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."

Comments

Where's the pirate bay?

[erroneus]

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.

Re:Great Win for HollyWood and the Feds

[thijsh]

Yes! They can never defeat the last Ninja. I propose we only keep Ninja.com, it is also useful for searching for torrents: Google Ninja

Re:Come again?

[AHuxley]

Re Do real journalists exist anymore ? Not if they want access to stories and the top officials it seems.

Advertisers

[Lorien_the_first_one]

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.

Wow, Feds loose

[anupokritos]

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.

Re:Wow, Feds loose

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are describing is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)

And yes in many states it is illegal to do so. The reason being to go after mobster like tactics. Things like "I was not there when Benny committed the murder." Yet he instructed Benny to do so and not only to do so how to do so. And he could say it like "now Benny there is a box with a picture in it (I do not like this person) and there is some money in it and a gun, if the person pictured were to disappear I probably would not be too upset if this money was gone". While at bit of a extreme example and probably a bad comparison. It shows why accessory is usually considered part of the crime. You are knowingly helping to facilitate a crime.

In this case it is *UNDER LAW* a major felony to do copyright violation. So yes you could could be tied as an accessory to every single person that downloaded something running a site like that.

Now there is other law that comes into play here of safe harbor for ISPs. Google will take down the link *IF* asked to do so. Did the movie linking site have a take down system in place? In this case Google is not knowingly facilitating a crime they just index *EVERYTHING*. Everything includes things that are criminal and not. This would be like trying to prosecute the guy who makes phone books for providing the address where Benny went to because he also used a phone book. These sorts of sites are like 'nudge nudge wink wink we are like google we just index things'. No they are sites that facilitate in indexing pretty much exclusively copyright violations.

I am honest about it. If I go to these sites it is because they have free stuff. I do not try to rationalize it like you do.

Re:Wow, Feds loose

[Snowtred]

Wait, this is very confusing.

So is it illegal for you to tell me that Google tells me that Movie-links.tv tells me where the links to tv and movie streams are?

Prob should close this thread before the fed's charge in.

Re:You Americans *do* need to fear terrorists.

[mcgrew]

I find it disturbing that yesterday I saw this in an AP story at Yahoo News, where they said "Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials worked with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security".

I went to link it in this comment today, and it's been edited; it now reads "Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials worked with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and other government agencies."

I agree with you; DHS is on the wrong side here, and the entire government as well, in all liklihood. Obviously the corporate press says whatever the government wants them to say, and the corporations are the ones who pay for elections, so they effectively own our government.

It really pisses me off, and I can't see anything I can do about it.

Re:Immigration needs to do round ups and not movie

[hercubus]

The government, hence immigration, does what corporate interests want, which is not roundups.

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!

Re:You Americans *do* need to fear terrorists.

[mcgrew]

Write a letter to the editor.

I do, frequently. Oddly, the corporate State Jorrnal-Register has never printed a single one, while the independant (and free as in beer) Illinois Times almost always prints them. Writing a letter to the editor does no more good than writing your corporate-owned congressman if it isn't printed.

Run for office.

I'd lose.