Source + further reading: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.
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[URL]http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100630-716669.html[/URL]
Pretty scary stuff eh?