[At-Large] NYTimes : U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown

Dev Anand Teelucksingh admin at ttcsweb.org
Thu Dec 2 20:18:07 UTC 2010


Here's another related article on the procedure :
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/11/seizing-domain-names-without-coica.html

which raises a interesting scenario : many ccTLDs outsource the technical
running of the ccTLD to third party registry operators, several of which are
US based. Does the recent ICE seizures imply that
ICE can issue a seizure warrant against a US based registry operator running
a ccTLD and redirect a ccTLD to ICE's own servers without notifying the
ccTLD or the ccTLD registrant?

Dev Anand Teelucksingh


On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Carlton Samuels
<carlton.samuels at gmail.com>wrote:

> Seems like they did it following prescribed procedure.  Good thing is any
> person aggrieved can always seek relief in district court.
>
>
> ==============================
> Carlton A Samuels
> Mobile: 876-818-1799
> Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround
> =============================
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Dev Anand Teelucksingh
> <admin at ttcsweb.org>wrote:
>
> > NYTimes : U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown
> > By BEN SISARIO Published: November 26, 2010
> >
> > "In what appears to be the latest phase of a far-reaching federal
> > crackdown on online piracy of music and movies, the Web addresses of a
> > number of sites that facilitate illegal file-sharing were seized this
> > week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the
> > Department of Homeland Security.
> >
> > By Friday morning, visiting the addresses of a handful of sites that
> > either hosted unauthorized copies of films and music or allowed users
> > to search for them elsewhere on the Internet produced 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 taking over the sites’ domain names, 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.”
> >
> > Read full article :
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html
> >
> > Also, OSNews.com also reporting on the story says :
> >
> > "...The US has started seizing the domain names of various websites
> > through ICANN.......The seizures come from the US Immigrations and
> > Customs Enforcement, and cover about 70 websites relating to potential
> > copyright infringement and counterfeit goods, among which is
> > Torrent-Finder.com, a mere torrent search engine which does not host
> > or even link to torrents; it displays content hosted elsewhere through
> > embedded iframes.
> > "My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice
> > from any court!” the owner of Torrent-Finder explained TorrentFreak,
> > “I firstly had DNS downtime.
> > While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy
> > had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the
> > situation and they say it was totally from ICANN."
> >
> > Read OSNews.com article :
> > http://www.osnews.com/story/24074/US_Government_Censors_70_Websites
> >
> >
> > So, how does that work? The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
> > served the seizure warrant on the gTLD registry and the gTLD registry
> > then updated the DNS records for that domain name to point to ICE's
> > DNS servers?
> >
> > -----
> >
> > Dev Anand Teelucksingh
> >
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