blag.dh

dataanxiety:

radioon:

journo-geekery:

US judge orders hundreds of sites “de-indexed” from Google, Facebook

After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered “all Internet search engines” and “all social media websites”—explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to “de-index” the domain names and to remove them from any search results.

A November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites…

ugh

I have NO problem with a judge protecting consumers from fraudulent sales of fake merchandise being advertised as genuine.

This is the problem I have with this court decision, and why I think it is bad (I’m quoting from the same Ars Technica article cited above):

How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit.

Okay, that seems reasonable. But this does not:

The other 225 sites were seized based on a Chanel anti-counterfeiting specialist browsing the Web.

There was actual evidence for only three of the most recent batch of 228 sites!

225 sites were seized based on evidence collected by browsing the web for images of counterfeit goods. Even for a “counterfeit expert” this seems unlikely to be sufficient, not for such an extreme series of measures invoked by the court ruling.

If it is— rather, if there is some characteristic that permits such easy identification, then why not do it for the other 3 sites that were seized rather than going to the trouble of ordering the merchandise?