It sounds like the fraudulent domains are foremost a trademark infringement.

The fact that the domains are used for phishing or to perpetrate criminal acts is a secondary matter that adds gravitas to Facebook's public presentation of why they are suing Namecheap.

The infringing parties are those that register the domains using Whoisguard, and Namecheap is a non-party witness to the infringement.

So, serving Namecheap a subpoena, and then suing them for compliance after they neglect to respond to the subpoena is apparently a normal method for getting information from an uncooperative non-party witness in a civil legal proceeding.

Presumably, once they are successful in their lawsuit and have the names of the individuals responsible for the domain names, they will hand the evidence over to the police for investigation of criminal acts such as wire-fraud etc.

https://www.weil.com/~/media/files/pdfs/subpoenas-using-subp...

Quite typical that the crime being investigated is a petty trademark infringement, while there are real victims who’s privacy and dignity is violated by these scammers.

It indeed disgusts me that as a society of laws we go after violent criminals, not because they violate real victims, but because they infringe on a trademark of a multi-billion dollar company.

I'm no expert, but as I understand things the cops don't give a shit. Like if you witness someone speeding, or if someone steals your bicycle.

They'll take a report if you want, but there are only so many detectives. And these internet crimes need so many special skills and cross jurisdictional lines so easily...

We could establish a specialist police unit with the skills and funding levels needed to go after crimes against Facebook. Facebook might even be willing to help with funding and training, and doubtless big copyright holders would also be interested. Personally I don't think that would be a step in the right direction though.

But violent crime is down over the last 30-years, seems to be more cops employed and less petty crime laws being enforced. Doesn’t quite make sense but I often hear this excuse.

I think we need to start thinking about scammers as violent criminals. Victims of scammers do feel extremely violated after the fact. They loose not only valuables, but also their dignity and their sense of security. Scamming is indeed a violent crime that causes significant harm to the victim.

I also get the sense that there is still a lot of victim blaming when it comes to scamming. This also has to change. Victims of scams have not done anything wrong. The criminals that scam other people are of full blame for their crimes, and they need to be brought to justice for their violent behaviour.

Can't just change the definition of violent. Agree that the crime is much more serious than it looks on the surface. There's probably a perfect word. Predatory?

Violence is already really loosely defined (e.g. violence seems to be done up the social hierarchy; e.g. a state is not considered violent if they deport a refugee, while a protestor is considered violent if they block traffic). But even in this loose definition scammers fit perfectly as being violent criminals. They intentionally cause significant harm to their victims with their actions.

A lot of definitions put a physical qualifier, but that is not how the term is used by English speakers, e.g. bullying or psychological tormenting, is violent even though it is only verbal.

> vi·o·lence | ˈvī(ə)ləns | noun

> behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

In every definition, violence requires physical force. Nobody calls psychological abuse violence, they call it "gaslighting" or "bullying" or "emotional trauma".

I would argue that violence also include "threats of physical force being applied," which is in many places the bar for aggression

If there can be violent threats, then there can be emotional violence.

Sure, but that is different from physical violence or threat of physical violence. Not to mean it is inherently less serious, but I would argue that they need to be treated as part of different categories.

I would also argue that emotional and psychological abuse should be considered a serious crime, but I am not convinced that conflating it with violence is appropriate.

I realize that my categories leave a blind spot for more subtle method of bullying, especially in intrinsically violence-free cases like cyber-bullying or "intense-gossiping" which can be seriously damaging.

Still I do not think that classifying that as violence in and of itself is an appropriate solution.

I don’t personally think it is helpful to make a distinction between physical and non-physical violence. Harm is severe in either case, and there is an obvious victim and and obvious perpetrator that needs to be brought to justice in either case.

Sure different forms of violence do vary in severity, but finding a new name for a type of violence that is done remotely and causes a different kind of harm both undermines and complicates the term “violence” and gives discount to some forms of violence by not labeling them as such.

> an obvious victim and and obvious perpetrator that needs to be brought to justice in either case.

Here I don't agree.

> Sure different forms of violence do vary in severity,

Also this is not the point. Emotional violence can be definitely worse than physical violence, I am not ranking them.

I am often bad at analogies, but I will try making one anyway.

When driving you are held to a concept of strict liability; if you cause an accident it is your fault; every time you sit in a vehicle you silently agree that every damage caused by your car will be (by default, but can be proven otherwise) your responsibility.

This is not the case when walking; if you push someone down the stairs because of a sneeze it is not manslaughter, it is manslaughter if you drive over a passerby because of that same sneeze.

Quite few things are considered in the context of strict liability, in general to be responsible of a damage the burden of proof is much higher.

Similarly physical and non-physical violence are held to different contexts; if I punch you then I am at fault a priori (there can be enough context to subvert this) and the reason is that I am expected to understand that punching you will cause damage (this is why accidental deaths in a fight can incur in manslaughter charges).

threats of psychological violence should be a crime, the same as other kinds of threats. On the other hand, with psychological violence there is not bright red line that can be as clearly crossed or not. It is much harder to argue that the abuser was conscious of the damage, or that the damage was done maliciously, or that the abuser should be held responsible for it.

It is not a matter of severity, it is just that one case of violence is significantly harder to judge fairly.

PS: > if there can be violent threats, then there can be emotional violence.

I made a small formatting mistake, the sentence

> threats of psychological violence should be a crime, the same as other kinds of threats.

should be after the last line.

Both local police and the FBI rarely care about fraud or scams. Most local fraud seems to be caught by individuals hiring private investigators that are former law enforcement. And even then, the punishment to the con-artist is often 1-2 years.

It’s even worse if you use a credit card, get skimmed, have money stolen from you then your credit card company tries to deny your claim. No where in this situation are there police going to the ATM to view the video surveillance of who stole your money.

Most law enforcement seems to rely on identity fraudsters being high on drugs in cheap hotels and being caught with hardware / stolen cards etc etc.

Are more cops employed? In the UK at least police numbers were cut drastically. One of the many hilarious pledges of the newly elected Tory government of the UK is that they'd hire lots of extra police to fix problems that some might argue were caused by the er... Tory government which had cut police numbers...

They are too busy going after victimless crimes.