Friends-
Breaking news: Demand Progress has obtained documents that reveal a
radical shift in how law enforcement is policing the Internet.
Brian McCarthy ran a website that linked to various sites where you
could watch online streams of TV shows and sports networks. A couple
months ago, the government seized his domain name and on Friday they
arrested him and charged him with criminal copyright infringement --
punishable by five years in prison. We just dug up the complaint, and
you can view it here.
Click here to tell the government that there's nothing illegal about
linking to another website -- and that they need to drop the charges
right away!
http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/dhscomplaint/?referring_akid=.423296.Gm2XIo&source=mailto
The complaint reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) don't even allege that
McCarthy made a copy of anything! Just that his site linked to
various
sites with copyrighted material. Under that sort of thinking,
everyone
who's sent around a link to a copyrighted YouTube video is a
criminal!
This is another shocking overreach by DHS and ICE -- a steamship-era
department that's proving once again that it doesn't understand the
Internet.
We need to push back -- and fast -- before they try to lock up more
Americans. Will you click here to tell DHS and ICE to back off?
http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/dhscomplaint/?referring_akid=.423296.Gm2XIo&source=mailto
Thanks for fighting back!