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Regardless 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

Regardless 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 ago
Ok, 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.
- aw3c2 16y ago
  How did you verify the search warrant shown in 1?

ernesto99 16y ago

Ok, 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.

aw3c2 16y ago
How did you verify the search warrant shown in 1?