathers.com claimed to have been DMCA-compliant at the time their site was raided.
There is also, of course, no mention of the 84,000 websites that were mistakenly seized and publicly accused of harboring child pornography before the ICE had realized their error.
But the movie industry is content with the actions, constitutional or not, because they gain awareness for a cause they have lobbied extensively to support.
“Movies and TV programs, some of the biggest draws on the Internet, are in many ways the ‘canary in the coal mine.’ Stealing and illegally selling this content may appear to be victimless crimes or a harmless form of theft, but they are neither,” the letter continued. “If it is not made clear that this kind of activity is illegal, it has the potential to become the harbinger of even more forms of illegal activity on the Internet.”
Also in the letter, the film industry groups voiced their support for tougher penalties for copyright infringement including felony charges and longer prison sentences. Recent reports, however, claim that these types of hardline approaches don’t do much to combat piracy, and that pricing, not ignorance, is at the root of the issue.
The approach does seem to be providing some humor for some torrent-associated domain owners though. TorrentFreak has revealed that some websites will be displaying the Department of Justice/Homeland Secuity/ICE logo page in place of their actual website to surprise visitors as an April Fool’s Day joke. This should certainly provoke some interesting responses out of Washington and Hollywood.
