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Homeland Security Explains Why Google Wasn’t Seized, Sort Of

The big news this week was without a doubt the domain seizure of 6 sport streaming sites, a few days before the Super Bowl.

This third round of seizures surprised many people, starting with the sites owners, through the public all the way to a US Senator.

In an interview with Public Radio, Homeland Security Investigation Special Agent James Hayes was asked to explain why the authorities didn’t take Google down. This wasn’t the question Hayes expected, and out of nowhere he suddenly cut out.

Luckily Hayes came back, but not with the right answers.

Some great analysis of the interview, and why Homeland Security failed again to explain the seizures, is available at Techdirt.

This post is from the News Bits section of TorrentFreak where we present stories from around the web in a concise summary format. Full TorrentFreak articles can be found here. If you have a tip please let us know. News Bits have their very own RSS feed
  • http://twitter.com/somken Aaron

    O_O

    Way to dodge the last question, ICE.

  • http://twitter.com/somken Aaron

    O_O

    Way to dodge the last question, ICE.

  • CuraHack

    This guy has no answer! What a faill….

  • CuraHack

    This guy has no answer! What a faill….

  • http://twitter.com/logros13 hejsan hopsan

    love the cut of… only technical difficulties im sure, no way they paniced and cut the connection. :P

  • politux

    isoHunt is a search engine, why are they taking heat? This guy claims they are not after search engines. How odd.

  • politux

    isoHunt is a search engine, why are they taking heat? This guy claims they are not after search engines. How odd.

  • Andrew

    So, did the linking sites that did take advertising money break a law, and if so, _which one_?
    And if not, under what authority were the sites taken down?

    Legality of the issue aside, the choosing of which sites to seize seems disturbingly arbitrary and subjective, and demonstrates a serious lack of technical knowledge.

  • http://twitter.com/bitsnoop BitSnoop.com

    Have NFI what that HS clown was talking about – Google accepts advertising money. Lots of it.

  • Anonymous

    if you input just about any scene dir/release name into google, you’ll find a hit.

    and about the UFC thing (44.95 per view, “1 million” people pirating it [citation needed]) how does this lead to lost jobs? i believe it only leads to lost revenue. the incremental cost to provide the stream to those supposed 1 million people is negligible, only cost is servers and bandwidth. at most that’s what, 1 server admin job?

    • WB3

      Remember, under this administration, it is “Jobs Saved”. Best math ever, can disprove it. These actions saved 10 Million jobs and we would be worse off if no action was taken.

  • WB3

    So, under his argument if there is a financial gain for providing the links, its illegal. So in his opinion, Google receives no financial gain for providing the same links. If we set up a free customized google search that aggregates the links to these sites and make no money, its OK. But Google will make money off of our work in setting up the customized search, and that is OK with them because Google isn’t the “little guy” and can fight back. Hypocrisy is what this is. And I bet you a dollar that the Lawyers cut him off to prep his answer. If the other article was correct about this Agent, he needs to be sued, EFF or Public Citizen should go on the offensive. There is a lack of Due Process in these actions that are now becoming a foreign policy matter.

  • http://disqus.com/ Rob8urcakes

    Ah the wonders of capitalism gone fascist in showing its true face to the World for all to see.
    And I see a contorted, hate-filled face prone to error and guilt. Oh dear, oh dear.

    To get around these site-blocking ‘seizures’ do this -
    http://www.hm2k.com/posts/find-the-ip-address-of-a-seized-website

  • MC

    Christ, he talked alot yet said NOTHING.

    Google makes advertising money from your searches, even when you search for ‘ superbowl stream’ or whatever, this exactly fits the ICE criteria for a takedown.

    Google.com should be seized right now.

  • JIsamaniac

    BS BS BS BS BS WOW! Are you kidding me?

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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