DHS Seizes 75+ Domain Names

Many readers have sent in an update to yesterday's story about the Department of Homeland Security's seizure of torrent-finder.com, a domain they believe to be involved in online piracy. As it turns out, this was just one of dozens of websites that were targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "In announcing that operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world. 'American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a week,' Mr. Morton said. 'Criminals are stealing American ideas and products and distributing them over the Internet.'" The TorrentFreak article we discussed yesterday has been updated with a list of the blocked sites.

Comments

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cornicefire]

I certainly agree with the quote in theory, but I also feel that it has to be broken because of the nature of society. In my town, there were some pretty nasty red-light runners. I was almost hit several times. So when they came to take away part of my liberty by installing red light cameras, I wasn't so upset. It was a trade off that would make the world better. There will probably be some people who think that letting the Feds shut down websites is a bad tradeoff to make but I'm not one of them. The constitution gives each of us the freedom to speak, not the freedom to steal someone else's word. Most of the torrent-loving people are just kind of lazy couch potatoes who seem obsessed with filling up a 2tb disk with more than they can ever watch. Yet they're too cheap to spend 99 cents on a song. Starbucks charges more for a cup of coffee than Amazon does for many of the hottest albums. Come on.

Re:Where is the Constitution? Where is due process

[SonicSpike]

So there was a jury trial?

Re:One of Our Cancers

[cheekyjohnson]

So when they came to take away part of my liberty by installing red light cameras

This is exactly where the problem lies.

not the freedom to steal someone else's word.

Luckily for us then that no words are being stolen! They are being copied. Even the laws which some people defend differentiate between theft and copying.

Most of the torrent-loving people are just kind of lazy couch potatoes who seem obsessed with filling up a 2tb disk with more than they can ever watch.

Interesting. I'd like to know where this assumption comes from, and if you have any proof to back it up. Actually, you probably do.

That said, I feel the same way about people who refuse to give others all of their money. If they had given away all of their money, someone else would have had more money, but since they didn't give away all of their money, the other person was inflicted with non-existent harm because they lost the potential to receive future gain! Those lazy couch potatoes never give someone else all of their money! They're just potential profit thieves!