New York – The owner of a number of website domains seized by the U.S. government on copyright infringement allegations has filed a lawsuit against the government, demanding the return of its domains, Techdirt reports.
Puerto 80 Projects, the owner of Spain-based televised sports video streaming site Rojadirecta.com, has filed suit in federal court in New York over the seizure of its domains by the Justice Department and Dept. of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The U.S. government’s “Operation in Our Sites” initiative has so far seized dozens of domains of sites believed to be offering unauthorized copyrighted or counterfeit goods.
Rojadirecta offers an index of links to streams of sports videos hosted on third-party sites; while many are unauthorized streams, the company notes in its lawsuit that among them are non-infringing links to authorized streams offered by Yahoo and others.
The company argues that it is not guilty of copyright infringement because it does not host any content itself; that the domain seizures violated First Amendment rights; and that the government was unresponsive to its attempts to remedy the matter via negotiations.
Rojadirecta also claims it does not receive any revenue derived from content hosted on third-party sites to which it links.
The company said that, since the seizure of its Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org domains, traffic is down 30% to its service, which is still available at Rojadirecta.es.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/6lfahbe (Techdirt)
http://tinyurl.com/4yyd4dq (TorrentFreak)
