

U.S. Government Seizes BitTorrent Search Engine Domain and More - Uncle_Sam
http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-seizes-bittorrent-search-engine-domain-and-more-101126/

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ig1
As I pointed on when people were complaining about a .ly domain being pulled
for hosting adult content, .com has exactly the same issues.

~~~
DannoHung
Is there a TLD that doesn't have any issues?

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axod
Maybe we'll start seeing 'cherished' IPs?

<http://123.123.123.123/> ? :/

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jjcm
Or just an underground dns serv(er/is) that doesn't follow ICANN.

~~~
kang
[http://www.unifiedroot.com/en/How-it-Works/Overview-How-
it-W...](http://www.unifiedroot.com/en/How-it-Works/Overview-How-it-Works)

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sudonim
These 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
Because the government never breaks its own rules.

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rapind
This 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
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-
the...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/in-anti-theft-effort-
officials-seize-9-domain-names/) and
<http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1006/100630losangeles.htm>)

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ernesto99
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...](http://torrentfreak.com/music-linking-site-raided-by-
dept-of-homeland-security-ice-101125/)

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
How did you verify the search warrant shown in 1?

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swombat
So, 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
Pardon my newbieness. But if these guys had a .cn domain instead, or anything
along those lines. They would be safe, no?

~~~
pyre
Not 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.

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jcromartie
What do ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) and Homeland Security have
anything to do with torrents?

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redthrowaway
Customs deals with counterfeit goods, iirc. That's what filesharing is being
classified as.

~~~
pyre
Well, 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.]

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dedward
What 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
At 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
I 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
TFA says yes, GoDaddy didn't know what was happening.

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ez77
Believe 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
It'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
I 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?

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ryanwaggoner
Off 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
We should have gone with the turkey like Ben Franklin wanted to.

~~~
jacquesm
I wonder what animal would best describe the way the US positions itself
versus other countries.

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8ig8
Seems a little fishy that the name server used by ICE was registered
yesterday...

[http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=whois&host=sei...](http://network-
tools.com/default.asp?prog=whois&host=seizedservers.com)

[http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=whois&host=tor...](http://network-
tools.com/default.asp?prog=whois&host=torrent-finder.com)

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michaelelliot
This sets a shocking precedent.

~~~
iwr
Not the first precedent. Remember blogetery?

[http://www.zdnet.com/news/blog-site-shut-down-after-
potentia...](http://www.zdnet.com/news/blog-site-shut-down-after-potential-al-
qaeda-links-surface/446246)

No commercial and centralized system is safe from censorship/seizure.

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fab13n
Time 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
Well, 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
Looking 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
DNSSEC and trust anchors will handle that part. It's more of the name
collision issue that concerns me.

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michaelelliot
I 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.

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fseek2
I posted some technical details here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943928>

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vaksel

       Several 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

~~~
gst
The 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
I 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
A 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.

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kronusaturn
Nope, .co.us was (and is) intended for Colorado. There never has been a
second-level domain under .us specifically for commercial organizations.

~~~
regularfry
Whoops, good catch.

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num1
I'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?

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ffffruit
While 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.

~~~
ernesto99
Bias 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.

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flipbrad
TorrentFreak 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
Should have thought about that 5 years ago ;)

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Volscio
Now picked up by the NYTimes:

<https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html>

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ryanhuff
Is it typical for a government agency to use a commercial data center/hosting
provider for this kind of activity?

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redrobot5050
In 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.

