Can an &quot;FBI domain seizure&quot; April Fools joke land you in jail? I found this GitHub repository that contains collection of several different intelligence agency domain seizure pages, including FBI domain seizure. It is meant to be used by said agencies for real seized domains, but I figured out one of my April Fools jokes on my own websites would be to include the FBI domain seizure page for just one day and display it to anyone who visits the page on April 1st for the first time. The domain is on a national TLD outside U.S. so it's fairly obvious that FBI couldn't seize that domain (and it's a 3rd level domain, too). However I would still make sure that I won't face any kind of jail for that if I misuse the domain seizure template for a silly April Fools joke. I would add a button to it that will be labeled as something like &quot;Details on this seizure&quot; or something, and clicking it will display an alert box saying &quot;APRIL FOOLS&quot; and redirecting back to the real website homepage. I also figured out that just for the sake of being sure, the page would visibly include a disclaimer stating that that page isn't real and was only installed for the purpose of a one time April Fools joke and does not intend to misinterprets it as a real domain seizure, and that the artwork is licensed under Public Domain as an official U.S. government agency artwork. Am I still in trouble if I go with that route? Is it too overboard?
I can't comment on what the legal situation would be in your home country, but as a matter of U.S. law, the hypothetical scenario you've described is not illegal. First, because you aren't a U.S. citizen and because you aren't operating in the United States, the U.S. government probably has no jurisdiction over you, your website, or your conduct. Even if it did, the most relevant statute, 18 U.S. Code § 1017, would not apply. The statute prohibits the &quot;fraudulent or wrongful&quot; use of the FBI's seal. But &quot;fraudulent&quot; and &quot;wrongful&quot; generally refer only to conduct where one uses deception or other means to obtain money, property, etc. to which they have no lawful entitlement. United States v. Enmons, 410 U.S. 396, 399 (1973). Because you aren't using the seal to obtain anyone's property through deception, this use would not fall within the statute's proscriptions. Even if the government sought to prosecute you, you would have a valid First Amendment defense. The First Amendment protects the right to free speech, and it does not allow statements to be criminalized merely because they are false. United States v. Alvarez, 132 S. Ct. 2537 (2012). This outcome should be unsurprising to most U.S. observers. I think most people would agree that the U.S. obviously cannot prosecute a Hollywood producer for making a movie dramatizing the FBI's efforts to shut down the Pirate Bay, even if it displayed the FBI's seizure message on a monitor in the course of the movie, and even if it showed the seal being used on a completely fictional website. The hypothetical you're describing is not materially different. In both cases, the seal is being used to falsely create the impression -- for entertainment purposes -- that the FBI has shut down a website. Saying false things for entertainment purposes is not a crime in the United States.
You might be able to use a site like the Internet Archive to preserve the TOC even after the site is shut down. The real liability trap here is if the site does not have the authority to give you this license. If a user uploads a photo that they do not own, and you use it, you are infringing the copyright of the original owner. Innocent infringement is not a defense to liability (although it may reduce damages in some cases.)
...due to the international registration of multiple domains to generate ad revenue by recycling stories across sock puppet networks, giving the impression of multiple, independent companies. None of that is illegal on its face. Internet domains are freely registerable by anyone, anywhere (with the exception of some laws in some nations that restrict such Internet-related activity), and registered privately or publicly, and websites can be hosted anywhere. Writing articles and "spinning" and copying articles (even if that writing is sales gibberish in broken English) among the same copyright owner is legal, and using the same design and layout for a network of sites is legal. The formation of multiple, related companies and shell companies to give the impression that companies are separate and independent is legal (again, with the exception of some business and corporate laws in some nations that restrict such activity). These are all common business practices. Some business practices may appear to be unethical - trying to fool customers in order to make money and get clicks and sell ads. And what you may be feeling is that such activity is unethical. And that's OK. But feeling that they are unethical doesn't make the practices illegal. Many common activities that are considered to be unethical are illegal; but not all. Buyer beware. One way some of that activity may be illegal is if those articles are factually incorrect and promote quack medical treatments, are financial scams requiring payments, are gambling sites or promote other clearly illegal things. But then you get into the complexity of exactly how they are illegal, which jurisdictions are involved, and on and on.
It is, in most jurisdictions, not a crime to download YouTube videos. For criminal law, the answer is that it is not illegal. In many jurisdictions, downloading music or video of any kind from the internet is not a crime. Thus, police has no power to punish you for downloading, and even less power to shutdown such "downloader" websites. YouTube's Terms of Service seem to disallow such downloads so YouTube has the right to terminate the agreement with the downloader. They may prevent you from viewing any more videos, for example. However, I think Google does not even have a technical measure in place to do that. Google is not interested in preventing you from using YouTube (its servers can handle that) and that is pretty much the only punishment it can use. Google could use the Terms of Services to say that the downloader-websites are breaking them and thus should not have access to YouTube. The websites could be sued for breaking the Terms of Services (and the court could order them to stop) and Google can block those websites from accessing YouTube by technical measures. It appears it did so in at least one case. Google could sue you (or the websites) for advertisement revenue loss, but it is unlikely. In theory, Google loses advertisement revenue from the video playbacks you would have done on YouTube but did not play because you downloaded the video and played it offline (contrary to the Terms of Service). Google might attempt to sue a downloader website on this basis and try to make it give it money. It would be difficult for Google to prove that it deserves such money, though. I cannot imagine how it would prove that "you would have played the video online, again, with advertisements, if you didn't download it. Note that when you replay a video from browser cache, advertisements do not replay. Why Google doesn't sue downloader-website more often? It's expensive. Google could pay a lot of money to shut down a website via court order but if it really wants to do so, they can apply a technical measure (such as IP block) instead. It is much cheaper and has the same effect. This may change in the near future. There's a some talk around about European court rulings and directives that may change this. It is quite possible that in the near future, even viewing illegally uploaded music on YouTube will be criminal. I find this doubtful because of the difficulty of proving knowledge ("How was I supposed to know that it wasn't an official clip?"). As for whether downloading to a file (as opposed to downloading to the browser cache) will become criminal, I really doubt that.
Maybe, but probably not The geographic location of the organisation is immaterial: under Article 3.2: This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: ... (b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union. Posts anyone (not just EU citizens) make to Reddit (or anywhere else) while they are physically located in the EU or UK engage the GDPR. Pushift.io is therefore captured by the GDPR and any denial of that is just plain wrong. Given the denial, it is likely right out of the gate that they are non-complient. For example, they are unlikely to provided the required information under Article 14. More importantly, it seems that they have not determined the lawful basis for processing the data under Article 6 - they can possibly rely on the public interest basis (preserving deleted publication is arguably a public interest) or a legitimate interest but that requires a balancing of their interest against the data subject's. That said, the right to be forgotten is not absolute, the reasons that might be applicable here are: The data is being used to exercise the right of freedom of expression and information. The data is being used to perform a task that is being carried out in the public interest or when exercising an organization’s official authority. The data represents important information that serves the public interest, scientific research, historical research, or statistical purposes and where erasure of the data would likely to impair or halt progress towards the achievement that was the goal of the processing.
If the "Pokeball" image is copyrighted and/or a trademark of Nintendo/whoever makes the Pokemon games, then whoever put that image out there under CC 3.0 BY is in violation and can be sued and will probably lose, and you would be in violation and can be sued and will probably lose. Your penalty would almost certainly be less since your violation was "innocent", that is, you had no way of knowing that the "Pokeball" imagery was somebody's protected intellectual property. ... Except you kind of maybe should know that, unless whoever made the Pokemon games (Nintendo or other) put the image out there and you can verify that, that maybe this license could be bogus and you should consult with who you imagine the owner of that IP may be or an impartial professional who could tell you for sure. I'm thinking if it were me I would do a little more research - and maybe get a paid opinion - if I was really thinking about using this for any but private purposes.
Yes and no. Using deception to get someone to open the door so that you can execute a warrant is okay (United States v. Contreras-Ceballos, 999 F.2d 432). Leading a criminal to believe that you are a crime-customer (e.g. for purposes of a drug sale) and not a police officer is okay (Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206), but must be limited to the purposes contemplated by the suspect and cannot turn into a general search. Lying about whether you have a warrant is not okay (Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U.S. 543, Hadley v. Williams, 368 F.3d 747), nor is it okay to lie about the scope of a warrant (United States v. Dichiarinte, 445 F.2d 126). Misrepresenting the true purpose of entry, even when the person is identified as a government agent, negates consent (US v. Bosse, 898 F. 2d 113; United States v. Phillips, 497 F.2d 1131; United States v. Tweel, 550 F.2d 297). However, there is no requirement to be fully forthright (US v. Briley, 726 F.2d 1301) so you can gain entry saying that you "have a matter to discuss with X" even when the intent is to arrest X. In a case similar to what you describe, United States v. Wei Seng Phua, 100 F.Supp.3d 1040, FBI agents disrupted internet access and then posed as repairmen to gain access to the computer. Their efforts were wasted, as fruits of the poisonous tree.
Yes One could certainly put up a site whose only content was a link to another domain. And I can't find any law which this would violate. If the link is a &quot;deep link&quot;, and if it bypasses a log-in page, while the other site is so designed that all access is intended to go through the login, I believe (but cannot at the moment verify) that the owner of the other site could claim that this violates their copyright. In any case it is not a good idea.But a link to an appropriate page should have no problem, nor should pointing your domain at an appropriate entry page. Therefor, since simply re-pointing a domain should have the same effect as simply linking, in those cases where it works at all, it should be legal. Doing it with an iframe, which would truly open another site within your site, may not be if the other site forbids such use, as in the ToS. The case law on that is not settled, but many sites object to it, as the answer by @BlueDogRanch points out. I don't see a good reason why one would want to do this, but that isn't the question. Copying the HTML of another site and modifying the URLs while keeping the content the same would pretty clearly be a copyright infringement, besides being a lot of work to little obvious point. It also isn't what the question asked about. Building a one-page site that has only a simple link or a redirect would clearly be legal, and would serve the purpose of causing your domain to lead a user to another site, but it isn't, strictly speaking, what was asked about either.