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ICE Seizes More Domains Today, Admin Says “We’ll Be Back”

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Yesterday and without warning, US authorities resumed “Operation In Our Sites” seizing several domain names associated with copyright infringement and counterfeiting. Today, yet more domains were added to the growing list. We caught up with one site owner who told us that while they were taken by surprise by a “pointless” seizure, they’ll soon be back.

As indicated in our exclusive report yesterday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have resumed “Operation In Our Sites”, the domain name seizing initiative designed to crack down on copyright infringement.

Following on from the most recent set of seizures in February, yesterday’s action represents the fourth phase of the operation. The following six domains were taken:

* Re1ease.net
* Watchnewfilms.com
* Dvdcollectionsale.com
* Dvdscollection.com
* Dvdsetsonline.com
* Newstylerolex.com

Today the list has grown again to include the following:

* mygolfaccessory.com
* overbestmall.com

We managed to catch up with PiraCee, an admin at Re1ease.net, a portal that did not host any copyrighted material itself but linked to movie and TV shows on sites like Megavideo.com.

“We were not informed [that the seizure was imminent] in any way,” he told us. “I was just presented with the ICE image upon doing a page refresh.”

For those unfamiliar with the site, Re1ease.net was founded following PiraCee’s split with Ninjavideo.net in late 2008. NinjaVideo, readers will recall, succumbed to ICE raids in 2010 and never recovered.

While undoubtedly quite busy with around 10,000 visitors a day, Re1ease.net was not one the largest sites of its type on the Internet. Indeed, others with significantly higher levels of traffic remain intact, untouched by ICE.

“I don’t believe we were doing anything wrong at all. Many higher profile sites remain unaffected,” PiraCee told us.

So why was Re1ease singled out? Despite being operated from outside the United States, did they have a bad attitude to DMCA takedowns perhaps?

“We have only ever had two DMCA takedown requests – for Source Code and Hobo With a Shotgun,” PiraCee told us. “We removed both.”

But despite losing their domain, a body-blow event for any site, Re1ease.net aren’t giving in.

“We will be back,” said PiraCee, as the site mulled over a possible domain change this morning. “Give us about a week.”

That was a few hours ago though, and things move very quickly in this game.

“Scrrls.net will be our new domain and will be up and running soon as we fix our backend,” PiraCee assured us. Indeed, it appears to be fully functioning now.

We continues to monitor developments in phase 4 of Operation in Our Sites and if any additional domains are seized we will update this report.

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U.S. Government Starts New Round of ‘Pirate’ Domain Seizures

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US authorities have resumed “Operation In Our Sites” and have seized several domain names associated with copyright infringement or counterfeit related crimes. Among the new targets are two sites that linked to copyrighted films hosted on third party streaming sites such as megavideo.com and veoh.com. Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has yet to officially announce the new operation.

Over the past several months a series of domain name seizures by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made headlines across the Internet.

Under the flag of “Operation In Our Sites” the authorities shut down a dozen file-sharing and streaming sites and many more accused of selling counterfeit goods.

Today ICE continued the operation with a 4th round, and the first one since February this year. Although the authorities are yet to give an official comment on the new seizures, We were able to confirm the following targets:

* Re1ease.net
* Watchnewfilms.com
* Dvdcollectionsale.com
* Dvdscollection.com
* Dvdsetsonline.com
* Newstylerolex.com

The first two domains are accused of copyright-related offenses, but did not host any copyrighted films themselves. Both Re1ease.net and Watchnewfilms.com linked to popular movie streaming sites such as Veoh.com and Megavideo.com. The rest of the domains appear to be connected to sales of counterfeit goods.

The new targets were most likely put forward to ICE by movie industry groups. In April of this year ICE director John Morton admitted that his organization was acting based on “tips from industry representatives,” among others.

The authorities are also aware of the fact that the domain seizures themselves are not really an effective tool. As pointed out before, more than half of the piracy-related domains that were seized by Operation In Our Sites simply continued under a different name.

Morton replied to this critique by emphasizing that the seizures also act as “public education about pirating.”

To quash allegedly copyright infringing sites more effectively U.S. lawmakers introduced the PROTECT IP Act last week. Aside from domain seizures, the new bill will also make it possible to block sites on an ISP level, to censor search engines, and to cut funding of allegedly copyright-infringing websites.

We are closely monitoring developments in Operation in Our Sites 4 and if any additional domains are seized we will update this report accordingly.

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Homeland Security Wants Mozilla to Pull “Domain Seizure” Add-On

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Homeland Security’s ICE unit is not happy with a Firefox add-on that allows the public to circumvent the domains seizures carried out during the past several months. In an attempt to correct this ‘vulnerability’ in their anti-piracy strategy, ICE have asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. Unfortunately for them Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet.

Image is Loading....Last month we were the first to draw attention to a nifty Firefox add-on called “MAFIAA Fire.”

The add-on maintains a list of all the domains that ICE (hence the antidote, ‘fire’) has seized and redirects their users to an alternative domain if the sites in question have set one up. The developers told us that they coded it to demonstrate the futility of the domain seizures, which they find objectionable.

Homeland Security’s ICE unit got wind of the add-on and almost immediately took action to have it taken offline. Although the add-on can be hosted anywhere, they asked Mozilla to remove it from their repository just a few days after it first appeared there.

“Recently the US Department of Homeland Security contacted Mozilla and requested that we remove the Mafiaa Fire add-on,” explained Mozilla General Counsel and Vice President of Business Affairs Harvey Anderson. “The ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit alleged that the add-on circumvented a seizure order DHS had obtained against a number of domain names.”

However, where ICE might have expected a swift take down from Mozilla, the legal and business affairs department of the tech company was not planning to honor the request so easily.

“Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order,” Anderson explains.

According to Anderson complying with the request without any additional information would threaten open Internet principles. So, instead of taking the add-on offline they replied to ICE with a set of 11 well-crafted questions.

Interestingly enough, Mozilla never heard from ICE again.

We can only guess how often U.S. authorities try similar mild censorship requests, but if we look at all the companies and services that kicked out Wikileaks last year we have to assume that it’s not the first time. Only a few dare to stand up to such requests, which is a worrying situation.

“One of the fundamental issues here is under what conditions do intermediaries accede to government requests that have a censorship effect and which may threaten the open Internet,” says Anderson.

“Longterm, the challenge is to find better mechanisms that provide both real due process and transparency without infringing upon developer and user freedoms traditionally associated with the Internet,” he adds.

We got in touch with one of the MAFIAA Fire developers, who told us that ICE never contacted them with a takedown request. And although the add-on would still be available on their own website if Mozilla pulled it, he was happy that they chose to put up a fight.

“Hats off to Mozilla for sticking up to them, at first we weren’t sure if Mozilla would even host it due to its controversial nature, but they truly backed up their open source supporting words with actions,” the developer told us.

Indeed, Mozilla deserves to be applauded here for judging ICE’s request by its content, and not by the envelope in which it was sent.

Meanwhile, the MAFIAA Fire team has published a Chrome version of the add-on today. Both add-ons are Open Source and available on the official website, which also has a mirror here to ensure continuity.

Looks like ICE’s request to Mozilla just backFIREd…

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