The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is seizing domains of BitTorrent sites and sites associated with counterfeit goods. They’re taking over sites without any prior complaints or notifications from the court.
It’s a little messy because some of the torrent sites ICE has been seizing have no tracker, carry no torrents and list no copyright works unless someone searches for them—they’re search engines, well with a torrent slant, of course, but search engines by definition. These seizures definitely raise questions on what type of criteria the Department of Homeland Security is using and raises a dark cloud over similar, un-seized sites. Check out the full list of seized sites here. [TorrenFreak via Business Insider]
Steve
Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 3:26 PMNapster, Kazaa, Limewire, Mininova and now The Pirate Bay. Nowhere to hide, it’s like a nerdier version of the Pirates 3 ending.
wsDK_II
Monday, November 29, 2010 at 9:04 AMThe government does not understand – you can never, ever kill the idea.
The idea will manifest itself in different physcial forms, with many different interpretations – however you can never, never, never remove the idea.
For which i am most happy, as i am an avid torrenter.
eddy96
Monday, November 29, 2010 at 2:56 AMThey should go after Google as well because you can search torrents through them. Just add +torrent
Painkiller
Monday, November 29, 2010 at 8:59 PMhow can “ICE” seize these websites when no physical goods are crossing a boarder in or out of the U.S? That is my understanding of Customs.
They conduct border control over a physical boarder. the Internet has no boarder. Therefor “ICE” has no jurisdiction there.