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Feds and Hollywood Seize Domains of Movie Pirates
adeelarshad82 writes "The federal government and Hollywood teamed up to seize domain names of seven sites that allegedly trafficked in copyrighted movies without due payment. The so-called 'Operation in Our Sites' sting targeted TVShack.net, Movies-links.tv, Filespump.com, Now-movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, PirateCity.org, zml.com, NinjaVideo.net, and NinjaThis.net. The operation was run by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, in conjunction with several Hollywood studios. Unlike past anti-piracy efforts, the sites did not actually offer the movies for download, but instead streamed the movies and TV shows against ads. Previously, movie crackdowns had concentrated on sites that distributed movie files, most recently using the BitTorrent protocol."
... put your sword away, no use you getting beat again ...
- Jack Sparrow
Lets take down domain names no one knows about, hasn't ever heard of, and claim a great victory. For as we know when the big man steps on the little justice is served. If piracy is really an issue lets find ways to make it stop. Quit writing crappy "security" enforcement, such as DRM or "no network connection/no play", and other forms of stupidty. Make high quality games for a great price.
It's the corporations that are most harmful to your freedom.
Glad to see that ICE is focusing on really important stuff like stopping movie downloads, rather than the really trivial matters like deporting the 12 million+ illegal aliens.
No wonder ICE doesn't have time for dealing with our border issues. They're too busy helping Hollywood. I guess Obama kind of owes them since it was their endorsement that helped put him into office.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
BitTorrent sites do not have the movie files on them. Users share them at their own expense and risk. They use blockable advertising to offset hosting costs.
Streaming sites obviously do have the files on them, and by using ads embedded into the stream, they were presumably attempting to directly make a notable profit off of the movies and TV shows.
So why were BT sites traditionally the main target instead of profiteering streaming sites? Nevermind how numerous and over-the-top most of the streaming sites seem.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
A venal government of a single country hijacked multiple domains with ease? Surely this should not be possible.
Corporation and Terrorism are not mutually exclusive. The effect of terrorism is that by harming a few people you hurt the majority by creating fear and thus terrorizing them, reducing their quality of life and freedoms. This also does not require blowing yourself up (hence the reason the term 'terrified' does not mean 'blown to bits'). If people stick to this proper definition (instead of modern sensationalism) it becomes very clear this applies to the media corporations tactics. They sue a few (actually thousands, more than have been blown up by Al Qaida) to terrorize others, and nobody knows if they will be sued (the little fact of downloading is not even relevant, anyone got sued by them).
So you Americans *do* need to fear terrorists (and thus some corporations), it's just that your idea of what terrorism means is all FOXed up.
The piracy "reportedly resulted in billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy," Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.
No. It didn't.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
That the US can have the FBI spend so much time shutting down domains and movie sites.
From the article:
(..) the ICE said that it had worked with officials in the Netherlands to execute search warrants for some of the domain names and content. (..) Joe Biden, who said that the U.S. would crack down on piracy, even overseas.
(emphasis mine).
Hey, most of the 'pirates' here are below sea level, you insensitive clod!
And on a side note: we even had some real pirates recently (captured off the coast of Somalia)... Don't think they had any movies or 19" servers on them - good movie material, though.
This particular site, while I'm glad it's not, is conspicuously missing from the list. Was it omitted for some reason? If so, what reason(s)? Could it be its high profile and popularity? Could it be the matter of international relations? It is not outside of the range of possibility for the U.S. to inflict its will on the .ORG tld.
The thing about ninjavideo that I always found interesting (and what i had thought would keep them online), was that the site did not actually host the files it was streaming, but only provided links which used some sort of weird java popup that you had to keep running in the background which acted as some sort of intermediary to actually start the stream from files with obfuscated addresses hosted on 3rd party hosting sites (think megaupload).
I guess it all comes back to the question of if whether having a link to somewhere else that hosts copyrighted material is itself infringement, and unless the ninja admins manage to beat the MPAA lawyers, it would seem we have our answer to that.
The real shame is that the site was super useful for finding archived tv shows (especially documentaries from nat geo and the bbc and the like), but i suspect linking to the big name movies is what got them shut down. Such a waste - I don't even understand why people would want to watch the cams in the first place.
So, it's easier to get US government to shut down some domains pirating movies, than to shutdown domains used by phishers, scammers and all the other types that are actually hurting 'ordinary' people (no matter how dumb those people are)?
I see.
I wonder if they are pursuing any of the advertisers that were advertising on those sites. If not, that's sort of like busting the illegal immigrants without going after the business that hired them.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
One, Movies-links.tv doesn't stream video, nor does it embed any movies in their site. What they do is provide links to where you can stream videos around the web and give the users the ability to report if the stream is working or not so that finding streaming video is easier. They confiscate the domain for that? That's like arresting me for telling you to go to the crack house down the street if you want to buy crack. Maybe it's not cool to give you that information but I don't think it's illegal. Really? It's illegal to let people know where they can find video streams? Anyhow immediately after the Feds seized the domain a replacement one was created: http://www.watch-movies-tv.info/ and you know how I know this? Because when I googled Movies-links.tv it was the second link that popped up. So wait a second? Why is it okay for google to tell me where I can find Movies-links.tv but not okay for Movies-links.tv to tell me where I can find video streams? Whatever. Who knows how long it took for this "operation" to get approval, pass the paperwork around, select a operational task force, come up with an action committee, decided on a communication strategy and plan the concerted effort.... I'm pretty sure it only took the people at Movies-links.tv about 5 minutes to register a new domain though. Nice work Fed's.
In the first action carried out as part of the initiative, authorities executed seizure warrants against nine domain names of Web sites that were offering first-run movies
A seizure warrant against a domain includes what exactly ? The host, the registrar, the technical contact's residence ?
I understand warrants for physical locations, but this seems a bit wrong. Maybe its just a poor choice of wording by the original author....
Search and seizure? due process? The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and Warrants shall not be issued, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Robert byrd dies and all of a sudden everyone forgets there is a constitution!
ICE is wasting our resources stopping streaming videos when their mission is to stop the gushing borders. Since when is it their duty to do the bidding of Hollywood? I smell payoff...
If ICE, the FBI and a bunch of other alphabet soup agencies are doing this, whether it is within their jurisdiction OR NOT, it has to mean a few things in order to make sense:
Agree with it or not, the whole idea of a government takeover of a website at the flip of a switch just gives me the heebie jeebies.
The game.
Immigration needs to do round ups and not movies. People from mexico are taking our jobs for under min wage. So us citizens don't have to money to buy / rent movies.
are in the industry. No one works in the cafeterias, cleans the offices, works on the sets, or does any other kind of ordinary labor.
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Reason to be educated I guess
If you're a Hollywood exec, illegals mow the lawn, clean the house, clean the pool, service the wife - all good things. Those illegals are not going home, brother, not going home.
Meat processing plants use immigration as part of the HR process. They feed names of activists, malcontents, injured workers to the immigration office and then the roundups begin. Immigration gets to pretend publicly that they're doing something and the meat plants maintain a well-behaved slave-labor force.
And because slave labor helps keep prices low, you can afford meat sometimes on your Wal-Mart salary.
Everybody wins!
-- How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.
Similar to the War on Drugs, the small fish and the users get pinched while the root of the issue goes ignored.
Yeah. I remember a part of the film Food Inc, apparently a sugar factory or something had hired illegal workers, and the INS wanted to deport them. I have no problem with that.
The problem was that the INS didn't deport all of the workers, they did them in small groups, which allowed the factory to train replacement workers without serious impact to the production.
THAT in particular pissed me off.
When I hear a subset of the /. crowd claim that individuals should be allowed to "share" music files for free without fear of copyright lawsuits, I respectfully disagree (in general), but at least I get where they're coming from.
But I see a lot of people here wanting to defend sites that provide a means for anyone to watch movies on demand, taking a profit and not passing any compensation on to the rights-holders... which I guess makes sense if you think there shouldn't be copyright at all, but in that case my disagreement with your position is perhaps a bit less respectful.
Particularly intersting since any site that isn't engaged in copyright infringement gets screamed at if they dare make you look at an ad.
Seems to me taking the position against the rights-holders has become a knee-jerk reaction.
Or it's like busting illegal immigrants without going after the grocery stores that they shop at, or busting the manufacturers of the processors in the illegal immigrants' mobile phones. Or it's like busting pedophiles or red-light-runners without going after their employers (and their grocery stores).
Hey, if you're going to hold third parties responsible for the activities of other people who were not acting at their direction, you might as well go all-out. You only want to bust illegal immigrants' employers?! You are thinking way smalltime and not taking your idea to its logical conclusion. We can use government force against a lot more innocent people than that.
Lorien, if you ever run for evil overlord, I'm not voting for you. You've got the right evil impulses, but you lack vision.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So we need to put the national guard at the borders because our immigration officers are working for Hollywood. AMERICA FUCK YEAH!
ICE raids places all the time, try using google for like five seconds.
We're supposed to be shocked to discover that the MPAA and the "U. S. Government" are thieves?
And NinjaThat.net, NinjaThem.net and NinjasAreAwesome.net.
I hit submit when I wanted to hit preview.
Busting sites that only link to content is a violation of their free speech rights. I should (and think I do) have the right to say <a href="http://www.thepiratebay.org">the pirate bay</a>.
Free Martian Whores!
What makes you think that governments act for the interest of the population? Democratic nation states are gone, welcome to the allmighty MARKET STATE !
Probably all GoDaddy registered domains too. Look folks, if you are gonna do something that's going to piss off the US or it's corporate interests, for the love of the spaghetti monster, register the domain outside the US where it can't be seized/redirected. Servers can be in the US if you pay from abroad, and jump ship to another host, but keep the servers as clean as possible and avoid using backups to restore the site to another server (if the federales have your backup, they know your configuration's weaknesses). If nothing else, keep you, your registrar, your dns service, and your servers (preferable each type of service/action they do) in different countries. Nothing pisses off the corporate led police thugs more than national jurisdiction boundaries. Oh, make sure your credit card is also registered to a bank account that is in none of the previous countries. 5 Flags folks. Live by it.
If you ask me, ICE should be securing America's borders, not being the Internet Police.
People from mexico are taking our jobs for under min wage
Lies. You wouldn't scrub my toilet even for minimum wage + health insurance. You want to work in a nice air conditioned office, or drive a nice air conditioned piece of heavy machinery, or work in a union factory or retail job, earn $30k+ a year and pay your mortgage. I can't see you picking crops at $10k a year you lying fuck.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It seems like this is a very bad precedent to set, and probably violates some international agreements. It would give cover to other countries like China or Iran for blocking sites and domains. We could complain about it before but now were screwed. And we did it for corporate profit reasons. I guess that is becoming this counties Ideology. I for one protest this move and see the dangers internationally, like the long term detention of combatants and the torture of prisoners. So I suggest if you have a strong opinion on this issue that you email the White House and let them know what you think.
In my opinion they should have gone after Mediavideo and not the linking sites. As some users mentioned, sites like tvshack embed videos from Megavideo for most of their "content".
Building a crawler that finds all the embedded videos on such a linking site is quite trivial. I mean, even checking the referer of the browser loading the player would point you to those sites! That way discovering illegal uploads would become quite easy. However Megavideo didn't bother to take down videos embeded on those sites, probably because they make up a great amount of their views and ad revenue.
And even though this is wild speculation, it seems that Megavideo is secretly making a profit from those illegal uploads by not taking all possible measures to delete them.