Feds seize P2P site domain names

Homeland Security Seizes 70+ Websites for Copyright and Trademark Violations

The federal government took a significant step toward combatting online piracy of software, movies, TV shows and music late last week when the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency seized the domain names of more than 70 web sites that trafficked in P2P links and conterfeit consumer goods. ICE is the agency responsible for federal copyright enforcement. Many of the sites were so-called "Torrent trackers," which serve as search engines for those seeking links to pirated content that can be downloaded on the Bit Torrent P2P protocol.

ICE obtained a seizeure warrant for the domain names of sites that included Torrent-Finder.com, a well-known Torrent tracker. Now, when users looking to download pirated content visit the site, they're greeted with a government notice indicating that the domain has been seized by the government.

Will ICE's action have a long-term impact on online piracy? I'm not so sure as the government was only able to take the site domain names, not the servers that run the sites. With a new domain name, a Torrent tracking site can be back in business in a few hours. But, the government's actions do send a signal that it's serious about the impact of online piracy and its copyright enforcement powers. Pirates are now on notice that the U.S. government is on their case.

Comments

[Didier]

Dear Slippy,I do not understand what pbmelros you have with GUI unpackers on Linux. Most GUI unpackers just send the same arguments to the actual command line tools, so they should more or less work in similar ways.What you need to do, regardless of what GUI is there, is wait for all the parts of a 7z archive to be completely downloaded. Then you might want to check out the commands in .Summary:7z -y x the.archive.7z.000tar -xf the.archiveYes, most of the archives go into a directory called geocities . It's supposed to be okay like this.On Windows you will not really be able to unpack all the stuff because the file system is not case-sensitive, meaning it doesn't distinguish between file names with uppercase and lowercase letters.

[Nate Hiatt]

I find it a little odd/scary Michael that you haven't put in your 2 cents worth on the Comcast/Level 3 debacle. I doubt you're unaware of the details, which leads me to believe you don't want to share your opinion, which is a little unsettling.

[William]

And the lesson for this this Thanksgiving weekend was that if you want to post something online, post classified national security documents and not that C.S.I. episode that everyone was able to watch for free.

I for one will sleep easier knowing that it's (not) harder for anyone to see that new Twilight movie before it comes out on DVD within the next week. At least our government is trying to protect something.