Wednesday, December 1, 2010

government seizes domains alleged to infringe copyright

bittorrent based dns to counter US domain seizures
government seizes domains alleged to infringe copyrightfrom pcmag: The U.S. government has shut down several sites apparently suspected of either linking to or providing access to copyrighted materials. Visitors to Torrent-Finder.com and other sites were met with a notice that the site's domain name had been shut down by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement - Homeland Security Investigations department, pursuant to a seizure warrant that would apparently be issued by a judge in the future.

It was unclear how many sites the ICE took down or otherwise took over, with TorrentFreak publishing a list of sites that had been taken down. If that list is accurate, only a few apparently disseminated links to BitTorrent trackers, the master index for distributing a given file across the Internet through the BitTorrent network. Such sites included Torrent-Finder.com, but also mydreamwatches.com and nfljerseysupply.com, among others. Others apparently distributed rap music.

"ICE office of Homeland Security Investigations executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names," ICE said in a written statement to the UPI. "As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time."

The move appears to be completely independent of COICA, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act making its way through the U.S. Senate.


related: in the wake of 'cablegate' -
why hasn't the govt seized the domain name wikileaks.org?*

uk police to get major new powers to seize domains*

update: dhs seizes more domains; this time for linking to copyrighted material

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