U.S. Government Seizes BitTorrent Search Engine Domain and More

[nsane.forums]

Following on the heels of this week's domain seizure of a large hiphop file-sharing links forum, it's clear today that the U.S. Government has been very busy. Without any need for COICA, ICE has just seized the domain of a BitTorrent meta-search engine along with those belonging to other music linking sites and several others which appear to be connected to physical counterfeit goods.While complex, it’s still possible for U.S. authorities and copyright groups to point at a fully-fledged BitTorrent site with a tracker and say “that’s an infringing site.” When one looks at a site which hosts torrents but operates no tracker, the finger pointing becomes quite a bit more difficult.

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 – unless you’re ICE Homeland Security Investigations that is.

This morning, visitors to the Torrent-Finder.com site are greeted with an ominous graphic which indicates that ICE have seized the site’s domain.

The message below is posted on the seized sites

“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning.

“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,” he explained.

Aside from the fact that domains are being seized seemingly at will, there is a very serious problem with the action against Torrent-Finder. Not only does the site not host or even link to any torrents whatsoever, it actually only returns searches through embedded iframes which display other sites that are not under the control of the Torrent-Finder owner.

Torrent-Finder remains operational through another URL, Torrent-Finder.info, so feel free to check it out for yourself. The layouts of the sites it searches are clearly visible in the results shown.

Yesterday we reported that the domain of hiphop site RapGodFathers had been seized and today we can reveal that they are not on their own. Two other music sites in the same field – OnSmash.com and DaJaz1.com – have fallen to the same fate. But ICE activities don’t end there.

Several other domains also appear to have been seized including 2009jerseys.com, nfljerseysupply.com, throwbackguy.com, cartoon77.com, lifetimereplicas.com, handbag9.com, handbagcom.com and dvdprostore.com.

Domain seizures coming under the much debated ‘censorship bill’ COICA? Who needs it?

Article from: TorrentFreak.

View: Original Article

[Ambrocious]

And this is exactly why people need to watch Police State 4.

America is turning into Nazi Germany...God help us all...

[RadioActive]

That's tyranny plain and simple, jeez!

[alaindc]

The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty.

Really?

liberty to think and act...the way THEY CHOOSE!

They close website that didn't even have any copyright file, link, or any torrent file in it.

They try their best to close Wikileak.

They begin to censor the net, for all the planet, not only the US.

So, in a way, they are way worse than China.

They act as Judge, jury, and executionner.

They try their best to force Canada to adopt absurd copyright law.

All that because copyright Mafia want to continu their business, without adapting it to the time, without offering to custumer what we want.

Fair price, without drms, without the region restriction for dvds, and no 6-8 months waiting after theater release.

They don't want to adapt.

We want it our way.

So, we adapt...

[tipo]

The Department of Homeland Security, allegedly with help from ICANN, has seized the domain name of Torrent Finder, a torrent search engine returning results also available on Google.

Since yesterday, users trying to access torrent-finder.com are greeted with a notice that reads: "This domain name has been seized by ICE – Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court under the authority of 18 U.S.C. §§ 981 and 2323."

The message goes on to suggest that copyright infringement and trafficking in counterfeit goods are the reasons why this domain was forcefully taken from its owner.

The incident raises serious concerns for several reasons. First, there's the nature of the site itself, a search engine that links back to other websites.

In other words, what the government want to say is that Torrent Finder facilitated copyright infringement by returning results for non-copyrighted .torrent files, hosted on other sites, that could enable sharing of copyrighted works.

Since locating such files is also possible through Google, why isn't Google's domain also seized? Could it be because they are the largest Internet services company in the world? If that's the case then this is a really unbalanced and unfair distribution of justice.

In addition, the Torrent Finder admin told TorrentFreak that his registrar, Go Daddy, had no part in the domain seizure and that it was done directly by ICANN, the US-based organization managing the DNS root zone.

In May 2009, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, who now serves as European Commissioner for Justice, raised the issue of ICANN's accountability to a single government, the United States.

"ICANN decisions affect millions of citizens and companies in the world. The courts of California alone are certainly not best placed to handle legal challenges originating in all continents of the world," Mrs. Reding said at the time.

link

[DKT27]

Threads merged.