Domain Name Seizure Warrant and Probable Cause

By , December 28, 2010.

A month ago, as many readers are aware, the US federal government seized a number of domain names for sites engaged in counterfeiting and infringement. The seizures were applauded by many working in the creative industries.

In my previous post on the subject, I responded to criticisms that the seizures violate due process (they don’t) and the First Amendment (they don’t).

A new round of criticisms have sprung up recently when a copy of the seizure warrant for several of the domain names — specifically, those alleged to be facilitating copyright infringement as opposed to counterfeiting — appeared online. You can see the warrant and affidavit here.

The criticisms have been spearheaded primarily by Techdirt, where a series of posts have alleged “technical and legal errors” in the warrant and affidavit. 1See Homeland Security Presents ‘Evidence’ for Domain Seizures; Proves it Knows Little About the Internet — Or the Law; Full Homeland Security Affidavit to Seize Domains Riddled With Technical and Legal Errors; More and Bigger Mistakes Discovered in Homeland Security’s Domain Seizures.

Are there errors in the affidavit? If so, do they even matter? The answer is no. The confusion comes from misunderstanding the nature and purpose of warrants and the meaning of “probable cause.”

Probable Cause

A seizure of property for a forfeiture proceeding is very much like an arrest of a person for a criminal trial. The trial or forfeiture proceeding is where guilt or innocence is determined. All that is needed for a seizure or arrest is some basis for starting a trial or forfeiture proceeding against the person or property.

In the US, the Fourth Amendment establishes that basis as “probable cause.” Probable cause does not mean prima facie evidence of guilt — evidence that, as the Supreme Court said over 200 years ago, “would justify condemnation.” 2Locke v. United States, 11 US 339, 348 (1813). Instead, it means only that it is probable that a crime has been committed. Probable cause requires only a “reasonable ground for belief of guilt.”

Most often, probable cause is established by a warrant. The investigating officer writes up an affidavit describing the facts and circumstances that lead him to believe a crime has been committed and submits it to a neutral judge. The judge reviews the warrant and signs off on it if satisfied that probable cause has been established.

Recognizing the distinction between the standard of probable cause and the standard required to prove guilt is important to seeing why the criticisms of this warrant are baseless.

In 1949, the Supreme Court explained the distinction:

Guilt in a criminal case must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt and by evidence confined to that which long experience in the common-law tradition, to some extent embodied in the Constitution, has crystallized into rules of evidence consistent with that standard. These rules are historically grounded rights of our system, developed to safeguard men from dubious and unjust convictions, with resulting forfeitures of life, liberty and property.

However, if those standards were to be made applicable in determining probable cause for an arrest or for search and seizure, more especially in cases such as this involving moving vehicles used in the commission of crime, few indeed would be the situations in which an officer, charged with protecting the public interest by enforcing the law, could take effective action toward that end. Those standards have seldom been so applied.

In dealing with probable cause, however, as the very name implies, we deal with probabilities. These are not technical; they are the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act. The standard of proof is accordingly correlative to what must be proved. 3Brinegar v. United States, 338 US 160, 174-76 (1949).

The Court could not be more clear on this last point. It has reiterated many times that probable cause is a preliminary and tentative determination, the affidavits accompanying warrants need not be “ironclad” or airtight, and magistrates should use common sense when deciding whether to issue a warrant, not focus on hypertechnicalities. 4See Brinegar; Spinelli v. US, 393 US 410, 419 (1969); Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 96 (1964); McCray v. Illinois, 386 U. S. 300, 311 (1967); United States v. Ventresca, 380 U. S. 102, 108 (1965); Barber v. Page, 390 U.S. 719, 725(1968).

The Court’s reasoning for giving warrants such leeway is based on the realities of law enforcement. As it said in US v. Ventresca (1965):

[T]he Fourth Amendment’s commands, like all constitutional requirements, are practical and not abstract. If the teachings of the Court’s cases are to be followed and the constitutional policy served, affidavits for search warrants, such as the one involved here, must be tested and interpreted by magistrates and courts in a commonsense and realistic fashion. They are normally drafted by nonlawyers in the midst and haste of a criminal investigation. Technical requirements of elaborate specificity once exacted under common law pleadings have no proper place in this area. A grudging or negative attitude by reviewing courts toward warrants will tend to discourage police officers from submitting their evidence to a judicial officer before acting. 5380 US 102, 108 (1965).

Sixteen years earlier, the Court said this common-sense approach that favors warrants but leaves room for reasonable mistakes properly balances the constitutional rights of individuals with the necessities of law enforcement:

These long-prevailing standards seek to safeguard citizens from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy and from unfounded charges of crime. They also seek to give fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection. Because many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability. The rule of probable cause is a practical, nontechnical conception affording the best compromise that has been found for accommodating these often opposing interests. Requiring more would unduly hamper law enforcement. To allow less would be to leave law-abiding citizens at the mercy of the officers’ whim or caprice. 6Brinegar v. United States, 338 US 160, 176 (1949).

Bottom line: seizures and forfeiture proceedings serve different purposes, like arrests and trials. The warrant is a preliminary instrument whose function is to establish probable cause of a crime. Actually proving guilt or innocence comes later. The realities of enforcing law require a lot of leeway in a warrant: it’s enough for probable cause that the facts and circumstances in the affidavit would lead a reasonable man to conclude that there is a likelihood that a crime was committed.

The Errors?

One of the “errors” alleged by Techdirt is the inclusion of statistics about the effects of online piracy in the affidavit. These statistics were likely added to provide context or background to the investigation for the judge reviewing the warrant. The “error” is that Techdirt disputes the validity of the statistics. But whether or not you agree with the accuracy of the statistics cited in the warrant is irrelevant: probable cause for copyright infringement doesn’t depend on the scope of the harm in the aggregate.

Other “errors” pointed out include the use and definition of certain terms. For example, the classification of Torrent-finder as a “bit torrent website” is disputed because it “hosts no tracker” and “hosts no infringing content.” But the terms are only descriptive, irrelevant to whether or not probable cause of a crime exists. Even if the terminology is technically incorrect, this is the type of “error” that the law doesn’t care about in warrants.

I’m not even sure the terminology used here is even wrong in the first place. BitTorrent is a protocol, so there’s an accepted, technical definition for that — but is there an accepted, technical definition for a “bit torrent website”? Wikipedia lists sites similar to Torrent-finder at Comparison of BitTorrent sites: sites that search through multiple torrent search engines but do not host trackers or infringing content themselves.

Some of the other “errors” found in the seizure warrant include what amount to possible defenses against criminal copyright infringement — for example, the operator of one of the sites whose domain name was seized claims that several of the songs available to download that had been identified in the warrant were authorized to be shared for promotional purposes. If true, this would of course mean that there was no infringement of those specific songs. But that’s an issue for the forfeiture proceeding, not the probable cause determination.

The Supreme Court has “flatly rejected the idea that the police have a standing obligation to investigate potential defenses before finding probable cause.” 7Acosta v. Ames, 386 F. 3d 5, 11 (1st Circuit, 2004), citing Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 145-46 (1979). Possible defenses and claims of innocence are issues for the judge and jury, not law enforcement officials. Yes, this means that sometimes property is seized or people are arrested that later are found not guilty. That is the purpose of the trial — to determine innocent or guilt. But “the Constitution does not guarantee that only the guilty will be arrested” and “due process does not require that every conceivable step be taken, at whatever cost, to eliminate the possibility of convicting an innocent person.” 8Baker v. McCollan
 at 145.

Conclusion

An actual legal challenge to this warrant would not likely be successful, but I doubt that is the goal of those pointing out the “errors” they’ve found. It’s not as though if some of the technical definitions were worded differently, or alternate statistics were used, critics would have no problem with the seizures.

Their problem is disagreement with fundamental copyright laws, so any attempts to enforce those laws are attacked any way they can. Critics seem to want an exception from these rules of probable cause and procedure — rules that apply to pretty much every other law, both federal and state — for piracy. A “balanced” copyright law, it seems, is one that places all the burden on the copyright holder — from creating and investing in new works to policing and enforcing the rights in those works — while requiring that “every conceivable step be taken, at whatever cost, to eliminate the possibility of convicting” a torrent search engine. 9Quote taken from Baker v. McCollan, where it was used in the context of describing what due process does not require.

References

References
↑1 See Homeland Security Presents ‘Evidence’ for Domain Seizures; Proves it Knows Little About the Internet — Or the Law; Full Homeland Security Affidavit to Seize Domains Riddled With Technical and Legal Errors; More and Bigger Mistakes Discovered in Homeland Security’s Domain Seizures.
↑2 Locke v. United States, 11 US 339, 348 (1813).
↑3 Brinegar v. United States, 338 US 160, 174-76 (1949).
↑4 See Brinegar; Spinelli v. US, 393 US 410, 419 (1969); Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 96 (1964); McCray v. Illinois, 386 U. S. 300, 311 (1967); United States v. Ventresca, 380 U. S. 102, 108 (1965); Barber v. Page, 390 U.S. 719, 725(1968).
↑5 380 US 102, 108 (1965).
↑6 Brinegar v. United States, 338 US 160, 176 (1949).
↑7 Acosta v. Ames, 386 F. 3d 5, 11 (1st Circuit, 2004), citing Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 145-46 (1979).
↑8 Baker v. McCollan
 at 145.
↑9 Quote taken from Baker v. McCollan, where it was used in the context of describing what due process does not require.

Feds Seize Domain Names

By , December 06, 2010.

On November 29, the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency executed seizure warrants on over 80 domain names for sites engaged in counterfeiting and online piracy. This round of seizures, dubbed “Operation In Our Sites v. 2.0”, is part of an ongoing investigation by ICE and follows a similar round of seizures which took place this past summer.

Many have noted similarities between Operation In Our Sites and the pending Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which would create enhanced civil forfeiture mechanisms against websites dedicated to infringing activities. Both the Operation and COICA target the domain name of these websites; both result in blocking the domain name from resolving to the website.

And, like COICA, critics of Operation In Our Sites have raised concerns that these domain name seizures lack due process and violate the First Amendment. I previously addressed these two issues as they relate to COICA; today, I want to take a look at them in the context of these domain name seizures.

Seizure vs. Forfeiture

The first step in understanding what is going on here is making a distinction between seizure and forfeiture. It’s easy to get the two confused, but they are separate concepts, and the government has to play by two different (but sometimes overlapping) sets of rules to stay within constitutional bounds.

Seizure is the act of taking custody of property. Most of us are probably most familiar with seizure of property that is evidence of a crime: when police find the murder weapon during a search, they can seize it — take temporary possession of it — for further examination and for use at trial. But property is also typically seized prior to forfeiture proceedings. 1Most property, that is, as we’ll see later. A court only has authority of property within its territorial jurisdiction, and it can only assert that authority when the property has been taken into its custody. 2Dobbins’s Distillery v. United States, 96 US 395 (1878).

The US Constitution lays out specifically what is needed for a seizure to be lawful. The Fourth Amendment states that “unreasonable” seizures are prohibited, and property may only be seized when accompanied by a warrant, issued “upon probable cause” that describes with particularity the “things to be seized.”

Forfeiture is the “involuntary relinquishment of money or property without compensation as a consequence of a breach or nonperformance of some legal obligation or the commission of a crime.” 3West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. Property may be forfeited as part of a sentence for a criminal conviction, or the government may seek forfeiture in and of itself through a civil in rem proceeding against the property. Civil forfeiture is limited to those types or classes of property set by statute. In civil forfeiture cases, the government has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that property was used in or derived from prohibited activities.

In short: property is seized to commence a civil forfeiture proceeding, and it is forfeited if it was used in the commission of a crime. This principle has been followed for centuries: British politician and lawyer John Sadler wrote in 1649, “No forfeiture before conviction; no seizure before indictment.” 4John Sadler, Rights of the Kingdom, pg. 281.

The US government may use civil forfeiture to enforce copyright laws against:

(A) Any article, the making or trafficking of which is, prohibited under section 506 of title 17, or section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of this title.

(B) Any property used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part to commit or facilitate the commission of an offense referred to in subparagraph (A).

(C) Any property constituting or derived from any proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of the commission of an offense referred to in subparagraph (A). 518 US Code § 2323(a)(1).

So, contrary to some descriptions of COICA, the authority to initiate forfeiture proceedings against domain names of websites involved in the commission of copyright infringement already exists. COICA merely enhances these forfeiture proceedings (for example, by adding requirements for advertising and financial transaction providers to take reasonable measures to block their services from forfeited domain names). However, whether the government pursues civil forfeiture against domain names under COICA, should it pass, or under existing law, the first step in that process would still involve what occurred on November 29th: the seizure of those domain names.

Seizure and Due Process

Most of us generally don’t question the authority of the government to seize property that is evidence in a criminal trial. If police have a warrant to look for a murder weapon, and they find it, they can bag it up and remove it from the owner’s possession.

But as mentioned above, property may also be seized pursuant to a warrant to be forfeited in and of itself. While some may find this practice troubling — especially if the government is seen as too aggressive in seizing property — the constitutional requirements for this type of seizure are largely the same as seizing property for evidence.

When it comes to the practice of seizing domain names, the question is: should the same rules that govern the seizure of ordinary property apply, or do domain names present special circumstances that require stricter rules of due process for their owners?

In making the claim that domain names present special circumstances, critics of the seizures seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. They say these seizures are unconstitutional — they should be subject to higher standards of due process because owners of domain names are being deprived of something more than owners of all other types of property subject to seizure. But at the same time, they say these seizures are ineffective because the owners aren’t being deprived of anything — they still have their content and servers, their sites can still be accessed by IP address, and in many cases, the owners have registered new domain names for their sites within hours of the seizures.

Let’s see whether the case for treating domain names differently than ordinary property hold up.

The Fifth Amendment states that “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Generally, “due process” requires notice and a hearing. When it comes to seizure, the question boils down to whether the notice and hearing must occur before the government seizes property, or whether the hearing can occur after.

For most of history, the Supreme Court has held that notice and hearing after property is seized is sufficent; the Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and specificity for seizures satisfies due process. However, the Court has carved out exceptions to this principle. In 1993, in a forfeiture case involving real estate, the Court stated that the Fourth Amendment “does not provide the sole measure of constitutional protection that must be afforded property owners in forfeiture proceedings” — forfeiture proceedings must also comply with “well-settled jurisprudence under the Due Process Clause.” US v. James Daniel Good Real Property held that the government must provide notice and hearing before seizing real estate it wishes to forfeit.

The reasons for this exception were provided by the Court. “The practice of ex parte seizure … creates an unacceptable risk of error.” The government’s interest in this practice must be balanced with this risk. Primarily, the Court noted that since real estate can’t move, courts can establish jurisdiction over it without seizure. Thus, there is no pressing need to delay notice and hearing until after real estate is seized.

Notably, three justices dissented from this holding, noting that there was no basis in existing case law for the Court to look beyond the Fourth Amendment in seizure cases and no logical reason to distinguish real estate from personal property:

“Our historical treatment of civil forfeiture procedures underscores the notion that the Fourth Amendment specifically governs the process afforded in the civil forfeiture context, and it is too late in the day to question its exclusive application. As we decided in Calero-Toledo v.Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U. S. 663 (1974), there is no need to look beyond the Fourth Amendment in civil forfeiture proceedings involving the Government because ex parte seizures are `too firmly fixed in the punitive and remedial jurisprudence of the country to be now displaced.'”

Nevertheless, when it comes to real estate, due process typically requires a hearing before the property is seized.

Domain names are not real estate, and the reasons in James Daniel Good Real Property for requiring a pre-seizure hearing are not applicable to the seizure of domain names. The “risk of error” involved in seizing domain names is no higher than those involved in the seizure of personal property: the content and servers are still available to the owner, the site can still be accessed through the IP address, and it is relatively easy for the owner to acquire a new domain name — something many of those affected did within hours of having their domains seized.

Also, like personal property, domain names can be “moved” or “destroyed” as those terms are understood in the jurisdictional context. The situs of domain names is the location of the domain name registrar where the domain name is registered. As mentioned above, it is relatively easy for a website owner to register a new name overseas, removing the domain name from the court’s territorial jurisdiction.

Thus, the forfeiture of domain names present the same considerations that the Supreme Court has held justify postponing notice and hearing until after seizure in Calero-Toledo. The seizure permits the US “to assert in rem jurisdiction over the property in order to conduct forfeiture proceedings, thereby fostering the public interest in preventing continued illicit use of the property and in enforcing criminal sanctions”, domain names “could be removed to another jurisdiction, destroyed, or concealed, if advance warning of confiscation were given”, and “seizure is not initiated by self-interested private parties”, but by federal officials.

Seizure and the First Amendment

The argument is also made that these domain name seizures violate the First Amendment. Websites contain speech; ex parte seizure of websites, before a judicial determination that the content is not protected by the First Amendment (as is the case with infringing content) may be considered a prior restraint on speech. As we’ll see, the seizure of these domain names do not run afoul of First Amendment protections for many of the same reasons they do not run afoul of due process protections.

The Supreme Court has addressed the implications of the First Amendment in seizures most often under laws prohibiting obscenity. Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. Seizure of obscene materials, whether to use as evidence in a criminal trial or to initiate forfeiture proceedings, requires a close look by courts because of the risk that nonobscene, protected speech might end up being blocked.

In Quantity of Copies of Books v. Kansas, the Court reiterated its warning that “if seizure of books precedes an adversary determination of their obscenity, there is danger of abridgment of the right of the public in a free society to unobstructed circulation of nonobscene books.” This danger does not foreclose all seizures concerning speech, however. It merely means that the law requires certain procedural safeguards to protect against the abridgment of  speech rights.

First, as the Court stated in Stanford v. Texas, “the constitutional requirement that warrants must particularly describe the “things to be seized” is to be accorded the most scrupulous exactitude when the “things” are books, and the basis for their seizure is the ideas which they contain.” There is no question that the government has met this requirement; the seizures were made pursuant to valid, specific warrants issued by a neutral, impartial judge.

Second, “because only a judicial determination in an adversary proceeding ensures the necessary sensitivity to freedom of expression, only a procedure requiring a judicial determination suffices to impose a valid final restraint.” 6Heller v. New York, 413 US 483, 489 (1973). This does not mean that a judicial determination must occur before seizure. The Court in Heller v. New York said that it “has never held, or even implied, that there is an absolute First or Fourteenth Amendment right to a prior adversary hearing applicable to all cases where allegedly obscene material is seized.” Rather, “a judicial determination need only occur ‘promptly so that administrative delay does not in itself become a form of censorship.'” In effect, the Court recognizes the danger that too long of a temporary restraint on speech-related items can have the effect of a final restraint.

The Court, however, upheld the seizure in Heller, and I think the reasoning is applicable to the seizure of these domain names:

In this case, of course, the film was not subjected to any form of “final restraint,” in the sense of being enjoined from exhibition or threatened with destruction. A copy of the film was temporarily detained in order to preserve it as evidence. There has been no showing that the seizure of a copy of the film precluded its continued exhibition. Nor, in this case, did temporary restraint in itself “become a form of censorship,” even making the doubtful assumption that no other copies of the film existed. A judicial determination of obscenity, following a fully adversary trial, occurred within 48 days of the temporary seizure. Petitioner made no pretrial motions seeking return of the film or challenging its seizure, nor did he request expedited judicial consideration of the obscenity issue, so it is entirely possible that a prompt judicial determination of the obscenity issue in an adversary proceeding could have been obtained if petitioner had desired. Although we have refrained from establishing rigid, specific time deadlines in proceedings involving seizure of allegedly obscene material, we have definitely excluded from any consideration of “promptness” those delays caused by the choice of the defendant. In this case, the barrier to a prompt judicial determination of the obscenity issue in an adversary proceeding was not the State, but petitioner’s decision to waive pretrial motions and reserve the obscenity issue for trial.

The seizure of domain names is even less like a form of final restraint than the seizure of the film in Heller. Neither any content or servers containing the content were temporarily detained. The purpose of seizing these domain names is to establish and preserve in rem jurisdiction for forfeiture proceedings. The seizure doesn’t preclude access to the web sites or amount to a “form of censorship” — as stated above, one can access the site by IP address, and it is relatively easy for a site owner to set up a new domain name. Finally, domain name owners have full opportunity to challenge the seizures themselves through pretrial motions or a prompt judicial determination at a forfeiture proceeding.

Conclusion

The seizure of these 82 domain names satisfy both due process and the First Amendment. Criticism of this strategy on constitutional grounds is thus shaky. Critics may still question the rightness of the seizures, but as the Supreme Court pointed out over a century ago, “If the laws here in question involved any wrong or unnecessary harshness, it was for Congress, or the people who make congresses, to see that the evil was corrected. The remedy does not lie with the judicial branch of the government.” 7Springer v. United States, 102 US 586, 594 (1881).

As far as their effectiveness or necessity, I’m inclined to agree with Patrick Ross’s take:

The U.S. government has an obligation to ensure that U.S. copyright law is enforced in all markets, physical and online. Operation In Our Sites is but one example of many of how the Obama Administration recognizes the critical role copyright industries play in our economy, and individual artists and creators play in our economy and our culture.

I’m sure there will be some out there who criticize the seizure of these domains, just as there are those who criticize a bipartisan effort by lawmakers to facilitate the disruption of these for-profit online theft centers. Their criticism will begin with an assertion of the importance of copyright protection, then immediately be followed by a big “but.” (Any image that comes to mind from those last two words is wholly on you.)

Instead of constantly saying what they don’t like, maybe those critics could say that copyright enforcement is important, and follow with an “and,” i.e., “and we think the federal government should do x, y, and z to ensure successful enforcement.” If you don’t hear that “and” it’s probably because they weren’t sincere in the part before the “but.”

References

References
↑1 Most property, that is, as we’ll see later.
↑2 Dobbins’s Distillery v. United States, 96 US 395 (1878).
↑3 West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2.
↑4 John Sadler, Rights of the Kingdom, pg. 281.
↑5 18 US Code § 2323(a)(1).
↑6 Heller v. New York, 413 US 483, 489 (1973).
↑7 Springer v. United States, 102 US 586, 594 (1881).