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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."
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
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.
90% of tvshacks content was hosted on megavideo, its still there, just go to another link site.
no news here as there was no accomplishment from the feds.
I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
It's the corporations that are most harmful to your freedom.
If you want to learn something about corporations, and why you should fear them, then watch "The Corporation". It's a movie-documentary... and at least when I last watched it, it said it was a free download... so the fact that the 7 websites were taken down at least shouldn't affect your education :-)
Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience.
source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/plotsummary
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.
It was unclear whether or not the federal agencies actually seized and confiscated the servers hosting and streaming the pirated content, although the ICE said that it had worked with officials in the Netherlands to execute search warrants for some of the domain names and content.
This article is completely silly. It sensationalism based upon speculation. Do real journalists exist anymore ?
Write a letter to the editor. Put in a freedom of information request. Bring up discrepancies like this at political debates. Take out ads. Make noise. Run for office.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Removing the requirement of plundering ships at sea for hostages and wealth from any definition of piracy is just dumb.
Removing the requirement of depriving another of their property from any definition of the word theft is just dumb.
That hasn't stopped the copyright cartels from doing just that.
Don't you mean 'Where's megavideo?' it's the one hosting all the movies, right?
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
Wow, and you think these foreign companies should care about what's legal in your state? Why should they? The internet isn't American. These companies have every right to operate legally based on the laws of the country they live in.
Why didn't they just confiscate the servers that have the data? Why didn't they arrest the people commiting these crimes? They had to have known how easy it is to put up another domain. They didn't because they can't. They know they don't have a legal basis to prosecute them based on the laws of the country they reside in. So they strongarm the Registrars who don't have the same protections under the law.
But it's pointless. It takes less time to get a new domain than it does to talk about how you cleverly confiscated the old on. But what really bothers me is that they waste tax payer's money on trying to prevent something that is entirely unpreventable.
If every video sharing site on the planet was shut down today, next week there would be ten more to replace them and the week after that a hundred more. And there is nothing anyone can do. It's a waste of money, and money that can be better spent helping people that really need it.
I'd lose.
You are probably right that you would lose eventually, when you got high enough up, unless you take on money from corporate sponsors. But you can still have an effect at the local level, and it is easy to get involved in local politics. For one, it doesn't pay well, so often you would find yourself the only man for the job, and for another, a lot of people in local politics are just using it as a stepping stone.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.