Feds seize several tv + movie streaming sites

[Yawn92]

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office are seizing and shutting down seven popular websites accused of hosting pirated movies, a move the U.S. attorney in Manhattan said is a step in increasing the fight against copyright infringement.

Referring to the seven sites as "among the most popular" websites for distributing illegal copies of movies, the government highlighted illegal copies of films currently in theaters, such as "Toy Story 3" and "The A-Team," for evidence to obtain the warrant. One site, Movie-Links.tv, was reported as the 258th most popular website in the world, with 3.3 million visitors each month.

Some of the sites allowed users to directly upload, download and stream the content, while others gathered links to the sites that hosted the content.

The seven sites are TVShack.net, Movies-Links.tv, **************, ZML.com, Now-Movies.com, ThePirateCity.org and PlanetMoviez.com. The websites are listed to computers located domestically in Colorado, Florida, Illinois and internationally in the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K.

Visitors to these web pages will now be redirected to a page that notifies them the sites have been seized by the government, though hours after the seizures were announced four of the sites appeared to still be working properly.

Source + further reading:

[URL]http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100630-716669.html[/URL]

Pretty scary stuff eh?

 

[Storming]

So they have got the domains? or did they get the hosting providers?

 

[AndroidApps]

All domains now point to a hosting account @ 1&1.
So they must have gotten access to the domain or DNS provider.

 

[Daniel]

That sucks

 

[Rick]

lol i never used the sites before but maybe shoulda

 

[oz187]

I am confused though. How did the US government just snatch domains? Shouldn't there normally be a court case or something first? Were these sites not playing by DMCA rules? Or what.

It seems odd to me, because why then would they just not snatch thepiratebay domain or isohunt's domain as well? Trying to understanding how and why they targeted these sites with these actions.

 

[Yawn92]

I am confused though. How did the US government just snatch domains? Shouldn't there normally be a court case or something first? Were these sites not playing by DMCA rules? Or what.

It seems odd to me, because why then would they just not snatch thepiratebay domain or isohunt's domain as well? Trying to understanding how and why they targeted these sites with these actions.

It's the united states government, nothing they do makes much sense.

 

[barcodenation]

Here's part of how they snatched the domains http://www.wikipeers.com/news/4013-The-KILL-SWITCH:-Obama-to-Kill-the-Internet-in-Emergency.html Barack Obama just got a bill passed that allows him to shut down the whole internet for "Emergency purposes" *cough* Bullshit! *cough* Bullshit! anyway inside the bill there were a lot of other little parts to it that lets the government control a lot more than just shutting down the internet.

 

[oz187]

I see. Were the owners of all these sites US citizens? It appears so but I am not certain.

 

[magca]

Should I worry? Guess not.

 

[oz187]

After talking with a lot of people and reading up, this is big news guys. Everyone should take it seriously. A lot of international agencies are cooperating, and they are trying to enforce some *tough interpretations of the DMCA (which pretty much no warez site obeys to its full extent) ahead of the introduction of ACTA.

 

[FancyPants]

FUCK! Anyone wants to buy e-vids.net? :p

 

[ilyathereis]

Uh, calling Uterus Spacecraft.....man, watch out

 

[Uterus Spacecraft]

this is pretty scary

 

[DOPE]

Yeah but werent the sites that this happened to actually streaming the movies and/or hosting them and not linking?

 

[w3bpr0jectz]

If the videos on your site are uploaded on megavideo, divxden etc, the worst that could happen is that the video gets deleted. maybe even your account with all the videos being deleted. If you don't host the files you are pretty safe.
that's what I think.

 

[Yawn92]

Yeah but werent the sites that this happened to actually streaming the movies and/or hosting them and not linking?

dunno about the others, but tvshack only linked to stuff, and never hosted any illegal content on it's servers, which is why this is such a big shock

 

[Dotcom]

http://www.movies-links.tv/ was my favorite site. It was linking, not streaming or hosting. Everything was hosted on numerous video hosts, not on theyre servers.
Scary. And now where do I get good links that was my favorite.


-d0t

 

[ACE]

 

[Flash]

Movies-linkz.tv has now changed to Watch-Movies-tv.info