Joining a growing list of takedowns this week, music blog RnBXclusive.com has had its domain name confiscated by the United Kingdom Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). The move is unprecedented because it is the first (publicised) case in which a .com gTLD domain name has been seized by a UK government agency. It is unclear what wrongs the website operator had committed, though a statement from SOCA suggests that they involve copyright infringement on a commercial scale:
The website in question specialised in RnB and enabled access to music obtained by hacking, including some which had not yet been released. IFPI estimates losses to legitimate businesses and artists caused by the site to be £15m a year. During the week running up to arrest phase the website had 70,000 users daily, mainly males aged 18 to 25 years. (emphasis added)
The concerning phrase here is ‘enabled access’. If the music was not being hosted on the blog and was not actually procured or obtained by the website operator, it seems at least doubtful whether the website was committing an actionable wrong by linking or otherwise enabling access to the files in question. At most, this might amount to the civil statutory tort of authorising copyright infringement.
Many have also pointed out that the warning message being displayed by SOCA in place of the site’s original content was highly misleading. I look forward to hearing the matter determined fully in court.
