Computer World:
Court orders three H-1B sites disabled
A New Jersey judge has ordered the shutdown of three H-1B opposition Web sites and seeks information about the identity of anonymous posters.
On Dec. 23, Middlesex County Superior Court Judge [*****] ordered firms that register domains and provide hosting services — GoDaddy Inc., Network Solutions, Comcast Cable Communications Inc. and DiscountASP.Net, to disable the three sites, ITgrunt.com, Endh1b.com, and Guestworkerfraud.com. Facebook Inc. was also ordered to disable ITgrunt’s Facebook page.
DiscountASP.Net said it has disabled Endh1b.com after it received the order from the New Jersey Superior Court. The order did not request any account information, only that the company “…immediately shut down and disable the website www.endh1b.com until further order of this court..,” a spokesman said in an email. Facebook said it received the document Monday.
GoDaddy is complying with the order and has suspended the web hosting for ITgrunt.com, said Laurie Anderson. GoDaddy disputes manager, domain services.
The web site Endh1b.com is registered but not hosted at Go Daddy, Anderson added in an e-mail. “Both domain names have been placed on registrar lock due to the pending litigation. When Go Daddy receives a court order, it is standard procedure to comply,” she said.
[*****] order was made in response to a libel lawsuit filed by IT services and consulting firm Apex Technology Group Inc., based in Edison, N.J. against the three Web sites opposing the H-1B visa program.
The issue is creating a stir among H-1B opponents working in IT-related jobs who fear their posts could result in the loss of their jobs.
Two of the sites, itgrunt.com and endh1b.com, were offline this morning, but guestworkerfraud.com remained operating.
The company is seeking the identity of a person who posted an Apex employment agreement on Docstoc.com, that has since been removed. A link to the document and comments critical of it has been posted on a variety of Web sites, including at least one in India, on Desicrunch.com. The comment broadly alleges that employees will find it difficult to leave Apex because of its contract terms.
Apex, in one legal filing, said the allegations by the anonymous posters are false and defamatory, and were hurting the company. In the filing, Apex said it “has had three consultants refuse to report for employment” as a result postings, according to legal documents.
Apex said it is also seeking “contact details of the individual who posted this legal agreement without permission since we are the copyright owner of the legal document.”
Accoring to court documents, a writer responding to admin@endh1b.com wrote that the site has “not posted a legal agreement and don’t have the contact details of anyone of our contributors. We will also protect the privacy of any members of our community.”
Patrick Papalia, an attorney representing Apex, said that the company has already identified an employee who left the initial comment. But he said the issue goes well beyond the agreement and involves threatening and racist comments against company officials, as well as ongoing allegations that it is engaging in illegal activities. “Apex has an outstanding reputation in the information technology field,” he said.
John Miano, who heads the Programmers Guild and is also an attorney, and who one represented one the parties involved in the dispute, said it is “rather chilling” to have a court in New Jersey ordering the shutdown of Web sites operated by people with no connection to New Jersey.
The operator of ITgrunt.com deferred questions to Donna Conroy, who heads Bright Future Jobs, an activist organization on the H-1B issue, who detailed her concerns about it in a post on her site.
In an email, she said, “I’m astonished that an American judge would force American web sites to rat on American workers who wouldn’t snitch on an Indian H-1B. If this order stands, it will rob the security every American expects when they post complaints anonymously or express their opinions on-line. It will create a credible threat that Americans could face retaliation from any current or former employer.”
The operator of Guestworkerfraud.com linked to ITgrunt.com’s blog entry and said he added some comments of his own. He doesn’t allow comments on this site. He has since removed the entry concerning Apex. He says he won’t let the New Jersey judge “run the Internet and silence free speech by shutting down the whole site. Hence, my site is still up.” He asked that his name not be used, in response to an email.
The ISPs and registrars were contacted. ITgrunt operates a page on Facebook. A company spokesman said it has not been formally served. The other companies didn’t respond by press time.
Rob Sanchez over at V-Dare can elaborate:
H-1B Bodyshop vs. U.S. First Amendment: The Case Of “Tunnel Rat”
By Rob Sanchez
The blogger who goes by the nickname “Tunnel Rat” has the status of a folk hero for American computer/IT and engineering professionals. He is celebrated for his acerbic commentaries on his website, ITGrunt. At least a portion of Tunnel Rat’s mystique derives from his persona as a geeky Lucha libre-type masked hero. The internet has been rife with speculation by both by his fans and detractors as to his identity and whether his writings represent reality or fantasy. All of that buzz adds to his legendary status.
“Tunnel Rat” expresses the popular rage of American high-tech professionals as they are dispossessed by immigration and outsourcing. His blogs are hard-hitting, profane and politically incorrect, especially in regards to corporate politics, stupid managers, and unqualified H-1B visa-holders from India hired as programmers and engineers by high-tech companies. VDARE.COM’s Patrick Cleburne has described ITGrunt as “the go-to source for H-1B/ American Worker Displacement atrocities”.
But don’t bother going to ITGrunt’s website now, because it and several other websites have been removed from the internet. (Remnants of the site are still in Google’s cache but they are disappearing fast). This happened on December 23rd because of litigation by the Indian-owned bodyshop APEX Technology Group. Apex is run by Sarvesh Kumar Dharayan [email him]. APEX has been demanding that various websites—some apparently run by desis from India!—remove all mention of its name.
Judge [*****] of The Superior Court of New Jersey ordered the internet service provider Godaddy.com to cancel the domain addresses associated with ITGrunt.com and endh1b.com . In addition, discountASP.NET was ordered to remove the pages from its web servers. Although Judge [*****] order was issued right before Christmas, these companies were required to act within 3 calendar days.
Godaddy [Email them] and discountASP.net [Email them] complied with the order with no further resistance.
Godaddy even went one step further: it confiscated the domain name ITGrunt, and so far has refused to release the domain back to its owner, “Tunnel Rat”.
Godaddy’s action prevents “Tunnel Rat” from moving his website to a different web server. “Tunnel Rat” once moved his website to Panama to avoid censorship in the United States. It could be argued that Godaddy has no right to keep the domain address because it would normally be considered property of ITGrunt.
The judge issued a similar order to NetworkSolutions to shut down guestworkerfraud.com. But at this time of writing, it remains live.
Judge [*****] has also embarked on a search to discover who is behind ITGrunt is. He has ordered Comcast and Yahoo to reveal the identity of one emailer, although it is not clear that the email address belongs to “Tunnel Rat”. Whoever owns that email address could be sucked into this conflict without even knowing what hit him for no other reason than he posted information on ITGrunt. In addition Judge [*****] ordered Facebook, where “Tunnel Rat” has a page, to divulge his identity by Monday, December 28.
Unmasking “Tunnel Rat” could expose him to reprisals such as blacklisting so he can’t get jobs. Or worse—he has even received death threats.
The judge is in New Jersey, but the defendants and the websites are in other states. Attorney John Miano, former President of the Programmer’s Guild, practices in New Jersey but was unable to stop the court from in effect claiming jurisdiction over the entire Internet.
So what, you may ask, did ITGrunt do to deserve this? In a “Certification of Notice”, a law firm representing APEX claimed that blog posts on the ITGrunt website damaged the bodyshop’s reputation and therefore makes it more difficult to recruit H-1Bs.
Ironically, the statements Apex complains of were not made by Americans but, apparently, by an H-1B worker who’s complaining that APEX was ripping him off. The reputation of APEX in the desi community was established way before ITGrunt came along. You can still read some of the posts here.
The APEX rampage against “Tunnel Rat” began when an anonymous Indian poster who claims to work for APEX posted a copy of an APEX employment agreement that he asserted imposed penalties of up to $35,000 for quitting. He wrote:
“If you join a company (including any level between you and APEX) then pay $35,000 or face a law suit, $9,000 for legal, training and guest services when you quit. $35,000 if you quit in between a contract…etc. The legalities of the agreement are convoluted, abstract and can/will be used against you if you displease APEX Technology Group Inc. So once you sign that document you are at the mercy of the employer and much worse than a bonded laborer in India.”
APEX hasn’t denied the authenticity of this agreement, but it asserts its copyright has been violated.
Suing websites for postings made by third parties is problematic. The Electronic Freedom Foundation describes Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code (47 USC § 230) as follows:
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This federal law preempts any state laws to the contrary: “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.”
So why APEX is taking such drastic actions against ITGrunt and other web sites?
The explanation could be as simple as corporate self-interest. Or there could be something deeper going on.
Perhaps we are seeing a clash of cultures between Americans who believe in values such as free speech in the First Amendment of the Constitution, and foreign cultures that don’t share the same enthusiasm.
Immigrants of this type won’t hesitate to subvert our Anglo-Saxon heritage when it suits their needs.
My question: why we are allowing people into this country who are antithetical to our value system and heritage?
Rob Sanchez (email him) is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization and author of the “Job Destruction Newsletter” (sign up for it here) at www.JobDestruction.com.
I had to blockquote both of these articles because I can’t link to them, because they plaster the name of the judge that made the ruling in 87 million different places. Fortunately, this is not true of Norm Matloff’s concurring opinion at V-Dare’s blog, but unfortunately, there are direct links from there to both these articles, which do. So, back to the salt mine:
Computerworld has been covering H-1B and related issues quite thoroughly since 1999. The editor at that time was skeptical when he saw the industry lobbyists screaming that there was a tech labor shortage, as his wife couldn’t get a job as a teacher even while the Boston-area papers were claiming a teacher shortage.
Here I’ll comment on two items, one by recent Computerworld Editor-in-Chief Don Tennant and the other a new article in the publication. (To save time, I’m just including URLs, which is just as well as there are interesting links on these sites.)
I’ve praised Tennant in this e-newsletter for being open-minded in spite of having, I surmise, come in to the H-1B topic with biases in favor of the program. I believe he originally bought into the “best and brightest” claims of the industry lobbyists, which as I’ve shown before apply only to a very small percentage of foreign tech workers. See my earlier comments here and here.
In a recent pair of blog postings, the second of which is here, Tennant wonders why he hears of workers in the tech field advising their children not to pursue tech careers. After all, Tennant says, even a generous accounting would find that only 35% of IT workers are H-1Bs, which leaves 65%, i.e. plenty of jobs.
I’ll use that 35% figure here for ease of exposition (it’s an overestimate for many reasons). But Tennant is missing the point in several different ways:
* That 35% doesn’t include FORMER H-1B workers who now have green cards. To be sure, I’ve always said they should be protected just like the natives, but the point is that if there had not been a H-1B program most of them would not be in the current labor market.
* The 35% figure is large in terms of its dampening effect on IT wages. Some of you may recall that even the mainly pro-industry NRC report in 2000 made the same observation.
* The 35% figure is large in that it enables employers to shun the older (age 35+) American workers. (Which renders irrelevant Tennant’s comment about jobs opening as baby boomers retire.)
* IT is a very, very broad field. Only a minority of IT jobs are typically filled by computer science graduates (the field Tennant cites), BUT H-1Bs almost exclusively work in such jobs. In other words, the impact on CS grads of the H-1B program is much more acute than on IT jobs as a whole.The notion that children of tech workers are shunning tech fields is real. Even if the parents actually encourage their kids to go into tech, the kids have seen up close how unstable the field is, and how vulnerable it is to H-1B and offshoring. Note that THIS IS THE CASE EVEN IF THE PARENTS ORIGINALLY CAME HERE AS H-1BS OR FOREIGN STUDENTS. The Wall Street Journal even did a piece on this; see here.
The second item I’ll discuss here is the current Computerworld article, Court orders three H-1B sites disabled | Judge’s ruling to shut down three opposition sites is part of Apex libel lawsuit By Patrick Thibodeau December 28, 2009.
Reportedly an H-1B worker publicly ratted on his employer Apex, an Indian body shop, for making him sign a contract which illegally bound him to indentured servitude. “IT Grunt,” who anonymously operates Web sites critical of H-1B, references the worker’s Web page. Apex is now suing ITG for allegedly defaming the firm, and has gotten a judge to temporarily shut down part of ITG’s Web operations.
To me it does seem reasonable to shut a site down, pending litigation, if there is reasonable evidence of defamation. But I don’t think there is much evidence of that, raising the possibility that this is just a nuisance lawsuit against critics of H-1B, in which case one wonders how the judge decided the way he did. In addition, this could open quite a Pandora’s Box, with those who’ve posted on the site possibly subject to exposure.
I would add, though, that to me this shows once again how the anti-H-1B activists are shooting themselves in the foot by concentrating on (a) violations of the law and (b) Indian “body shops” (rent-a-programmer businesses). As I’ve said before, (a) is the wrong way to go, because most abuses of the H-1B program and fully legal uses of loopholes, and (b) is wrong because the mainstream firms are just as culpable as the Indian body shops.
I agree with Matloff. This is not an abuse of the H-1B program, it is a natural consequence of a program that almost totally displaces native born white Americans in a certain field, because corporations want cheap labor.
