Leading up to the Super Bowl this weekend, a total of 307 domain names were seized, 16 of which provided access to online streams of popular sporting events.

Commenting on the actions, ICE Director John Morton was quick to declare victory, but perhaps this came a little too soon. Firstrow, one of the largest sites which had several of its domains taken over by the US government, is not planning to give up the ‘battle’ anytime soon.

Quickly after its firstrow.tv, firstrowsports.tv, firstrowsports.net and firstrowsports.com domains were seized, the service was operating as normal under a new domain – Firstrowsports.eu. Talking to TorrentFreak, one of the owners said that the US has stepped out of line by simply taking away their property.

“The US has prided itself on their ‘innocent before proven guilty’ mantra, yet is clearly hypocritical when it comes to this,” the Firstrow co-owner told us. “Numerous times the US has seized domains, before the defendants have been proven guilty in a court of law.”

“What is the point of trying to approve SOPA and PIPA if they do the same without these laws,” he questioned, referring to the pending US bills that would make it even easier to seize allegedly infringing domains.

The response of Firstrow stands in sharp contrast with that of ICE Director John Morton yesterday.

“In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it’s the law,” Morton said.

This comment forms the base of the dispute. What is the law of the land? The people who operate Firstrow don’t live in the US, and neither are their servers located there. In fact, Firstrow says that their site is perfectly legal where they are based, so they will continue business as usual.

“Since we don’t live in a third-world country here, the courts decide if something is illegal not the entertainment industry lobbies. We will continue until a court decides that the site is illegal, but for now we’ve seen three court decisions on this matter that say it is not.”

Firstrow’s co-owner is referring to the court cases in Spain, where sites that merely link to copyrighted works have been declared legal. Rojadirecta, a site very similar to Firstrow, won in Spanish courts twice.

In the US, however, things work differently. Two operators of streaming sites have already been arrested and await criminal trials. And if the domains are linked to foreigners, the US believes it has the authority to take them over if they are deemed to infringe copyrights.

This stance has raised eyebrows among foreign governments. A few months ago the European Parliament adopted a resolution which criticized US domain name seizures. According to the resolution these measures need to be countered as they endanger “the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication.”

Yesterday’s actions show that the US authorities are not impressed by the international critique, just as Firstrow refuses to change course after yet another domain seizure. Firstrow says ICE is wasting its time and continues to provide access to sports fans all across the world, who are otherwise unable to see their beloved games.

“ICE must have a lot of spare time if they can waste it on these domain seizures,” Firstrow’s co-owner says. “They should invest time in the real important stuff , instead of chasing people who have no other option than to watch a sports game for free.”

Source: Seized Sports Streaming Site Makes a Blazing Comeback

At the time there was no official announcement from the authorities, but ICE has now confirmed that this, their 10th round of domain seizures, is being branded ‘Operation Fake Sweep.’

In total the authorities took down a record breaking 307 domain names. The majority, 291, sold counterfeit NFL merchandise and the remaining sites allegedly linked to copyrighted streams.

The full list of seized streaming domains is firstrow.tv, xonesports.tv, firstrowsports.tv, firstrowsports.net, firstrowsports.com, hq-streams.tv, robplay.tv, soccertvlive.net, sports95.net, sports95.com, sports95.org, sportswwe.net, sportswwe.tv, sportswwe.com, youwwe.net and youwwe.com.

In addition to the seizures, police also arrested 28-year old Yonjo Quiroa of Comstock Park, Michigan. According to the press release Quiroa is the owner of nine of the sixteen sites, which he operated from his home.

Responding to the arrest and domain seizures, ICE Director John Morton declared victory.

“While most people are focusing on whether the Patriots or Giants will win on Sunday, we at ICE have our sights on a different type of victory: defeating the international counterfeiting rings that illegally profit off of this event, the NFL, its players and sports fans,” Morton said.

“In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it’s the law.”

NFL’s Vice President of Legal Affairs Anastasia Danias welcomed the support of the authorities.

“We are grateful for Homeland Security Investigations’ tireless efforts in combating intellectual property theft and are pleased to be working along with them and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department on this important issue,” he said.

The controversial seizures which started early 2010 have now resulted in the takeover of 669 domain names. The majority of the sites in question offered counterfeit goods and three dozen were linked to copyright infringements. One domain name has been returned because it was seized by mistake.

Source: Feds Arrest Streaming Site Operator for Copyright Infringement

Although the XS admin denied begin connected, he did admit renting out a server to “a guy who rented it out,” a suggestion that he perhaps had suspicions about potential connections, intended or otherwise.

XtremeSpeeds then disappeared completely and a promised August update from the site’s admin never materialized. What followed was an information black-hole, a common feature of ongoing piracy investigations where authorities aren’t yet ready to shout about their achievements and lawyers advise their clients to keep their mouths shut.

Now the rumor mill is turning again. According to reports, IMAGiNE – one of the P2P scene’s most prominent release groups – have been busted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reports, which have proven impossible to confirm from any official source at this stage, state up to nine arrests.

Last year, IMAGiNE launched their own “secret” private BitTorrent tracker that remained under the radar for roughly 10 minutes. The site, UnleashTheNet, also known by its acronym UtN, was hosted in Canada but in the last few days it simply disappeared.

This morning TorrentFreak spoke with the site’s host who informed us that they haven’t heard anything about any raids or arrests. A traceroute timed-out at the site’s IP address.

However, there is one person who claims to know the details of IMAGiNE’s fate and he spoke with us just a few hours ago. So, has IMAGiNE really been busted?

“Yep,” says DiGiTALiNK, founder of P2P release group EP1C. “ICE joint operation got them.”

In an email to TorrentFreak, DiGiTALiNK went on to say that 9 people were arrested including IMAGiNE members Spunky, HoD, Jason, Tank, TheStash and Spangy, all of them within the United States. [See update below]

If these words do indeed turn out to be true, this latest development marks yet another event in a turbulent few months for EP1C, IMAGiNE, and associated sites and individuals.

In June this year, IMAGiNE published a warning on their site which declared that EP1C members had been banned and that anyone inviting them back would share their fate. It was claimed that DiGiTALiNK, EP1C’s founder, had “turned in one if not more of his members to the feds” and that a private FTP site of his was being watched by the authorities.

In the hugely political world of private trackers, claims like this are not unusual. In many file-sharing circles paranoia reigns supreme but, as they say, just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

When EP1C’s DiGiTALiNK delivered his response to IMAGiNE’s claims, the focus was on escalating the conflict.

“They crossed paths with the wrong person, they lie, cheat, steal and have a fake identity to make people think they care about there [sic] safety, but in fact many of there [sic] source providers have been busted because they have no regard for your safety, only want the fame of that release,” the response began.

“Within the next few releases I will be providing proof of all this to the public and including all there [sic] personal identification information.. haha if I was a snitch they would have already been busted. IMAGiNE, are [expletives removed].”

Immediately some details related to the identity of one IMAGiNE member were released followed by the locations of others along with the words: “Get ready for a War.”

But those hoping to learn more from future EP1C revelations would be left disappointed. EP1C made their final releases on June 14th and 15th, dates which to within a week coincided with the accusations made by IMAGiNE.

TorrentFreak pointed out the history of bad-blood between EP1C and IMAGiNE to DiGiTALiNK and asked if he had a comment. We also asked how he came by the more specific details of the alleged arrests. At the time of publication we’re yet to receive a response.

After making releases of high-profile movies every few days for the last few months, last week on September 9th IMAGiNE made their most recent release – The.Guard.2011.DVDSCR.XViD.AC3-IMAGiNE. Nothing has been heard from them since.

The group did not respond to correspondence sent to a secure account so only time will tell if this release turns out to be their last.

Update: Fresh sources confirm that four people were visited by ICE

Source: Reports: Feds Bust IMAGiNE Movie Release Group

This wave of seizures, which took place with the Super Bowl just around the corner, netted 10 domains including Atdhe.net, ChannelSurfing.net, HQ-Streams.com, HQ-Streams.net, Firstrow.net, Ilemi.com, Ilemi.net, Iilemi.com, RojaDirecta.org and RojaDirecta.org.

Now the individual behind two of the domains, HQ-Streams.com and HQ-Streams.net, has not only lost his domains but now potentially faces losing his freedom.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have confirmed their agents arrested a New York man this week on suspicion of illegally streaming copyrighted sports events over the Internet.

Mohamed Ali, 19, of Hollis, N.Y., was taken into custody at his home in Queens and charged with a single count of criminal copyright infringement.

“Today’s arrest sends a clear message to website operators who mistakenly believe it’s worth the risk to take copyrighted programming and portray it as their own,” said ICE Director John Morton.

“Protecting legitimate business interests are a priority for HSI, the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center and our law enforcement partners. We are dedicated to protecting the jobs, the income and the tax revenue that disappear when organized criminals traffic in stolen content for their own profit.”

According to the criminal complaint, between February 2010 to January 2011 Ali used his domains to show events from the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the Ultimate Fighting Championship and (UFC) and other boxing events.

ICE says that Ali charged $6, $12 and up to $25 to access links which would allow visitors to watch events. There appears to be no claim that Ali provided the streams himself.

At the time Ali’s domains were seized, ICE were very clear that they were targeting sites that were “among the most popular on the Internet for illegally distributing copyrighted sporting events”, but since then his domains have received just 50,000 hits, even though masses of news coverage will have boosted interest among Internet users. But clearly not all hits turn into business.

While ICE claim that Ali charged a fee to view streams, they say that in approximately a year he made just $6,000. A tap of the calculator reveals that at the $6 ‘cheap rate’ just 1,000 ‘tickets’ were sold, at $12 just 500 and at the top rate, around 240. If this is what constitutes one of the “most popular” sites, piracy is truly under control.

In August 2010, HQ-streams.com was hit with a direct court order from the UFC which restrained it from broadcasting their events, an order with which the site at least initially complied.

“Too (sic) All Members Of The Forum, There won’t be any UFC 118 stream here this Saturday,” said a notice posted on the site at the time. “We don’t want our site to get into troubles (sic) with Zuffa!”

Troubles with Zuffa, it seems, were the least of their worries.

Source: Operation in Our Sites: Feds Arrest 19-Year-Old Streaming Site Admin

With such a high benchmark set for sticking-it-to-the-man, on countless occasions over the last decade the community has sighed in collective resignation and disappointment when site admins or product developers have “caved in” to the demands of the entertainment industries.

But there are real people behind these stories of admins fighting for their lives, and while it’s easy to move on to tomorrow’s news with barely a second thought for their predicament, they are the ones that have to live with the consequences of their actions.

In May, US authorities embarked on phase 4 of Operation in Our Sites, seizing the domains of several more sites including that of Re1ease.net, a portal that offered links to movie and TV shows. Although the site quickly returned with a new domain, once the dust has settled the seriousness of their situation weighed heavily on the site’s admins.

“At the time I was happy the domain was all that was taken. If we had of lost the server I imagine we would have just quit there and then,” site admin PiraCee told TorrentFreak.

RE1_VOD, another Re1ease admin, explained that it came as a shock for the site to be targeted over other much larger sites of the same kind, but they remained defiant.

“We registered several domains being stubbon not to be taken offline,” he explained. “The initial plan was to re-code Re1ease to be API-based and be a distributed website.”

But it seems the mood soon changed.

While RE1_VOD recalls the excitement of getting up during the night to be the first to add content and beat competing sites, he told us that once the US government got involved it was an altogether different game.

Already the site had suffered problems with advertisers who would delay payments for months only to announce they could not deal with the site, presumably on copyright grounds. DMCA takedown notices began to cause problems too.

“We would reply to DCMA requests but just one email from copyright holders to hosts would result in them turning the website off,” says RE1_VOD.

“Apart from the effort that was to be involved, personally, the whole thing killed my passion for the project. What started as something fun simply wasn’t anymore,” says PiraCee.

Despite the issues, Re1ease continued with their work but last month came news of a real game-changer – the attempt at extraditing TVShack.net admin Richard O’Dwyer to the US.

“This was one of the main reasons for the closure. We didn’t fancy a holiday of that nature,” PiraCee explains.

“The risks outweigh the pros of running a site like Re1ease now, then when we heard about TVShack, we thounoughtnough is enough.”

“Hopefully, in one way or another, if Re1ease was still being watched in the same was TVShack was, they will see the closure as willingness to co-operate and that will be the end of the matter. We really do feel for Mr O’Dwyer.”

So for Re1ease, this really is the end. Both admins send their thanks to the staff and users of the site but while PiraCee and RE1_VOD will stay online, priorities will change.

“We don’t plan on leaving the Internet, but we are going to concentrate on our personal lives. I myself have just got engaged and i’m in the middle of buying a house / starting a family,” PiraCee concludes.

As the world becomes ever more connected through the Internet and other networks, we are communicating like never before – more quickly and more often. But despite these greater links between us, through the myriad of so-called social-networks, it is easier than ever to forget that there are real people behind these mountains of text on screens.

Some of these are real people in the file-sharing community and they face difficult times – who can blame them when they make tough decisions? Their families won’t, that’s for certain.

Source: Extradition For Pirates? Seized Domain Admins Call It Quits

Yesterday the company behind the site, Puerto 80, filed a petition in the Southern District of New York for the return of its domains. As reported by TechDirt, the company has brought in legal heavyweights in the form of Ragesh Tangri and Mark Lemley from law firm Durie Tangri.

The federal court filing by site owner Puerto 80 states that Rojadirecta’s domains were used for sports-related discussions, conceding that “an index of links to streams of sporting events” were available but adding that the site committed no acts of copyright infringement.

“Contrary to the grounds on which the domain names were seized, the Rojadirecta site is not violating copyright law, let alone criminal copyright law,” the filing begins.

“Rojadirecta explained this to the government when, on February 3, 2011, it sent ICE and the Department of Justice a letter requesting immediate return of the subject domain names pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 983(f).”

Puerto 80 go on to bemoan the fact that they repeatedly tried to engage the U.S. authorities in discussion about the seizures and that the process to reclaim their domain names had dragged on, a delay which continues to damage their business. Several weeks ago it became clear that legal action would be necessary.

“On May 26, 2011, the government informed counsel for Puerto 80 that the only acceptable ‘compromise’ would entail Puerto 80 prohibiting its users from linking to any U.S. content anywhere on its sites. Because this ‘solution’ would prohibit Puerto 80 from engaging in lawful acts not prohibited by copyright law, Puerto 80 chose instead to challenge the seizure in court,” notes the filing.

Puerto 80 say that the activities of Rojadirecta do not constitute contributory infringement because the site is capable of substantial non-infringing uses. Furthermore, the company refutes claims of vicarious liability adding that the actions of Rojadirecta do not constitute direct copyright either. Puerto 80 note that the government has failed to show that Rojadirecta committed even a single criminal act.

The lawsuit adds that the domain seizure by ICE effectively shut down the entire Rojadirecta website thereby stifling all speech hosted on it “based on an assertion that there was probable cause to believe that some of the material linked to the website (though not found on the website itself) might be infringing.”

The Rojadirecta website is still available online using an alternative URL – rojadirecta.es – but Peurto 80 said that losing its original domains cost it 30% of its traffic.

“We’re very glad that Rojadirecta is fighting back so that this and other domain name seizures can receive more careful judicial consideration,” said the EFF in a comment. “We’ll be following the case closely and expect to weigh in as amicus as well.”

Source: Streaming Site Rolls Out Lawyers To Fight Domain Seizure

Lowellsfacts.com, was a domain operated by anti-vaccine and self-described “medical research” and “truth information” blogger Lowell Hubbs. Others who appear to know the guy much better than us describe him as a deranged “batshit” conspiracy theorist, but since we do file-sharing news here at TorrentFreak and not pharmaceuticals or psychiatric studies, others more knowledgeable than us can decide if that’s a reasonable assessment.

We’re interested in something else; if Lowellsfacts.com was not a site offering unauthorized files or peddling counterfeit products, why would the feds seize it and put up the all too familiar ‘copyright’ notice?

Well, according to Lowell Hubbs himself, he’s the victim of foul play.

“Apparently, as I was told; there are links or hidden links hacked into my site that go to illegal porn and as well likely music down loads or movies, or links to counterfeit something,” Hubbs explains.

“I don’t know what is in there personally, nor how they did it, and I don’t know yet all of what is going on; I am just getting beginning information, by someone who has looked into it and is more knowledgeable than I as to computer systems,” Hubbs adds.

In a later update, Hubbs announced that he had found the problem. He asserts that someone had indeed hacked into this website and put up 17 pages and 70gig of files. He insists, however, that none of this is down to him.

“How in the hell would I have acquired anything like that? For anyone to believe I am responsible for that, I can tell you – you are flatout-insane!” he exclaims.

“Anyone with any common sense looking at this picture, would know the chance of that is zero! Period. Nice try though, just one more attempt to falsely destroy me, and a huge one. There is nothing these people will stop at in attempting to do so. Too much truth.”

If the claims of Hubbs being a conspiracy theorist are true, then this seizure – whether warranted or otherwise – is a gift to his cause, whatever that might be. Whether or not it will be a gift to the big pharmaceutical companies he’s been bad-mouthing for sometime will remain to be seen.

Hubbs’ site is now back up at VacFacts.info and aside from questionable content and quite a lot of cut and pastes, it doesn’t look like a hub of wanton copyright infringement or counterfeiting to us, at least in its current form.

Admittedly there are a multitude of worrying claims about Hubbs on the web (which we aren’t in a position to verify) and he clearly has dozens of enemies and it is feasible that ICE had good reasons to shut him down. That said, Hubbs doesn’t appear to have been informed about why his domain was taken and he’s clearly not under arrest.

So why has ICE seized the domain and put up the copyright notice? If we had some due process, some proper hearings which allow the facts to come out into the open and disputed or confirmed, any claims of copyright infringement could be assessed. As usual the public is in the dark.

Conspiracy theories can be dangerous things, and the information vacuum along with this very strange domain seizure simply throws fuel on the fire.

Update: It seems that Lowell Hubbs has some other conspiracies to think about today. Ars managed to speak with ICE who denied the seizure.

“It’s hard to say definitely what happened here, but it sounds a lot like someone disgusted by Hubbs’ anti-vaccine activism and paranoia hacked into his site, perhaps uploaded some porn just for fun, then pointed the site’s DNS record toward the ICE takedown banner.”

Source: Updated: Feds Seize New Domain, Add To “Batshit” Conspiracy Theories

Following on from the most recent set of seizures in February, yesterday’s action represents the fourth phase of the operation. The following six domains were taken:

* Re1ease.net
* Watchnewfilms.com
* Dvdcollectionsale.com
* Dvdscollection.com
* Dvdsetsonline.com
* Newstylerolex.com

Today the list has grown again to include the following:

* mygolfaccessory.com
* overbestmall.com

TorrentFreak managed to catch up with PiraCee, an admin at Re1ease.net, a portal that did not host any copyrighted material itself but linked to movie and TV shows on sites like Megavideo.com.

“We were not informed [that the seizure was imminent] in any way,” he told us. “I was just presented with the ICE image upon doing a page refresh.”

For those unfamiliar with the site, Re1ease.net was founded following PiraCee’s split with Ninjavideo.net in late 2008. NinjaVideo, readers will recall, succumbed to ICE raids in 2010 and never recovered.

While undoubtedly quite busy with around 10,000 visitors a day, Re1ease.net was not one the largest sites of its type on the Internet. Indeed, others with significantly higher levels of traffic remain intact, untouched by ICE.

“I don’t believe we were doing anything wrong at all. Many higher profile sites remain unaffected,” PiraCee told us.

So why was Re1ease singled out? Despite being operated from outside the United States, did they have a bad attitude to DMCA takedowns perhaps?

“We have only ever had two DMCA takedown requests – for Source Code and Hobo With a Shotgun,” PiraCee told us. “We removed both.”

But despite losing their domain, a body-blow event for any site, Re1ease.net aren’t giving in.

“We will be back,” said PiraCee, as the site mulled over a possible domain change this morning. “Give us about a week.”

That was a few hours ago though, and things move very quickly in this game.

“Scrrls.net will be our new domain and will be up and running soon as we fix our backend,” PiraCee assured us. Indeed, it appears to be fully functioning now.

TorrentFreak continues to monitor developments in phase 4 of Operation in Our Sites and if any additional domains are seized we will update this report.

Source: ICE Seizes More Domains Today, Admin Says “We’ll Be Back”

Under the flag of “Operation In Our Sites” the authorities shut down a dozen file-sharing and streaming sites and many more accused of selling counterfeit goods.

Today ICE continued the operation with a 4th round, and the first one since February this year. Although the authorities are yet to give an official comment on the new seizures, TorrentFreak was able to confirm the following targets:

* Re1ease.net
* Watchnewfilms.com
* Dvdcollectionsale.com
* Dvdscollection.com
* Dvdsetsonline.com
* Newstylerolex.com

The first two domains are accused of copyright-related offenses, but did not host any copyrighted films themselves. Both Re1ease.net and Watchnewfilms.com linked to popular movie streaming sites such as Veoh.com and Megavideo.com. The rest of the domains appear to be connected to sales of counterfeit goods.

The new targets were most likely put forward to ICE by movie industry groups. In April of this year ICE director John Morton admitted that his organization was acting based on “tips from industry representatives,” among others.

The authorities are also aware of the fact that the domain seizures themselves are not really an effective tool. As pointed out before, more than half of the piracy-related domains that were seized by Operation In Our Sites simply continued under a different name.

Morton replied to this critique by emphasizing that the seizures also act as “public education about pirating.”

To quash allegedly copyright infringing sites more effectively U.S. lawmakers introduced the PROTECT IP Act last week. Aside from domain seizures, the new bill will also make it possible to block sites on an ISP level, to censor search engines, and to cut funding of allegedly copyright-infringing websites.

TorrentFreak is closely monitoring developments in Operation in Our Sites 4 and if any additional domains are seized we will update this report accordingly.

Source: U.S. Government Starts New Round of ‘Pirate’ Domain Seizures

The actions of the authorities were met with disbelief by the sites’ owners and their millions of visitors. But those directly involved weren’t the only ones complaining.

Several legal experts believe that the domain seizures may stifle free-speech, and have further pointed out that the lack of due process could be a violation of the U.S. constitution. In this assessment they were joined by several politicians.

Two of the most outspoken politicians are U.S Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Zoe Lofgren. In an attempt to get some much-needed answers to their questions, they asked the responsible authorities to explain how effective the seizures are and whether they are legitimate.

This week they got a response, but not the one they were looking for. Although Homeland Security’s ICE unit finally responded after three months, the politicians found the answers to be insufficient, as all the major issues were simply avoided.

“It is hard to imagine that the administration can effectively deter online copyright infringement when they refuse to answer basic questions regarding what they believe constitutes infringement,” U.S Senator Ron Wyden commented.

“While the departments finally responded to questions that I sent them more than three months ago, the responses from ICE and DOJ reveal a single-minded determination to stamp out online infringement and demonstrate little if any understanding of the Internet’s value and function,” he added.

One of the hot topics has been the seizure of the Torrent-Finder website, a meta-search engine that doesn’t host or link to any copyrighted files directly. We previously pointed out that many mistakes were made during the investigation into this site, and Wyden and Lofgren specifically asked why this site would be deemed to aid in criminal copyright infringement.

How is Torrent-Finder different from other search engines like Google and Bing, and how does criminalizing hyperlinks effect free-speech, they questioned. But answers didn’t come.

“Particularly troubling is their refusal to explain how linking is different from free speech. Given that hyperlinks in many ways form the foundation of the Internet, efforts to go after one site for linking to another site – which the Administration is currently doing and the Protect IP Act would expand on – threaten to do much more than protect IP,” Wyden said.

“There are many actions that we can all agree the Administration can and should be taking to crack down on counterfeiting of U.S. goods and the illegal sale of U.S. IP products that don’t involve advancing novel and unsupportable theories like holding sites liable for linking,” the Senator added.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren was disappointed by the non-response from ICE as well, and characterizes the domain seizures as an act of censorship.

“ICE’s response fails to address legitimate concerns about ‘Operation In Our Sites.’ Domain seizures without due process are a form of censorship. In this instance, our government has seized domains with nothing more than the rubber stamp of a magistrate, without any prior notice or adversarial process, leaving the authors of these sites with the burden of proving their innocence,” she said in a response.

“While this might be enough for the seizure of stolen cars or knock-off handbags, it is not enough for web sites and speech on the Internet. It is disturbing that this administration is treating them the same,” Lofgren added.

The response from ICE shows that they have no intention of explaining their actions, and that they will continue seizing domains without answering some of the core questions that have been asked. And that’s not all – things may soon get much more disturbing.

Earlier this week we reported that the U.S. Government is working on a revamped version of the COICA bill, named the Protect IP Act. This bill is designed specifically to make the domain seizures most effective, and give the authorities even broader powers such as censoring search engines and ordering ISPs to block websites.

Last time around Senator Wyden was able to stop COICA from being implemented, but with a lot of backing in Washington and Hollywood the Protect IP Act might be harder to stop. There’s no doubt that yet more questions will be asked in the coming months, but it is doubtful that meaningful answers will follow.

Source: Vagueness About ‘Pirate’ Domain Seizures Disturbs US Politicians

Under the flag of “Operation In Our Sites” the authorities shut down a dozen file-sharing and streaming sites, as well as close to 80 sites selling counterfeit goods. On the majority of these domains, the authorities have now decided to run an anti-piracy announcement to honor yesterday’s World Intellectual Property Day.

“To coincide with World Intellectual Property Day, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has launched a new public service announcement (PSA) that aims to raise awareness of the economic impact of IP theft,” they announced.

The authorities can “use” the domains for this campaign because the previous owners did not file an appeal. This means that the domains have fallen into the hands of the U.S. Government.

“If no petitions or claims are filed, the domain names become property of the U.S. government. Since “Operation In Our Sites” began, 65 domain names have been forfeited using this process. Other domain names are still in the administrative forfeiture process,” the authorities explain.

Interestingly enough, the video that appears on the domains is an anti-piracy campaign, targeted at those who download illegal movies. However, of the 100+ domains that were seized over the past year, only one (torrent-finder.com) was linked by the authorities to illegal movie downloads. But this falls flat, since Torrent-Finder is actually one of the few sites that appealed the seizure of its domain, and thus not showing the video.

Most of the domains that now link to the video have nothing to do with ‘piracy,’ but were selling counterfeit goods. Something entirely different according to the law, but that doesn’t seem to bother the authorities. If we have to take a guess, we’d say the anti-piracy video was probably put up at the MPAA’s request.

Source: US Govt. Uses Seized Domains for Anti-Piracy Video

ICE director John Morton confirmed last week that the seizures will continue in the coming years. But at the same time the authorities amp up their anti-piracy efforts, those in opposition are already coming up with ways to bypass them.

One of these initiatives is the “MAFIAA Fire” add-on for Firefox that was officially published today. The plugin, which will support the Chrome browser at a later stage too, maintains a list of all the domains that ICE (hence the fire) has seized and redirects their users to an alternative domain if the sites in question have set one up.

To start the ball rolling the add-on’s developers have redirected some of the seized sites for which they know the alternate domains, such as Torrent-Finder.com and Rojadirecta.com. In addition, they are offering webmasters the option to register an alternate domain in anticipation of an eventual domain seizure. These domains will then be verified and the site owners can “activate” them in case they’re needed.

TorrentFreak got in touch with the MAFIAA Fire developer, who told us that this is just the beginning. Inspired by a quote from John Gilmore who once said “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” they are determined to retaliate against these and other censorship attacks.

“This is just a start, now that we have opened this can of worms people can expect many add-ons, extensions and plug-ins from us,” TorrentFreak was told. “Our goal is to reverse governments attempts to censor the Internet, and nearly anything the anti-piracy people put up to protect their dinosaur business models.”

“Imagine the old game of whack-a-mole, now imagine playing on multiple machines all around you at the same time.”

“We really are tired of the corruption at the highest levels of government by these people. Enough is enough. There is a time to moan and there is a time to take action – and taking action has been long overdue,” the MAFIAA Fire developer said.

According to the add-on developer, something has to be done to stop the Internet from falling under the control of the entertainment industries or other hidden agendas. This add-on is a small step, but a start according to him.

“Governments around the world are either censoring for the entertainment companies never ending woes, or using that as an excuse to slowly get more control over the internet for their own agendas – and trampling over our rights in the process.”

“Our right to privacy should outweigh any outdated business model, unfortunately average Joe cannot afford a $10,000 plate dinner to speak to their representatives and his voice is drowned out by the vultures who have been doing this for decades,” he concluded.

Aside from redirecting seized domains, the MAFIAA Fire developer is also planning something for the websites of the various anti-piracy agencies worldwide. For this project, he is encouraging people to send in the domains of anti-piracy sites around the world, and more specifically, the country they’re operating from.

The MAFIAA Fire add-on can be downloaded from Mozilla and the official website, which also features a FAQ for those who want to know all the juicy details. The add-on code itself will be open source and released to the public in a few days.

Source: Firefox Add-on ‘Undoes’ U.S. Government Domain Seizures

Described by some people as “a parade of strawmen” the hearing focused heavily on Google, and how the search engine should be the one to ensure that online piracy no longer poses a problem. However, a speaker that also delivered some interesting statements was ICE director John Morton, who has been leading the seizures of piracy-related domain names in the past several months.

In his witness testimony Morton explained in detail how more than 100 domains were seized in four separate rounds, starting in June of last year. While omitting to mention that many of the sites simply continued under different domains, Morton said that the seizure banners have led to “public education about pirating” as they had received 38 million hits since the start of the operation.

Another statement of interest from the ICE director is that Operation In Our Sites is here for the long haul. Despite the critique from journalists, activists and politicians, the US Government will continue to seize domains in the future.

“The Operation In Our Sites initiative will continue through 2011 and beyond. ICE’s efforts through this operation successfully disrupt the ability of criminals to purvey copyrighted materials illegally over the internet,” Morton testified.

“In addition to the domain names that are seized through this operation, evidence suggests that the operation has a deterrent effect. In fact, following Operations In Our Sites v. 1.0, ICE was notified that 81 of the most active websites that had been offering pirated material voluntarily shut down,” the ICE director added.

The rest of Morton’s statement appears to be an effort to justify the domain seizure procedures, directly responding to the many constitutional questions that were posed, in particular the claimed absence of due process.

“Operation In Our Sites was developed with the Department of Justice to respect free speech, to provide due process, and to work within the statutory framework provided to us by Congress. Domain names seized under Operation In Our Sites are seized only in furtherance on ongoing criminal investigations into violations of U.S. federal laws.”

Although ICE’s definition of due process appears to differ from that preferred by their critics, Morton gave four examples of how domain owners can attempt to get them back after a seizure. However, in reality this turns out to be more problematic than ICE claims it is.

The owner of Torrent-Finder, one of the seized domains, told TorrentFreak that his options are rather limited since he can not rely on “constitutional rights” as an Egyptian. He appealed the seizure from the very start, in November of last year, but thus far the case is moving very slowly.

Overall, ICE believes that the current way of dealing with domains that are possibly connected to copyright infringement is the best option they have. Morton said that based on “tips from industry representatives” among others, they will continue to seize domains that are deemed to support online piracy.

Source: “Operation In Our Sites” Will Continue Seizing Domains

Under the flag of “Operation In Our Sites” the authorities shut down a dozen file-sharing and streaming sites, as well as close to 80 sites selling counterfeit goods. After two months of silence on the domain seizure front, the MPAA has now applauded the US authorities for their “successful” enforcement efforts.

“Operation In Our Sites has not only put illegal sites out of business, but has raised public awareness about this specific form of crime on the Internet. Most importantly, these enforcement efforts have resulted in most of these entities ceasing their illegal activity,” wrote the MPAA two days ago in a letter to the US Government.

In more ways than one, the above statement from the movie studios is a gross twist of reality. For one, the public awareness that was raised mostly concerned the realization that the Government was willing to sacrifice a lot, including first amendment rights, to protect the interests of the entertainment industries. The seizures resulted in heavy critique from journalists, legal experts, senators and most prominently, the public.

It is of course hardly a surprise that the MPAA is misrepresenting the truth in their favor, but adding that the domain seizures “resulted in most of these entities ceasing their illegal activity” goes too far. Let’s take a look at what really happened to the allegedly infringing file-sharing and streaming sites that had their domains seized, starting in reverse chronological order.

It wasn’t hard for the affected sites to continue their operations. Since their servers had not been touched physically it was a simple matter to change a few settings to make the sites available to the public again under a new domain, something achieved in a few minutes. This is exactly what most of the streaming and file-sharing related sites have done.

During the latest round of seizures under the “Operation In Our Sites” flag in February, a total of 10 domain names were targeted, belonging to 6 different sports streaming services. Despite the thousands of dollars in tax payer money that were spend on the enforcement effort, all of the sites were back up in no time under new domains.

As of today, only one of the six is no longer accessible and that is the site of Bryan McCarthy, who was arrested by the feds last month. McCarthy initially continued his Channelsurfing.net website under a new domain at Channelsurf.eu. The day after his arrest this site was still up and running and it is believed that due to the circumstances he took it offline himself after he was bailed out.

So, although all the sites noticed an initial dip in traffic due to the seizures, the actions of the US Government did little to actually stop the streaming services from operating. This was no different to the situation November last year when 82 domain names were seized. Although most of the targets were sites selling counterfeit goods, 4 file-sharing related domains were also seized, including Torrent-Finder.com.

As mentioned previously, the operator of Torrent-Finder immediately announced he would fight the seizure in court and continued operating under the Torrent-Finder.info domain. Of the three other ‘piracy’ related sites that were seized, two – OnSmash and Rapgodfathers – came back on another domain, carrying on where they left off. Again, the seizures appear to have had little effect.

If we look back at the first round of “Operation In Our Sites” seizures in June last year, a similar pattern emerges. Of the 8 movie streaming services that were targeted at least 3 have continued, and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if the smaller sites that didn’t return immediately started over under a new name.

The above clearly illustrates that a domain seizure is not the ultimate anti-piracy tool the authorities and the MPAA claim it is. Most of the piracy related sites simply continued under new domains, undeterred. This raises the question whether the costs involved warrant the mediocre outcome.

Aside from the tens of thousands of dollars in tax money being spent on the enforcement actions, the unconstitutionality of the seizures are also a cost that has to be factored in. And with the seizures failing to achieve the desired outcome, one has to question whether it’s all worth it.

Source: US Government’s ‘Pirate’ Domain Seizures Failed Miserably

Without knowing what they have been accused of or having the opportunity to defend their site, the Government has repurposed the owners’ private property.

In order to seize the domain names without notice to the owners, the Government uses a procedure that permits it to bring an action directly against a piece of property used in the commission of a crime –in this case the domain name– rather than the owner. This type of action (called an “In Rem” forfeiture) is not new. In the past, the Government has used In Rem actions for purposes such as an action against an automobile used to transport bootleg whiskey.

An In Rem action does not necessarily require the Government to wait until a court hears both sides and rules that the property has been used for illegal purposes and is subject to forfeiture. Instead, in many cases, the law is written so that all the Government has to do is to sign an affidavit that demonstrates probable cause for the forfeiture, which is signed by a magistrate judge and the Government can seize the property.

To carry out the In Our Sites program, ICE has treated these domains like any other instrument used for common theft and judges have signed off on their affidavits. The U.S. Attorney has publicly exclaimed that website operators like Brian McCarthy are hiding “behind the anonymity of the Internet to make a quick buck through what is little more than high-tech thievery.”

The Government’s view on the domain seizures seems to be overly simplistic and it ignores the fact that a domain is not the same as a gun or a boat used to transport narcotics. A domain is a unique combination of different types of property, including an address, a valuable asset, a brand and a medium for speech.

Any Government seizure of private property raises Constitutional questions. Here, I will outline the five most pressing Constitutional questions that have arisen because of the manner in which the Government has chosen to seize this unique type of property.

1. The Government Seizes The Domains Without Prior Notice And Hearing.

The Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment guarantees that “[n]o person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Traditionally, this means that individuals must receive notice and a meaningful hearing before the Government takes away their property.

This right to prior notice and hearing is not a minor legal technicality. It is an indispensible aspect of due process. It is the only way an individual can protect himself from the Government arbitrarily or mistakenly depriving him of property before it happens.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. If due process invariably required prior notice and hearing, that would be the end of the analysis. The domain name owners received no notice or opportunity to give their side of the story before their domain names were seized. The complication comes from the fact that, over the years, the courts have carved out certain limited exceptions to the pre-deprivation notice and hearing requirement. Although the Government has proceeded as if the domain seizures fit into one of those exceptions, it is highly questionable. The Supreme Court has explicitly limited those exceptions to “extraordinary situations where some valid governmental interest is at stake that justifies postponing the hearing until after the event.”

Is the In Our Sites program one of those “extraordinary situations where some valid governmental interest is at stake?” Determining whether the program should be allowed to compromise a citizen’s due process rights basically involves balancing the importance of the individual’s property interest against the Government’s interest in taking property prior to notice and a hearing.

In the past, the courts have permitted the Government to delay notice and hearing to protect important public interests such as the ability to collect taxes or protect the public from contaminated food. However, the court refused to allow the Government to delay notice and a hearing before seizing a home, in part because a home is too important a private property interest.

Domain owners cannot argue that their property interest in a domain is as important as a person’s property interest in his own home. However, whether the owners are using it for innocent or criminal purposes, a domain is critically important to its owner. The domain is how other people, computers or search engines can find a site. When a domain is seized, the content gets locked away until a new domain is created. A domain is also a critical marketing and branding tool and, in some cases, like the sex.com domain name that sold for $13 million last October, a domain can even be a lucrative asset.

On the other side of the equation, the Government cannot argue that the public interest in preventing copyright violations is as important as its interest in public safety or collecting revenue. Clearly, the Government has some interest in preventing copyright violations. The question then is whether preventing copyright violations is important enough to America to justify setting aside its citizens’ fundamental constitutional rights by seizing property before a hearing.

The Government’s justification for the pre-hearing seizure is not made clear by its affidavits. In its November 2010 affidavit, the Government was claiming that the seizures of domains that provide links to copyrighted material were necessary to prevent third parties from “acquiring the names and using them to commit additional crimes” and “continuing to access” the websites. Commentators were critical of this justification because it is so unlikely that the seizure will prevent anyone from accessing the material and even more unlikely that a third party would take over the domain name. In the most recent affidavit, the Government limited the justification for seizure to the vague claim that the websites were being used to commit or facilitate a crime.

On balance, ownership of a domain is too important a private right and preventing copyright infringement is not an important enough public goal to justify seizure without prior notice or hearing. In the last 50 years, the courts have trended toward due process protection, even for procedures that had been traditionally permitted. In light of that trend, the Government’s basis for setting aside due process requirements should be found to be insufficient. Without notice and hearing, these seizures violate the Fifth Amendment.

2. Seizures of Protected Speech Without a Hearing Violates The First Amendment.

Since the seized domain names are for websites that, at least arguably, contain speech, the seizures must also comply with the freedom of speech provisions of the First Amendment. Generally, the First Amendment does not permit prior restraint, which is when the Government censors material before it is distributed. The Supreme Court has deemed prior restraint as “the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.” Instead of prior restraint, courts typically require the Government to allow the publication of the speech and then to sanction the offending party afterward.

There is a deepening debate about whether the domain name seizures are a prior restraint that violates the First Amendment. As Techdirt points out, like with due process, the Government must provide prior notice and hearing before it restrains “potentially protected speech, with the intent to take material out of circulation.” Seizing an entire domain has the hallmarks of a prior restraint because in doing so, ICE is indiscriminately taking both infringing and non-infringing material out of circulation.

On the other hand, supporters of the constitutionality of ICE’s actions, such as Terry Hart, point out that the Supreme Court has permitted prior restraint of certain items, such as obscene materials or threats to national security. However, even these supporters recognize that these exceptions are premised on the Government ensuring a prompt judicial determination. Hart stated that “in effect, the Court recognizes the danger that too long of a temporary restraint on speech-related items can have the effect of a final restraint.” While true, this analysis does not address the differences between obscene material and links to infringing material. Additionally, it would not save ICE’s procedures because the Government has not, in fact, provided an immediate hearing on the seized domains.

Even if the types of sites that have been previously targeted, often consisting of links to other sites, were not a form of protected speech, there is still concern that endorsing these seizures would ultimately lead to the Government seizing the domains of sites expressing viewpoints it deems dangerous. ICE Director John Morton told Politico that the Government was not interested in going after bloggers or discussion boards. Morton said, “We’re not about what is being said by anybody. We’re about making sure that the intellectual property laws of the United States, which are clear, are enforced. When somebody spends hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the next movie or a billion dollars to develop the next heart medicine, the innovation and the enterprise that went into that effort is protected as the law provides. It’s that simple.”

Many commentators are not comforted by the Government’s assurance that they will not use their seizure power to attack anti-establishment viewpoints. Libertarian website, The Activist Post, declared after a round of seizures last month that “we are rapidly approaching a day where information can no longer flow freely on the Internet. We better wake up and share these stories with everyone we know, because tyranny is fast approaching.”

Although we are not there yet, this is a legitimate concern. Even if the Government does not directly go after certain types of speech, what is to stop the DHS from only going after copyright violations on sites with subversive opinions and ignoring copyright violations on pro-Government sites? The effect would be the same as any other prior restraint of speech.

3. There Is No Concern That The Accused Will Flee With Their Domains.

Certain constitutional rights sometimes take a backseat to crucial practical considerations, such as the Government’s concern that property involved in a crime will disappear if it is not immediately seized.

For example, the Supreme Court has allowed seizures without prior notice or hearing in a case involving the seizure of a yacht believed to be used to transport drugs. The Court was swayed by the fact that a yacht is the “sort [of property] that could be removed to another jurisdiction, destroyed, or concealed, if advance warning of confiscation were given.” However, in a later case, the Court found such a seizure against real estate “which, by its very nature, can be neither moved nor concealed,” to be unconstitutional.

A domain is not the same as real estate. Like real estate, a domain has an address and space within which the owner can build, but that space is not confined to finite borders or an address the way that real property is. Despite the differences, a domain is more like real estate than it is like a yacht. A domain can be sold, but it cannot be moved or concealed from the Government without defeating the purpose of having a domain in the first place.

4. There Is An Unacceptable Risk Of Wrongful Seizure.

ICE also unwittingly made its critics’ point last month when it mistakenly seized the domain names of 84,000 websites. The Government had falsely accused the sites of child pornography. This type of large-scale, disastrous mistake illustrates the constitutional deficiencies of the seizures.

To be clear, the Constitution does not demand that the Government always be right. For the Government to be able to effectively seek justice, falsely accused and falsely punished citizens are inevitable tragedies. However, the Constitution does require the Government to institute sufficient procedures that reasonably protect a person’s freedom and property from a wrongful taking.

In many ways, the whole point of due process is to protect citizens from wrongful Government action. The Supreme Court has explained that the right to notice and a hearing prior to a government seizure is for the purpose of enabling an individual “to protect his use and possession of property from arbitrary encroachment-to minimize substantively unfair or mistaken deprivations of property.”

Supporters of the ICE seizures will point to the fact that, despite the lack of notice and hearing, a seizure cannot occur without a judge finding that the Government’s affidavit demonstrates probable cause. However, critics get no comfort from the fact that ICE cannot kick down your virtual door without a judge’s sign off. Last week, during a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet, California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren grilled the Obama administration’s Intellectual Property Czar Victoria Espinel about the Constitutional shortcomings of the ICE domain seizures. Espinel attempted to argue that a judge’s sign off amounted to due process. Lofgren tersely countered by saying “With all due respect, judges sign a lot of things.”

See the exchange and Lofgren’s full line of questioning in the video below:

Lofgren makes a good point. Several other commentators have pointed out that judges signed off on the affidavits despite numerous factual and technical errors. The perception that the judge’s review was inadequate was certainly not helped by the fact that Magistrate Judge Margaret Nagle literally used a rubber stamp, rather than a pen, to sign the December affidavits.

In addition to doubts about the adequacy of the factual review, critics such as Oregon Senator Ron Wyden have argued that depriving domain owners of due process is especially problematic because it is still unclear whether certain seized domains are actually violating copyright law. Wyden wrote a scolding letter to the Director of ICE and the Attorney General demanding answers and expressing concern about denying website owners a chance to defend themselves prior to seizure because “there is an active and contentious debate about when a website may be held liable for infringing activities by its users.” Wyden added that the domain seizures “could function as a means of end-running the normal legal process in order to target websites that may prevail in court.”

5. Targeted Sites Are Not Given An Immediate Opportunity To Reclaim Their Domain.

The final Constitutional problem is that not only is there no notice and hearing before the seizure, there is not an immediate and meaningful hearing after the seizure. Most exceptions to due process and freedom of speech restrictions are premised on the promise of an immediate opportunity to defend yourself after the Government has taken your property. Operation In Our Sites has included no such immediate hearing. In fact, according to reports, weeks after the November seizures, site owners were still waiting to learn what it is that their sites had been accused of.

The lack of an immediate opportunity to reclaim a domain is not the only problem. Even if a post-seizure hearing occurred within hours of the seizure, it may be too late to truly compensate a domain name owner’s loss caused by an erroneous seizure.

Commentators such as Larry Downes have correctly pointed out that the seizure of a domain name is somewhat unique because a seizure may work to shut down a website indefinitely. A domain seizure is not like when the Government seizes a car used to solicit a prostitute. If the car is later returned, it still runs as well as it did when it was taken. With a domain name seizure, if a user attempts to access a website, but instead finds himself face-to-face with the DHS/ICE seal, even if the domain is later restored, that user will probably never return to the site.

It is even worse for those 84,000 websites falsely accused of child pornography. A visitor attempting to access these websites got an additional message stating: “Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution.”

Even though these websites were completely innocent, will users come back to sites that the government has publicly accused of child pornography?

—

David Makarewicz is an attorney practicing internet law in defense of websites and blogs.  Visit Dave at Sites and Blogs or follow him @sitesandblogs to keep up with breaking Internet news affecting websites, bloggers and social media.

Source: 5 Reasons Why the US Domain Seizures Are Unconstitutional

“Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution,” was the worrying message they read on their websites.

As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized.

The domain in question is mooo.com, which belongs to the DNS provider FreeDNS. It is the most popular shared domain at afraid.org and as a result of the authorities’ actions a massive 84,000 subdomains were wrongfully seized as well. All sites were redirected to the banner below.

The FreeDNS owner was taken by surprise and quickly released the following statement on their website. “Freedns.afraid.org has never allowed this type of abuse of its DNS service. We are working to get the issue sorted as quickly as possible.”

Eventually, on Sunday the domain seizure was reverted and the subdomains slowly started to point to the old sites again instead of the accusatory banner. However, since the DNS entries have to propagate, it took another 3 days before the images disappeared completely.

Most of the subdomains in question are personal sites and sites of small businesses. A search on Bing still shows how innocent sites were claimed to promote child pornography. A rather damaging accusation, which scared and upset many of the site’s owners.

One of the customers quickly went out to assure visitors that his site was not involved in any of the alleged crimes.

“You can rest assured that I have not and would never be found to be trafficking in such distasteful and horrific content. A little sleuthing shows that the whole of the mooo.com TLD is impacted. At first, the legitimacy of the alerts seems to be questionable — after all, what reputable agency would display their warning in a fancily formatted image referenced by the underlying HTML? I wouldn’t expect to see that.”

Even at the time of writing people can still replicate the effect by adding “74.81.170.110 mooo.com” to their hosts file as the authorities have not dropped the domain pointer yet. Adding mooo.com will produce a different image than picking a random domain (child porn vs. copyright), which confirms the mistake.

Although it is not clear where this massive error was made, and who’s responsible for it, the Department of Homeland security is conveniently sweeping it under the rug. In a press release that went out a few hours ago the authorities were clearly proud of themselves for taking down 10 domain names.

However, DHS conveniently failed to mention that 84,000 websites were wrongfully taken down in the process, shaming thousands of people in the process.

“Each year, far too many children fall prey to sexual predators and all too often, these heinous acts are recorded in photos and on video and released on the Internet,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano commented.

“DHS is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to shut down websites that promote child pornography to protect these children from further victimization,” she added.

A noble initiative, but one that went wrong, badly. The above failure again shows that the seizure process is a flawed one, as has been shown several times before in earlier copyright infringement sweeps. If the Government would only allow for due process to take place, this and other mistakes wouldn’t have been made.

Coverage on previous copyright related seizures can be found here, here and here.

Source: U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’

Thus far, neither the Department of Justice nor Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit have officially commented on the seizures, but it can’t be a coincidence that sports streaming sites were targeted a few days before the Super Bowl is due to be aired.

The Super Bowl is the most-watched American television broadcast and huge commercial interests are likely to be the main reason why the domains were seized. In November, the previous round of seizures was timed a few days before another commercial event, “Cyber Monday”. These seizures targeted mainly online retailers of counterfeit goods, in an operation that was labelled the “Cyber Monday Crackdown” by the responsible authorities.

Thus far, TorrentFreak has confirmed the seizure of the following major sports streaming sites (no new ones will be added in this round):

* HQ-streams.com
* HQ-streams.net
* Atdhe.net
* Rojadirecta.com
* Rojadirecta.org
* Firstrow.net
* Ilemi.com
* Iilemi.com
* Iilemii.com
* Channelsurfing.net

In the aftermath of the seizures TorrentFreak has been in contact with the owners of several of the above sites, and despite the temporary setback they are all determined to continue.

The owner of Rojadirecta, whose site had been declared legal in Spain by two courts, is currently seeking legal counsel and the Channelsurfing owner has similar plans. Operators of competing sites are grouping together to determine what actions to take next to counter the seizures both legally and technically.

The easiest option for the sites to continue their operations is to move to alternative domains, which most have done already. Since the servers have not been touched physically it’s a matter of changing a few settings to make the sites available to the public again. Rojadirecta is currently available on several alternative domains, including Rojadirecta.es. Channelsurfing.net is now available under Channelsurf.eu, Atdhe.net has moved to Atdhenet.tv and Ilemi.com transferred over to Ilemi.tv.

The streaming sites that were targeted in this “Super Bowl Crackdown” are not new to complaints from copyright holders.

Last year HQ-streams.com was hit with a court order which restrained it from broadcasting UFC events, an order with which the site complied. Rojadirecta on its turn has been sued by copyright holders in Spain, but after a three year legal battle the court decided that the site operated legally.

With the recent domain seizures, however, the US authorities have a much more powerful tool in hand to take action against sites they deem to be illegal. Without contacting the site owners – who are mostly foreign and host their sites outside of the US – they simply obtain a seizure warrant from a District Court judge and use this to take control over the domains in question. This questionable process grants the US censorship powers over a great part of the Internet, which it is using to protect the commercial interests of media and sports outfits.

Based on the domains that are targeted in the most recent seizures, it is apparent that the authorities will soon announce and comment on the “Super Sunday Seizures” or the “Super Bowl Crackdown.” Once this happens, or when any new domains are added to the list above, we will update this article accordingly.

Update: No new sports sites will be seized in this round.

Source: U.S. Seizes Sports Streaming Sites in “Super Bowl Crackdown”

The site has well over a million visitors a day, and is listed among the 100 most popular sites in Spain in terms of traffic. This morning, however, visitors were surprised by a warning from US authorities. Continuing the previous “Operation in Our Sites” actions, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had seized Rojadirecta’s .org domain.

Rojadirecta is an unusual target for several reasons, not least because the site has been declared legal twice by Spanish courts. The site’s owners have previously fought a three year legal battle in Spain, which they won, but a single seizure warrant from US authorities has made this victory pointless.

Without receiving a notification or the option to defend themselves, the site’s domain was seized this morning.

“We have not been notified,” Rojadirecta’s Igor Seoane told TorrentFreak. As with the previous seizures the domain registrar was bypassed in the seizure. “According to Go Daddy they have not touched anything,” Seoane said.

Similar to BitTorrent sites, Rojadirecta doesn’t host any copyrighted material. Instead, it indexes HTTP links to sports streams that can already be found on the Internet, and also carries links to .torrent files which are hosted on other sites.

The site is owned by a Spanish company that pays its taxes and has been declared to operate legally in Spain. In addition, the site is not hosted in the US either. The only connection to the US is that the .org domain is maintained by a US company.

This indirect connection to the US makes the seizure a dubious action, according to Rojadirecta’s owner. “In our opinion the US authorities are completely despising the Spanish justice system and sovereignty,” Seoane told TorrentFreak.

At the moment Rojadirecta displays the same message from DOJ and ICE as the sites seized last year, including Torrent-Finder. It is expected that Rojadirecta is one of the first of a new list of seized domains.

The sports streaming and P2P link site is currently looking for legal advice, both in Spain and the US, and its owners are determined to fight the seizure with all means they have.

Despite losing the .org domain, Rojadirecta can still be accessed via rojadirecta.com, rojadirecta.es, rojadirecta.me, rojadirecta.in. The latter two domains are interestingly enough maintained by the same company as the .org domain, but Rojadirecta ensures us that they have many other domains that are not controlled by US authorities or companies.

The seizure of Rojadirecta shows that commercial interests are high on the agenda of the US Government. Seizing a domain that has been specifically declared to operate legally in other countries does not appear to be an obstacle. In this light, one has to wonder if generic domain names should be controlled exclusively by US companies.

Update: The owner of Channelsurfing.net informed us that his site was seized as well. Channelsurfing embedded videos from other sites and never hosted any copyrighted material on its servers.

Update: We published a follow up article here.

Update: Atdhe.net has been seized as well, another sports related site.

Update: firstrow.net has been seized, yet another sports related site.

Update: ilemi.com has been seized, yet another sports related site.

Update: kingdom-kvcd.net was initially reported to be seized as well (image), but the site’s owner told us that this is due to a “huffy ex-staff member” who decided to point the DNS to the server where the other seized domains are hosted.

Source: U.S. Resume Controversial File-Sharing Domain Seizures (Updated)

Torrent-Finder’s owner Waleed Gadelkareem was genuinely surprised by the actions of the US authorities and said earlier that he is determined to fight the seizure. He suspected that the authorities had made a mistake and hired a lawyer to help him with the legal proceedings.

Torrent-Finder’s lawyer David Snead called the seizure “a stretch of the law,” and today it became apparent just how far the law was stretched by the authorities. The application for the seizure warrant was just sent to us by Torrent-Finder’s owner and on first reading several painful mistakes stand out.

To start off the affidavit shows that the authorities worked closely with the MPAA, and the movie industry lobby group is cited multiple times to confirm various claims. In addition, a highly disputed MPAA study is used to signify the severity of movie piracy, despite the fact that it was called into doubt by the Government Accountability Office just a few months ago.

The general description of Torrent-Finder and the four music linking sites that were included in the affidavit are not completely accurate either. The sites are described by Homeland Security’s Special Agent Reynolds as being among the most popular of their kind, but in the case of Torrent-Finder.com we can easily list a few dozen BitTorrent sites that have more visitors.

This investigation has identified five linking, cyberlocker or Bit torrent websites that are among the most popular such websites on the internet for distributing illegal copies of movies, television shows, software and music files.

Aside from the fact that describing the site as one of the most popular of its type is a bit misleading, the core issue is whether Torrent-Finder is indeed a site which use is to distribute illegal copies of movies and music.

To make his case, agent Reynolds characterizes Torrent-Finder as a linking site, which generally “collect and catalog links to files on third party sites that contain illegal copies of copyrighted content, including movies, television shows, software and music.” This description doesn’t really seem to apply to Torrent-Finder.com.

Torrent-Finder does not catalog or collect any files, it simply allows people to search several torrent search engines or indexes. Also, these other torrent search engines do not host any copyrighted material either, but only torrent files that may or may not point to copyrighted content.

Another claim from Homeland Security’s Special Agent Reynolds is that the news section on the site was another indication that Torrent-Finder was aiding criminal copyright infringement. He describes it as follows:

I was able to view posts by the user “Torrent Finder,” including “Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent,” “Piracy in The Music Industry,” “The First Episode of ‘The The Walking Dead’ Leaks to BitTorrent,” and “Piracy domain seizure bill gains support.”

This is interesting to say the least, because all these articles from the news section are in fact copies from articles that came from TorrentFreak and other sites. Torrent-Finder used our site as a news source and shared the articles with the users of the site.

From reviewing these posts by the user “Torrent Finder,” I learned that the above -referenced postings contained links and information to pirated movies including “Wall Street Never Sleeps,” “The Social Network,” “Red,” and other movies.

This appears to be another painful mistake. Not only have two of the four articles nothing to do with pirated content, the ones that do are news items that do not link to torrent files or any copyrighted files. A screenshot copy of our “Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent” article is nevertheless included as evidence in the affidavit.

Ironically, the “Piracy domain seizure bill gains support” article comes from CNET and covers the COICA law that would grant US authorities the power to seizure domains, in a similar fashion to what they did with Torrent-Finder.

The seizure application then continues to describe how the Torrent-Finder site works, and the “Downloads of Infringing Content via Torrent-Finder.com” is particularly interesting. Here, Special Agent Reynolds described how the site can be used to download torrent files from external sites.

Although the description itself is fairly accurate, the same section would also apply to every other search engine including Google and Bing. Downloading torrents via Torrent-Finder involves exactly the same steps as downloading torrents via a web search engine, nothing more nothing less.

Another part of the affidavit that stands out is the fact that the proposed seizure has not been carried out properly. According to the affidavit, the authorities should present the warrant to both the registrar (Godaddy) and the registry (Verisign). The registrar would then have to replace the domain name’s technical and administrative contacts with that of the authorities, but this never happened.

Although we’re not legal experts, in our opinion there were enough mistakes made in the affidavit to warrant an appeal against the seizure and get the domain transferred back to the original owner. In order to achieve this, Torrent-Finder’s owner is willing to put up a fight.

“My concern now is to get back my domain. Not because I do business with it, but because it was the first domain I bought and the first idea that I developed. It has been mine since then and I WILL NOT give it away because the USA government is testing a new bill,” Waleed said, referring to the COICA bill that would make such domain seizures standard procedure.

In the coming days Waleed and his lawyer will consider what steps to take next, and we expect that this will not be the last time we report on this unique case.

Source: US Government Made Painful Mistakes In Torrent-Finder Seizure

The site, which doesn’t host or link to any infringing content, disappeared from the Internet for allegedly infringing copyrights. It was the oddball in a list of dozens of sites that were selling counterfeit goods including fake watches and sports clothing.

Up until that day the owner of Torrent-Finder had never run into legal issues when operating his site, which he founded more than half a decade ago. Waleed – who runs the site from his home country of Egypt – always felt he was running a perfectly legal operation and openly registered the domain in his own name.

Needless to say it came as a shock to him that his domain had been taken over by the U.S. authorities last month, a decision he is now determined to fight fiercely. Waleed has hired a lawyer to assist him in this process, and the first steps have been set into motion to hopefully regain control over the domain.

TorrentFreak got in touch with David Snead, the lawyer who represents Torrent-Finder, to ask him about this peculiar case.

“At base, what ICE did is legal, if, in torrent-finder.com’s case, a stretch of the law, which is likely what they intended,” Snead told TorrentFreak.

“There is a civil forfeiture law that has been used for many years by the U.S. to enforce its customs laws, and it has been widely, and legally, used to seize items that infringe copyrights. The classic case would be for customs to seize counterfeit DVDs sold at a flea market.”

“In this case, we believe that ICE’s activities are based on a provision of the statute that allows seizure of items that are facilitating infringement. Because the DNS resided in the U.S., ICE was likely within the law in seizing the DNS, even though the owner of the domain name is not in the U.S. It’s important to note that the site itself wasn’t seized, only the domain name,” Snead added.

It has to be added that Snead and everyone else are still mostly in the dark about the exact reason why the Torrent-Finder domain was seized. “We really don’t know what happened here. So the legal analysis is based on ICE’s past activity enforcing U.S. customs laws,” the lawyer told TorrentFreak.

Thus far, ICE has been contacted with a request for more details about the seizure order that was filed under seal. But, despite promises that more information would be provided before last Friday, both Snead and Torrent-Finder are still waiting to receive a copy of the order.

In the coming days (or weeks) we hope to find out more about the allegations against the BitTorrent search engine, which will enable Waleed and his lawyer to determine what steps to take next. In the meantime Torrent-Finder is still available under their backup domain, Torrent-Finder.info.

As far as we are aware, the owner of Torrent-Finder is the only person protesting the seizure of his domain. Waleed sincerely believes that his site isn’t breaking any laws and hopes that the United States legal system will side with him in the end. .

“I am sure I will win the case. Any internet user who used Torrent Finder before and understands how it works will know that I am not doing anything different than any other search engine. Besides, the silence of the ICE and keeping the investigation ‘under seal’ can only mean that they have done something wrong,” Waleed told TorrentFreak.

Source: Torrent-Finder Determined to Fight U.S. Domain Seizure

The page was so crude that it gave the tens of thousands of worried users a little relief – if the FBI was really behind the shutdown they would’ve made a better job of the page design than this, surely? The conclusion I reached along with many others was that this was the work of hackers. Site staff reported that the DNS had been hacked, which at the time was actually relatively good news, as reports started to come in that the site now traced to the Department of Homeland Security.

For many sci-fi fans the site downtime was really badly timed, as they (and just about everyone else) were desperate to get on the site to get the leaked ‘ViSA‘ workprint copy of Star Wars: Episode III. But as time passed you could feel the mood change. Most people knew deep down something was wrong but just didn’t want to admit it. Operation D-Elite had been and now EliteTorrents was gone.

When the confirmation came, it did so via a notice in the site’s IRC channel: “A few of the admins have been raided by the FBI, sorry, but ET [EliteTorrents] is now closed”, closely followed by an announcement by Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Michael J. Garcia, and Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel of the FBI’s Cyber Division:

This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents. Employing technology known as BitTorrent, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and, in the last four months, allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles – including movies and software – which were downloaded 2.1 million times.

BitTorrent sites had been shut down before in the United States, such as the LokiTorrent case, but none had been closed down by the FBI – something had changed. The recently introduced Family Entertainment and Copyright Act meant that when EliteTorrents admin Sk0t uploaded Star Wars: Episode III, he didn’t just commit a civil infringement, it was now a serious crime. The huge popularity of the movie meant it was downloaded at least 10,000 times during the first 24 hours with some claiming in the region of 20,000 downloads worldwide, and this was reportedly enough for the MPAA to finally lose its patience and make good on its successful infiltration of the site.

The federal agents involved in the case executed 10 warrants and took control of the server. In a recent interview, Scott McCausland, aka sk0t, an administrator of the site told Slyck: “Star Wars was uploaded… and then it was game over. I awoke one morning to see the FBI warning on the ET site, and thought to myself “Damn, I think we are screwed.” It didn’t dawn on me at the time that I could be a target. I didn’t upload a lot, just a couple movies. But I did Star Wars, so… Then, at 6AM I am woken up to the sounds of 6 FBI, 6 ICE, and 2 Local Police at my front door. They come in, confiscate everything, and that begins my 2+ years saga.”

In the BitTorrent community many people were absolutely furious at the loss of their favorite site, with a passion not seen since the demise of Suprnova. Thousands of others were panicking. Forums and IRC were awash with theories of who had been arrested so far and who would be targeted next by the FBI, and why. Would it be limited to admins? What about the uploaders? Would regular users be chased down? In the end, around 130,000 users had nothing to worry about but some admins and uploaders weren’t so lucky.

In 2006, Scott McCausland pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of criminal copyright infringement for his uploading of Star Wars: Episode III. He received jail time and home confinement and on his release told TorrentFreak: “After 5 months in prison, and another 5 months on home confinement, I have just one obstacle left: my 1.5 years years left of probation.”

Fellow site admin Grant Stanley, then aged 23, pleaded guilty to the same offenses as Scott and received the same sentence with the addition of a $3,000 fine. Other admins and uploaders who pleaded guilty included Sam Kuonen, then aged 24, 22 year old Scott D. Harvanek and An Duc Do, aged 25.

Not everyone arrested in connection with the case pleaded guilty. Daniel Dove, an administrator of the site, opted for a ‘not guilty’ plea. For Dove, the gamble hasn’t paid off. The jury was told that Dove was responsible for managing and recruiting the crucial ‘uploaders’ on the site (original seeders) and that he also operated a server which was used to distribute pirate material. The jury believed it and found him guilty on one count each of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement.

Dove will be sentenced on September 9th 2008 where he, like some of the other admins, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail, but is likely to receive substantially less.

Historically, the EliteTorrents case is an important one. Many BitTorrent trackers used to be hosted in the United States, but had been essentially scared or pressured to leave, largely due to direct or indirect MPAA pressure. Right up until the creation of the Family Entertainment Act, any action against sites would have taken place in the civil domain. The act coming into force gave the FBI the green light to get involved, much to the delight of the MPAA who possessed significant investigative powers but lacked the killer ability to quickly shut down a non-compliant site.

The MPAA loves to issue a stream of data about how much piracy went on at EliteTorrents (and a lot did go on), but it was the seeding of a movie, a single pre-release movie that eventually killed the entire site and caused the imprisonment of the admin team. Clearly the leak did nothing to hurt the movie as it went on to gross nearly $110m in its first weekend and has nearly reached a worldwide total of $1bn. But we knew that anyway.

Despite the massive resources at the disposal of the FBI and supposed importance of the case, the person that originally leaked the Episode 3 workprint copy direct from Lucas is nowhere to be seen.

Source: How The FBI Dismantled a BitTorrent Community