US Government Censors 70 Websites
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 27th Nov 2010 10:46 UTC
Legal The US is really ramping up its war on intellectual property infringement, a war which I'm sure will be just as successful, cheap and supported by the people as the wars on drugs and terrorism. The US has started seizing the domain names of various websites through ICANN - not because owners of these sites were convicted of anything, but merely because complaints have been filed against them. Anyone want to take a guess how long it will be before the US government blocks WikiLeaks? Update: The blocks function outside of the US too. In other words, the US is forcing its views upon the rest of the world once again.
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And the lesson here is...
by StephenBeDoper on Sat 27th Nov 2010 15:46 UTC
StephenBeDoper
Member since:
2005-07-06

...if you own a domain name and use it for spamming, phishing/financial fraud, hosting malicious software, sales of counterfeit pharma, or other actively-malicious/criminal activity, then you have nothing to fear from ICANN.

But run a bittorrent search on the same domain? Now THAT's over the line.

Reply Score: 9

RE: And the lesson here is...
by oiaohm on Sat 27th Nov 2010 23:08 in reply to "And the lesson here is..."
oiaohm Member since:
2009-05-30

...if you own a domain name and use it for spamming, phishing/financial fraud, hosting malicious software, sales of counterfeit pharma, or other actively-malicious/criminal activity, then you have nothing to fear from ICANN.

But run a bittorrent search on the same domain? Now THAT's over the line.


Have you not noticed the reduction in spam. 12 months ago ICANN started degregistation of sites knowing containing malicious software and doing phishing.

Also the network to network routers have been doing IP blocking against some sites as well. Problem now is a lot of spam comes from botnets.

I am sorry to say bittorrent sites hosing illegal software are used by bot masters to ship there software as altered closed source software. There always will be 1 or 2 non guilty caught in a clean sweep.

This is just the next step in the anti-spam process.

All the illegal usage of bittorrent could not go on for ever.

Reply Parent Score: 1

StephenBeDoper Member since:
2005-07-06

"...if you own a domain name and use it for spamming, phishing/financial fraud, hosting malicious software, sales of counterfeit pharma, or other actively-malicious/criminal activity, then you have nothing to fear from ICANN.

But run a bittorrent search on the same domain? Now THAT's over the line.


Have you not noticed the reduction in spam. "

Honestly, no, I hadn't noticed any decrease in spam. If anything, I've seen increase in some types of spam - E.g. spam targeting EMail-to-SMS gateways & manual spamming of contact forms (to get around CAPTCHAs).

12 months ago ICANN started degregistation of sites knowing containing malicious software and doing phishing.


That's certainly good to hear, any online sources with details (I couldn't find any mentions with some quick googling)?

Also the network to network routers have been doing IP blocking against some sites as well. Problem now is a lot of spam comes from botnets.


Yes. Domains play more of a "support" role in the spam world these days (hosting the sites linked to by spam).

I am sorry to say bittorrent sites hosing illegal software are used by bot masters to ship there software as altered closed source software. There always will be 1 or 2 non guilty caught in a clean sweep.

This is just the next step in the anti-spam process.

All the illegal usage of bittorrent could not go on for ever.


If the underlying goal of these seizures is to combat spam, then it seems a needlessly round-about way of doing it (as opposed to, say, fixing CAN-SPAM). But judging from the list of seized domain names, the main targets seem to be knock-off/counterfeit consumer goods.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE: And the lesson here is...
by Almafeta on Sun 28th Nov 2010 05:01 in reply to "And the lesson here is..."
Almafeta Member since:
2007-02-22

Regarding the original article: Going to those sites, you see a warrent was issued in the seizure of those domains.

Here are the laws cited, stating that the US has broad powers to seize property being used in crimes; specifically, anti-counterfeiting laws:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00000981----000-.ht...

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002323----000-.ht...

I'm not quite sure how Chapter 18, section 2323 applies to this case, yet, but I'm sure that if someone can find the warrent in question, it'd list why.

Now, the point I wanted to reply to:

...if you own a domain name and use it for spamming, phishing/financial fraud, hosting malicious software, sales of counterfeit pharma, or other actively-malicious/criminal activity, then you have nothing to fear from ICANN.

But run a bittorrent search on the same domain? Now THAT's over the line.


Actually... not one of the domains taken down were torrent sites. They were all purveyors of counterfeit physical goods, such as "louis-vuitton-outlet-store.com," "newstylerolex.com," and "boxsetseries.com." Searching for their names on Ripoff Report results in some interesting complaints.

I'll agree that these actions seem to be unlawful... but it's hardly a case of electronic crimes being targeted disproportionately.

Edited 2010-11-28 05:05 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

Almafeta Member since:
2007-02-22

I can only edit that post for 20 minutes. Someday, OSNews will fix that bug.

Anyhow... I don't have time to do a full scan, but it looks like all these domains were all counterfeiting operations being run by the same company. I'd have to do a lot more investigative work to be sure that all of them were the one company...

Edited 2010-11-28 05:27 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2