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U.S. Government Seizes BitTorrent Search Engine Domain and More
- michaelelliot 16y agoThis sets a shocking precedent.
- iwr 16y agoNot the first precedent. Remember blogetery? http://www.zdnet.com/news/blog-site-shut-down-after-potential-al-qaeda-links-surface/446246 http://www.zdnet.com/news/blog-site-shut-down-after-potentia... No commercial and centralized system is safe from censorship/seizure.
- vib 16y agoIndeed. That site did the same thing as google or any search engine does. Makes you think twice about starting a search start up on the US.
- ffffruit 16y agoWhile I do respect the fact that this sounds terrible, I cant help but point out the fact that torrentfreak's news reporting has always been extremely biased, in many cases rendering the information they provide in their posts as untrustworthy.
- michaelelliot 16y agoSadly, I agree. I've also noticed the same recently while reading a TechDirt article. If only they were more objective, it would really lend to their credibility.
- ernesto99 16y agoBias is something totally different than being untrustworthy. I write for TorrentFreak and while I agree that we have our own look on things, we do check all facts carefully, possibly more than the average 'news' outlet. Please back up your untrustworthy claim or stick to the bias one.
- michaelelliot 16y agoI still think TorrentFreak is a great news source, Ernesto. :)
- ernesto99 16y agoThanks :) I don't mind critique at all, but it's frustrating if people call it untrustworthy when we spend hours every day checking facts and gathering sources.
- ffffruit 16y agoErnesto, I also like TF, dont get me wrong, I do read it and enjoy it every day. As you say, you do have your view on certain things. My feeling is that that extreme view, in many cases, makes me wonder the actual facts. Maybe 'untrustworthy' was a bad term to use.
- ernesto99 16y agoI see what you mean there. I have the same thing with reading press releases from the MPAA ans RIAA.
- flipbrad 16y agoTorrentFreak is well written and well research; its story selection is different to other more mainstream news sites. Much like al jazeera, this makes it an extremely useful and valuable news site. I do wish for a more mainstream name though! It always seems slightly embarrassing referring people to an authoritative piece on 'TorrentFreak.com'
- ernesto99 16y agoShould have thought about that 5 years ago ;)
- aw3c2 16y agoWell, ernesto, please reply to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1942406 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1942406
- ez77 16y agoBelieve me, I don't want to sound anti-American at all but... what's up with that adored eagle? Thirty thousand nuclear warheads are enough to keep us scared.
- ryanwaggoner 16y agoIt's just a national symbol; most countries have something similar. Also, the US nuclear weapon stockpile is down to about 5,000; hasn't been 30,000 since the 1960s.
- ez77 16y agoI won't bother to look up the current number: 5,000 is scarry enough, but I stand corrected. On the other hand, do you have a reference to a list of similar menacing national symbols?
- ryanwaggoner 16y agoOff the top of my head, the UK's symbol of a lion seems more menacing. I'd much prefer to face a large predatory bird than a lion.
- m_myers 16y agoWe should have gone with the turkey like Ben Franklin wanted to.
- jacquesm 16y agoI wonder what animal would best describe the way the US positions itself versus other countries.
- jodrellblank 16y agoThis lion seems more menacing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_%28HM_Government%29.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Coat_of_Arms_of_the_... (Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_animals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_animals )
- vaksel 16y agoSeveral other domains also appear to have been seized including 2009jerseys.com, nfljerseysupply.com, throwbackguy.com, cartoon77.com, lifetimereplicas.com, handbag9.com, handbagcom.com and dvdprostore.com i don't see why those domains would be seized
- khafra 16y agoThey all sound like sites making pirated/counterfeit items available.
- gst 16y agoThe interesting question is if all those domains belong to US citizens. If the US only seizes domains of their own citizens that's somewhat OK for me. If the US also sizes domains of other nation's citizens I guess in the future I'll only use domain names outside the jurisdication of the US. But if that's the case I wonder why they haven't taken down PirateBay yet.
- c1utch 16y agoI believe the .com domain was originally for the US, so the US government has jurisdiction regardless of where the owner of the domain lives. .ly domains were being seized by their government even though the domains were being operated by American companies.
- regularfry 16y agoA common misconception, that. .com is not a country-code TLD. It was never intended for use by one country; it's explicitly a generic top-level domain, for use by international organisations. What gives the US "jurisdiction" is that it's nominally controlled by VeriSign and thence ICANN, which is a US quango, so owners of .com domains are in a legal relationship with a US entity. Outside the US, people have been known to get quite worked up about this arrangement, and there have been serious suggestions that ICANN should cede control (or transfer directly) to a UN body. Whether interference as in this case is legal in international law is, as far as I know, untested. The TLD which was originally intended for use by US commercial organisations was .co.us, which nobody seems to bother with.
- swombat 16y agoSo, who's getting started on that alternative DNS system? Until a formal infrastructure emerges, it can probably be cobbled together with a combination of BIND servers and browser plugins, I'd imagine...
- vib 16y agoPardon my newbieness. But if these guys had a .cn domain instead, or anything along those lines. They would be safe, no?
- pyre 16y agoNot necessarily. China at the very least pays lip-service to the idea that they are cracking down on piracy. Most Chinese piracy is small time or organized crime, so they can just bust a few people and say that they have 'cracked down.' With something as open as a webserver, it would be hard for them to not take it down to save face in international diplomacy.
- vib 16y agoAlso, there's this alternative to DNS that was pointed out by a commenter in TorrentFreak: http://www.unifiedroot.com/en/How-it-Works/Overview-How-it-Works http://www.unifiedroot.com/en/How-it-Works/Overview-How-it-W...
- woodall 16y agoA nice little Hosts file/Manager could also do the trick. Can't wait for the new era of darknets; not that the old one has disappeared. If the hosts file manager could also work as a dyndns type utility, then servers could change IPs at random and the user would be none the wiser.
- ig1 16y agoAs I pointed on when people were complaining about a .ly domain being pulled for hosting adult content, .com has exactly the same issues.
- jcromartie 16y agoWhat do ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) and Homeland Security have anything to do with torrents?
- redthrowaway 16y agoCustoms deals with counterfeit goods, iirc. That's what filesharing is being classified as.
- pyre 16y agoWell, I would cry foul if ICE was taking them down for 'counterfeiting,' but once they were arrested, none of the charges included counterfeiting. [i.e. the 'counterfeiting' classification is just a rouse to get jurisdiction.]
- fab13n 16y agoTime to apply for a YNews startup offering uncensored DNSes :) If you're willing to do Evil to monetize it, you might even get to resell sex.com and a couple of expensive domains. Or just explain to investor that one day, when you'll be big enough, you'll be able to do it. Also, you'll be able to decide how fast you respond to requests according to whether the domain's owner subscribed to your "premium" service. TL;DR: brace yourself for libertarian cyber-mayhem.
- davidu 16y agoWell, we at OpenDNS could make this work for all our users today. And I think we're large enough that they wouldn't just seize our domain. But it's a slippery slope... Once you fragment the DNS like that, it's hard to go back. And then we're put in a position to make editorial judgements of which version of the domain to follow which we prefer to not be in. So we don't, for now. There's a lot more thinking about this subject that I and others have discussed, but fragmenting the DNS is not the ideal answer. Making ICANN independent of the US is, however, of critical importance.
- jacquesm 16y agoLooking forward to the first DNS service run by a phisher... why take the long way around when there is a much shorter one. Really I think OpenDNS has some merit but I'd hate for the DNS system to become so fragmented that the whole fabric of trust that we've built towards domain names would be up for grabs. The consequences of that happening are beyond my technical expertise to estimate but my gut says it can't be good.
- davidu 16y agoDNSSEC and trust anchors will handle that part. It's more of the name collision issue that concerns me.
- po 16y agoAnd I think we're large enough that they wouldn't just seize our domain. They could probably make it difficult enough for you that you would change your mind. When the full force of the government you're operating in comes down on you, it's hard to stay in business. This is why the "solutions" tend to come from P2P groups. It's harder for the government to go after individuals (many of whom are in different countries) than a single organization. I use OpenDNS and I do appreciate that you are thinking about it.
- rapind 16y agoThis looks kind of fake. Can anyone confirm that throwing up this image is real and not a publicity stunt? They've got piwitracker and google analytics running on a page that just serves up one image.
- compumike 16y agoRegardless of the legal and other issues here, this looks like a hoax or hack. The nameservers are now pointing to ns[1,2].seizedservers.com. However, doing a whois lookup on seizedservers.com reveals that it was registered only this past Wednesday! In comparison, looking back at some domains that were previously seized by ICE (and verified by the NYTimes blog), they're all pointing to 74.208.15.160 without any weird NS changes or on-page analytics. (see http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/in-anti-theft-effort-officials-seize-9-domain-names/ http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/in-anti-the... and http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1006/100630losangeles.htm http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1006/100630losangeles.htm)
- ernesto99 16y agoOk, since I'm partly responsible for the article I'll share my take and explain why we ran the story. 1. Yesterday we reported on the site rapgodfathers.com which was seized and pointed to the same landing page (+ analytics). This was confirmed by the owner (plus another source) and a search warrant from a US district Court. See http://torrentfreak.com/music-linking-site-raided-by-dept-of-homeland-security-ice-101125/ http://torrentfreak.com/music-linking-site-raided-by-dept-of... 2. Today reports came in on more sites. We've known the owner of torrent-finder for a few years and spoke with him about what happened. He confirmed that ICANN was involved and that Godaddy knew nothing about the actions. He also told us some more information that we were told not to post in public. Combined with yesterday's raid the story added up. 3. About the analytics... My guess would be that the hosting company put that there, but it may also be the authorities. 4. Dozens of sites are involved in this, all with different owners. A hoax seems to be impossible. But then again, we're just simple bloggers, and thought we had enough info to back the story. If anyone disagrees, please say so.
- michaelelliot 16y agoI wonder what process ICE go through to have a .com redelegated. Since Verisign operate the .com registry they would have to be involved at some point along the line.
- dedward 16y agoWhat I want to know - was the registrar involved in this, and acting on instructions from US authorities, or acting on instructions from ICANN, or was the domain record actually modified at a higher level than the registrar had control over (is that even possible?)
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoAt a higher level. Yes, that's definitely possible - the .com nameserver tells resolvers where to find the nameserver for domain.com. Try 'dig @l.root-servers.net www.google.com' sometime.
- dedward 16y agoI realize that it's technically possible - but what I'm wondering is if icann (or someone else) actually did this without involving the registrar, or if the registrar simply complied with some kind of order.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoTFA says yes, GoDaddy didn't know what was happening.
- 8ig8 16y agoSeems a little fishy that the name server used by ICE was registered yesterday... http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=whois&host=seizedservers.com http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=whois&host=sei... http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=whois&host=torrent-finder.com http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=whois&host=tor...
- ryanhuff 16y agoIs it typical for a government agency to use a commercial data center/hosting provider for this kind of activity?
- redrobot5050 16y agoIn this case, the evidence that this is a hoax makes me feel that the government had no involvement in this. However, for future reference, yes. The government would easily contract out something like this. There is a virtually no limit to what the government would contract out. For example, some of my co-workers work on the no-fly-list database/content repository. There's very little that the government does in-house these days.
- sudonim 16y agoThese seizure notices are not 508 compliant. Isn't the government obligated to make all websites under their control accessible to people with disabilities? There isn't even an alt tag on the giant images with text. Now Im just sayin' but if they're using stupid loopholes to seize these domains, couldn't they be sued under the americans with disabilities act?
- baddox 16y agoBecause the government never breaks its own rules.
- fseek2 16y agoI posted some technical details here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943928 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943928
- Volscio 16y agoNow picked up by the NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html
- num1 16y agoI'm sitting a little confused here. The WHOIS for torrent-finder.com lists an address in Egypt. But comments that I've seen so far express anger, but are explicitly tempered by the fact that this is happening within the US and we haven't crossed any lines yet. Didn't we just cross lines?