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US Government Seizes Torrent Search Engine Domain
Voulnet writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"This morning, visitors to the Torrent-Finder.com site are greeted with an ominous graphic which indicates that ICE has seized the site's domain. 'My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!' the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning. 'I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy, I noticed the DNS had changed. GoDaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN,' he explained. Aside from the fact that domains are being seized seemingly at will, there is a very serious problem with the action against Torrent-Finder. Not only does the site not host or even link to any torrents whatsoever, it actually only returns searches through embedded iframes which display other sites that are not under the control of the Torrent-Finder owner."
208.100.11.174
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
$9 million of campaign contributions buys you a lot I guess.
ImmixGroup seems to have "been awarded a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Cyber Crimes Center (C3)" http://www.immixgroup.com/news/pr_display.cfm?ID=117 . That would make a hoax unlikely.
Confirmed: Not a hoax. NetSol (used to be) private registration leads to immixGroup IT Solutions, working for the public-sector (US Government) out of Virginia.
See also: SEIZEDSERVERS.COM registered two days ago.
This isn't a question of your country giving away your freedoms. This is a question of international responsibility, lack of it, and the impartiality and global importance of the DNS.
Now, states seizing their own domains is one thing and subject to their laws, and the US does own .COM, .ORG and .NET and unilateral actions without any form of apparent judicial warrant or oversight like this will shift people away from them. The old WHOIS data was deliberately invalid, so under the rules, they don't need notice. Even so, one of the affected sites is a .TV - I wonder what Tuvalu would have to say about this, diplomatically speaking? dotTV may be 80% owned by Verisign, but it's still 20% owned by Tuvalu. I wonder if this was cleared by them?
International reaction from this could be interesting - the host is only a little tier2. They are watching, and it appearing on the news is obviously making a bit of noise. They may get substantially more interest than they expected in the short-term, but it will wane unless they do something really stupid like target a high-profile site or, God help us, a fully-autonomous ccTLD on the DNS root - which, on their little power-trip, they might. One does hope they wouldn't be so... foolish: bullies get their toys taken away.
Well, it looks fishy to me. Here are the questionable elements.
(1) The domain registration information information still lists a private domain owner and and admin contact.
(2) The name servers ns1.torrent-finder.com and ns2.torrent-finder.com, as well as the torrent-finder.com ALL redirect to addresses in a private hosting company (74.81.170.108, .109 and .110 respectively), physically in Charlotte, NC. The picture you're greeted with is served from one of the hosting company's addresses.
(3) Whois reports the registrar to be Go Daddy, but the name servers ns1 and ns2.seizedservers.com whose IP addresses aremanaged by a private company called "wild west domains".
(4) The "seizedservers.com" domain is controlled by a company called "immixGroup IT solutions". The registrar is network solutions and the registrant is using network solution's privacy service to block his contact identity.
Notice what is missing here: any reference to a government controlled host, domain or name controller. All we have is a set of privately procured and managed name and web servers with anonymous administrative contacts. There is literally *nothing* to connect the picture you are seeing at the torrent-finders.com website to DHS, other than the picture's *claim*.
A little googling shows this exact same picture shows up in similar "DHS seizure" cases, with the exact same pattern of private servers and domains leading back to some anonymity service and NO government ip addresses, domains or contacts involved, although the *private* domains and servers involved are different. If this were a DHS seizure program, wouldn't the trail lead back to the same government contacts?
It looks to me like this is either a hoax or a case of private hijacking by a private individual or group who uses different domains and accounts to cover his tracks.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.