Feds vs Spanish Sovereignty

[DaBees-Knees]

(source Zeropaid)

The US’ Immigrations and Customs Enforcement could turn everyone’s fears into reality if COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) is passed into law.

The precedent has been already created with ICE’s actions of seizing a foreign website with no US connections whatsoever. COICA would give the Department of Justice the power of seizing any site that comes into conflict with copyright holders, in order to prevent the importation into the United States of goods and services offered by an Internet site dedicated to infringing activities.

Rojadirecta.org (ranked #70 worldwide) used to host links to streams of multiple sport events but now has been closed by ICE (under the program called Operation in our Sites – created in order to close down all websites that “threaten economic opportunities and financial stability” and “suppress innovation and destroy jobs”.)

What the feds did not take into consideration is the fact that Spanish courts ruled countless times that the site is abiding by Spanish law.

Rojadirecta.org has been redirected to Rojadirecta.com and greets its visitors with the following messages:

“A very long judicial process (more than 3 years) where have worked the Spanish police, the Spanish Attorney General’s Office and the Spanish justice, ALL of them defending or deciding the legality of the site.”

“By closing rojadirecta.org this way, the domain dot org number 70 more visited in the world, show to any country in the World the lack of control over the generic domain names (.com, .org, .net, etc.) which are controlled by American companies and which the US authorities are censoring from the last months as they want without a legal process with the chance to defense yourself. Obviously we are already seeking legal advice and we will do the same in the US at the beginning of the day.”

Rojadirecta seems to have gained control over its .org version, but content and streaming link pages have been moved to Rojadirecta.com, Rojadirecta.me, Rojadirecta.es and Rojadirecta.in.

ICE might think of itself as the lone ranger, ready to right the wrongs, but what would happen if foreign countries would start seizing domain names of US-based websites ?

This is a major wake-up call to anyone that might be interested in COICA’s actions.

Additional reading at: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/senator-us-domain-name-seizures-alarmingly-unprecedented.ars

Once again the USA is making the mistake of striding heavy footed around the world trying to force it's views on other nations. It seems very slow to learn from it's past mistakes.