U.S. GOV SHUTS DOWN 82 SITES ……..

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http://www.cio.com.au/article/369616/courts_shut_down_82_sites_alleged_copyright_violations/

U.S. GOV SHUTS DOWN 82 SITES
Courts shut down 82 sites for alleged copyright violations
Two
U.S. government agencies have obtained seizure orders for the domain
names of 82 websites accused of selling products that infringe copyright
law, including music, movies and handbagsand other consumables .The
seizure orders, from courts in eight states and Washington, D.C., have
allowed the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to shut
down sites including Torrent-finder.com, DVDscollection.com,
Sunglasses-mall.com, and NFLjerseysupply.com, officials from the
agencies said Monday.News reports of multiple site closures surfaced in
the past few days, but officials with the two agencies talked about the
actions during a press conference Monday.”With today’s seizures, we are
disrupting the sale of thousands of counterfeit items,” U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder said. “We are cutting off funds to those looking to
profit from the sale of illegal goods and exploit the ingenuity of
others. And, as the holiday shopping season gets under way, we are also
reminding consumers to exercise caution when looking for deals and
discounts online. To put it simply: If a deal seems too good to be true,
it probably is.”The Center for Democracy and Technology, a digital
rights group, questioned whether the seizures were legal when website
operators had no warning and no chance to fight the actions in court.
The seizures raise concerns about violations of free speech protections
in the U.S. Constitution, said David Sohn, senior policy counsel at CDT.

A
U.S. copyright statute allows law enforcement to seize “any property”
used to infringe copyright, but police have generally used the statute
to seize manufacturing equipment. Recent efforts to seize domain names
under the statute may mean that the DOJ and ICE are shutting down free
speech on some of those sites, Sohn said.”Domain names are essentially
forums for free expression and communication,” he said. “Obviously,
websites can also be forums for illegal activity, but seizing domain
names without any [legal] adversary process, without any opportunity for
the affected parties to get notice of the action, it carries the risk
that legitimate websites and legitimate speech could end up being
suppressed.”Sohn also questioned if the tactic would be effective. Many
of the sites shut down in recent days may pop up under new domain names,
he said.

Sites targeted by the two agencies displayed a notice
on their home pages saying that ICE had seized the domain names.
“Willful copyright infringement is a federal crime that carries
penalties for first time offenders of up to five years in federal
prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution,” the notices read.
“Intentionally and knowingly trafficking in counterfeit goods is a
federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to
ten years in federal prison, a $2,000,000 fine, forfeiture and
restitution.”

Some commentators questioned the seizure of
Torrent-finder.com, a search engine for BitTorrent files that didn’t
host any files itself. Another version of the site remained online at
Torrent-finder.info Monday morning.

ICE “went way beyond its
mandate to seize a whole bunch of domain names,” wrote Mike Masnick,
founder of the TechDirt blog. “Many of the operators of the domain names
seized in this round state they hadn’t received any notification of
complaints, let alone demands to be taken down.”

The seizure of
search engines is “ridiculous,” Masnick added. “For anyone who actually
understands how the internet works (i.e., clearly not Homeland Security)
this is a massively troubling move, suggesting that if Homeland
Security doesn’t like how your search engine works, it can simply seize
your domain and put up a really scary looking graphic, claiming it has
taken over your website,” he wrote.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a
Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised
the action by the DOJ and ICE. The seizures targeted “rogue websites,”
said Leahy, who has sponsored legislation this year that would make it
easier for the DOJ to shut down infringing websites.

“The
innovative use of the tools currently available to law enforcement to
seize these domain names is similar to the remedy that would be
specifically authorized under the bipartisan Combating Online
Infringement and Counterfeits Act for websites that are registered in
the United States,” Leahy said in a statement. “We can no longer sit on
the sidelines while American intellectual property is stolen and sold
online using our own infrastructure. This costs American jobs, hurts our
economy, and puts consumers at risk.”CDT has raised the same concerns
about the Leahy legislation that it has for the DOJ and ICE action. The
Leahy bill would make it clear that such actions are legal, Sohn said.

Also
cheering the seizures was Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the
Recording Industry Association of America.”Federal law enforcement
authorities have now hung a ‘closed for business’ sign on some of the
most notorious music websites that were havens for copyright theft,” he
said in a statement. “No anti-piracy initiative is a silver bullet, but
targeted government enforcement against the worst of the worst rogue
sites sends a strong message that illegally trafficking in creative
works carries real consequences and won’t be tolerated.”

http://www.cio.com.au/article/369616/courts_shut_down_82_sites_alleged_copyright_violations/

http://publicintelligence.net/u-s-government-shuts-down-seventy-piracy-web-sites-seizes-domain-names/

U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown
In
what appears to be the latest phase of a far-reaching federal crackdown
on online piracy of music and movies, a number of sites that facilitate
illegal file-sharing were shut down this week by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland
Security.By Friday morning a handful of sites that either hosted
unauthorized copies of films and music or allowed users to search for
them elsewhere on the Internet, were shut down, their content replaced
by a notice that said, in part: “This domain name has been seized by ICE
— Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant
issued by a United States District Court.”In seizing the domain names of
the sites, or Web addresses, the government effectively redirected any
visitors to its own takedown notice. “ICE office of Homeland Security
Investigations executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number
of domain names,” said Cori W. Bassett, a spokeswoman for ICE, in a
statement. “As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional
details available at this time.”Among the domains seized were
torrent-finder.com and three that specialized in music: onsmash.com,
rapgodfathers.com and dajaz1.com. TorrentFreak, a news blog about
BitTorrents — a file-sharing system that has tended to elude the
authorities because it is decentralized — said that at least 70 other
sites had been seized, most having to do with counterfeit clothing, DVDs
and other consumable goods.On Friday, torrent users were already
discussing new sites that had popped up to serve them.The takedown
notices are similar to those that went up on nine sites in June as part
of an initiative against Internet counterfeiting and piracy that the
agency called Operation in Our Sites.

    In announcing that
operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and
representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a
long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected
criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world. “American business is
under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a
week,” Mr. Morton said. “Criminals are stealing American ideas and
products and distributing them over the Internet.”Ms. Bassett would not
comment on whether the latest raids were part of Operation in Our Sites,
and a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America,
which represents the major recording labels, declined to answer
questions.The new seizures also come as a new bill, the Combating Online
Infringements and Counterfeits Act, is making its way through Congress.
The bill, which was approved by a Senate committee last week, would
allow the government to shut down sites that are “dedicated to
infringing activities.”

Homeland Security shuts down dozens of
Web sites without court order :The Homeland Security Department’s
customs enforcement division has gone on a Web site shutdown spree,
closing down at least 76 domains this week, according to online reports.

   
While many of the web domains were sites that trafficked in counterfeit
brand name goods, and some others linked to copyright-infringing
file-sharing materials, at least one site was a Google-like search
engine, causing alarm among web freedom advocates who worry the move
steps over the line into censorship.All the shut sites are now
displaying a Homeland Security warning that copyright infringers can
face up to five years in prison.According to a report at TorrentFreak,
the search engine that was shut down — Torrent-Finder.com — neither
hosted copyrighted material nor directly linked to places where it could
be found. Instead, the site opened new windows to sites that did link
to file-sharing materials.“When a site has no tracker, carries no
torrents, lists no copyright works unless someone searches for them and
responds just like Google, accusing it of infringement becomes somewhat
of a minefield,” writes Torrentfreak, “Unless you’re ICE Homeland
Security Investigations that is.”

As of its last update,
Torrentfreak counted 76 domains shut down this week.Homeland Security’s
ability to shut down sites without a court order evidently comes from
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a Clinton-era law that allows Web
sites to be closed on the basis of a copyright complaint. Critics have
long assailed the DMCA for being too broad, as complainants don’t need
to prove copyright infringement before a site can be taken down.

http://publicintelligence.net/u-s-government-shuts-down-seventy-piracy-web-sites-seizes-domain-names/

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December 6, 2010 at 8:23 AM