PlanetMovies Just Got Punk'd Courtesy of U.S. Copyright
 

http://planetmoviez.com/index.html ...interesting

200 something k alexa? thats what...20k hits/day?

I think it's lower than that, Oracle

The sites they took offline were backup a short time later on.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/07/...S-Seizure-Fail

http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing...t-back-100705/

I am all for getting piracy under control, but what is more worrying in this story is that apparently, this US govt operation managed to get the registrar to seize the domains.

Of course, the registrars are in the US and the sites were infringing US law. But what if later on the US decides it doesn't like porn anymore and forces registrars to pull the plug on all porn domains in US registrars?

It happened with these piracy sites, it's happened with the casino sites and it even happened to a cuban tourism site operated by a non-US national living outside of the US

What if the US controlled ICANN just decides that it doesn't matter if the domain is in a US registrar? Any US govt agency can get ICANN to force a registrar to pull the plug on any domain?

This, IMHO, is bullshit. Do I have to worry now that if a US govt agency tomorrow decides a bondage site is illegal they can just seize my domains because my domains are in a US registrar? Do I have to go looking for a non-US registrar now?

One of those pirate sites just moved to a chinese registrar and regged a new .cc domain. It was backup in less than 24 hours I think.

How cool is that ICE US Special Agent Badge?

I am completely with you on everything. But one thing you missed, 2 of the domains WERE NOT in US registrar accounts. One was already in a Chinese registrar, another was with a Canadian registrar. The US Government seized the domains through ICANN.

It seems you obviously grasp the issue, but unfortunately most don't. The US essentially exerted, for the first time in a major way, its authority over the entire TLD system, and more is expected. It is indeed an extremely concerning development for a medium thought to be international and free, to have a single country, seize domains regardless of the TLD, location of the domain, etc, simply because they have access to the root server system through ICANN.

It won't stop piracy one bit, a few more raids and pirate sites will just operate off IPs, most large sites are already talking about. But the precedent it sets for the future is very very concerning as you said.

bingo... the root servers are what determines whether or not a domain is resolved not where the domain is reg'd...

i worry that these domain grabs will ultimately lead to the govt grabbing domains that make disparaging remarks about the govt... :2 cents:





.

America, oh so powerful...

Shit will hit the fan one day and backfire in their face.

Ah great, so the worse case scenario I was worried about is already happening.
That's comforting.

I was under the impression from several articles that only domains registerd in US registrars were targetted.
Apparently, this operation also tried to take down The Pirate Bay and Megaupload , but failed.
Actually, it failed in taking down all the other sites too, since they are all back up and it's only a matter of time before they regain their traffic.

http://www.copshop.com/Merchant2/gra...icebadgeLG.jpg

http://www.copshop.com/view/dhs/

http://badge-police.com/index.php?ro...&product_id=53

maybe 1k/day.

They were streaming movies and tv shows. Kinda like a tube site for movies.

They mostly weren't hosting it. Most videos were on megavideo, etc sites.

Copyright infringement is under ICE jurisdiction? I would have thought there was an intellectual property division.

Actually, so did I

Don't worry, not going to happen. Only right-winger administrations would do this. Last I checked the Obama administration is as liberal as they get.

200k would be about 3k unique or so/day

yes good question - never heard of them

while I won't argue about if Obama is liberal or not (in my mind he is a freaking conservative lite and no where close to liberal) I will say with the current anti-incumbency attitude in the US and just how conservative the Supreme Court is going to be for at least the next 25 years.... this worst case scenario becomes more and more a possibility :2 cents:

good news
another illegal site bites the dust...