Arrested

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=351.45919.V-X...

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=351.45919.V-X...

Thanks for fighting back!