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

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: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!