By Mel News February 14, 2012

So The UK Government Gets In On Seizing Domains? Music Website Seized

Visiting a popular R&B website this morning brings you to an ominous page similar if not worse than the one this website wore for a year. SOCA stands for the Serious Organized Crime Agency, a police organization in the UK. The notices announces the domain of rnbxclusive.com has been seized and its owners arrested for fraud. It also claims the majority of music available on the website was stolen from artists. I guess the UK doesn’t believe in due process either.

The page disgustingly displays your IP address and operating system information and tells you that if you’ve downloaded music from the website you may have committed a crime that carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years.

Perhaps the most sickening part of the notice is this though:

SOCA has the capability to monitor and investigate you, and can inform your internet service provider of these infringements.

You may be liable for prosecution and the fact that you have received this message does not preclude you from prosecution.

As a result of illegal downloads young, emerging artists may have had their careers damaged. If you have illegally downloaded music you will have damaged the future of the music industry.

Visit pro-music.org for a list of legal music sites on the web.

Yeah, cause ya’no the major labels and the RIAA are the only one’s who gets to decide what music websites they don’t like and entire governments bend to their will and demand. The claims at the end of damaging the future of the music industry and damaging the careers of young artists is a blatant bald face lie. The independent music industry is thriving.

Unbelievable. For those that may not remember, this website’s domain was seized for an entire year without due process by ICE before they gave it back for not having probable cause. RNBXCLUSIVE’s domain was through GoDaddy and their website server was through Rackspace so it’s going to be interesting to see how the UK Govt feels they have jurisdiction to seize the domain name.

No word if additional sites have been seized, we’ll update as we get more information.

Mel

http://www.blackmusicblvd.blogspot.com Nate Native

word. This shit sucks.
YaBoy

Does that mean they will pursue every single individual that has visited that website, or is that just an empty threat / scare tactic?
- Mel
  
  I don’t know. Pretty shitty scare tactic/threat though.
  - Fred
    
    Anyone can log your IP address by visiting their site. However, tying an IP address to an individual user is relatively hard. Not only do they have to be able to prove that it was your router (assuming NAT is used) that accessed the internet, they have to prove that it was you that did it.
  - Bergman
    
    I visited the site just now, as a form of protest.
    
    Oh well, there’s always the Wayback Machine.
  - Michael
    
    I think the issue is that the dude was posting full artist albums on the site. I am all for promo but I guess albums should not be leaked online. If the issue is about mixtapes I totally disagree with what the UK gov did. Mixtapes are released by the artists with their permission for free. If any website out there chooses to help promote those mixtapes by posting it on their site or posting the singles from the mixtapes on their site they shouldn’t get shut down for it!
- Qwx
  
  It’s just a scare tactic. Visiting any site itself is never any sort of crime. Even if site does something illegal, there has to be data on you participating in it. Since the site is down, and you can’t do anything there, this is just a blatant lying thread, designed to scare you.
  
  As a form of protest, I visited the site too, and refreshed several times. Here ya go, you know, that I’m using Windows XP, shocking!
  
  (To anyone less computer-literate – when you’re browsing, your IP, browser and Operating System are being transmitted (IP is required to communicate, other stuff helps create better services) to the website you’re visiting. So they just display you the information, you’ve already told them).
  
  This is sick. Me sad panda now. I hope EU wont pass ACTA.
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me

blow me. track this……
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Reality

If u haven’t done anything wrong you have nothing to fear.

Stop whining about these places being shut down cos you are bring a hippocrite; if it was your belongings they were stealing you would be the first to complain.

It’s totally irrelevant whether you think it shouldn’t be illegal in the first place, cos at the moment it’s the law and you should abide by it or face the consequences.
- Mel
  
  You just left that comment on a website that was seized for a year, and then given back because there wasn’t probable cause to keep it.
  
  Chew on that a minute. They issued the equivalent of the death sentence on this website, without giving the opportunity to defend or even explain. Not once did anyone associated to this website including it’s super awesome attorney see the inside of a court room over the Govt taking down the website and holding the domain name hostage. For 13 months.
  
  Then they just gave it back one day without explanation or apology. And here we are having to start completely over, with 90% of our previous daily regular readers being unaware we’ve returned to the internet.
  
  Saying if you haven’t done anything wrong you have nothing to fear is complete bullshit. We’re not dealing with a sane process, we’re dealing with bought and paid for laws and politics. It’s about being a part of something that the gatekeepers can’t wrap their head around, don’t understand and view as a direct threat to their existence. They don’t get it doesn’t have to be that way and blogs are not the enemy, so they react in a way that makes it worse for them and makes their entire situation worse.
  
  I don’t know if rnbxclusives was doing something wrong or not, honestly I don’t care. You don’t say you’re a democracy while allowing the police and investigators to act as judge, jury and executioner to issue then carry out punishment before you’ve been allowed the opportunity to respond and defend. That flies in the face of democracy. It’s no different than China, Iran, North Korea.
  
  We are reality. Read it and weep.
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/08225217010/breaking-news-feds-falsely-censor-popular-blog-over-year-deny-all-due-process-hide-all-details.shtml
  - Bergman
    
    There’s also the question of how, precisely, the UK takes down a page that isn’t hosted in the UK. How would the UK government react if, say, someone in Japan took down a .co.uk domain?
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Bergman

I’d love to see someone replace the front page at http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/index.htm get replaced with that SOCA splash screen…it’d be a lot more honest than what SOCA is doing.
- Bergman
  
  And I apparently can’t type coherently tonight. =(
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Dave

Well – the SOCA are certainly going after a VERY SERIOUS crime here. I can really sleep well in my bed at nights now. Never mind about murderers, muggers and rapists. Let’s go for something nice and easy.
This is total twaddle and out-and-out scaremongering by someone who obviously doesn’t know what they’re talking about. It’s my understanding that copying/sharing only becomes a criminal case if there is a profit made by distribution. Otherwise it’s a civil matter. Oh – and, by the way, shouldn’t: “Arrested for fraud” be: “Arrested on suspicion of fraud”. This sounds like a case of guilty unless proven innocent to my untrained eye, not to mention slander or libel. The whole page looks amateurish and containing the sort of threats that might appear on a phishing mail. It’s already been stated that an IP address doesn’t identify a particular person and what have “young artists’ careers” got to do with any law enforcement or alleged criminal aspects? It’s not up to the SOCA to make statements like that. I read elsewhere today that private companies have been paying police to make investigations. Makes you wonder, eh? The whole thing is a travesty.
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jimbob

If the owners of the website taken down were profiting and claiming the music was genuine then good riddance, scamming fuckers. Giving non profiteering down-loaders a bad name.
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So The UK Government Gets In On Seizing Domains? Music Website Seized

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