Community | December 16, 2010 | 9 comments

Dutch Anti-Piracy Group, With MPAA's Help, Able To Grab 29 US-Hosted Domains... With No Trial Or Notice

source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101215/11300412292/dutch-anti-piracy-group-with-mpaas-hel...

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toyotabedzrock
Now that the US government appears to be endorsing the idea of simply seizing domain names without notice(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101128/15302012021/who-needs-coica-when-homel...) to the proprietors of those domains, it appears that others are doing the same as well. TorrentFreak reports that the Dutch anti-piracy group, BREIN, with help from the MPAA, has been able to get 29 different domain names -- all hosted in the US -- to point to BREIN's homepage instead(http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-shuts-down-29-bittorrent-and-nzb-sites-101215/). The owners of those domains were apparently given no notice and no recourse. It sounds like most of the sites did not host any content but linked to potentially infringing content.

Whether or not you believe that simply linking to potentially infringing content should be against the law, we're seeing yet another example of the simple lack of due process and how this may impact other areas. If BREIN can get US domains shut down, what's to stop other countries from doing the same thing? China doesn't like reporting by an American site about China? What's to stop it from trying to "seize" that domain? Even if we grant the idea that many of these domains were engaged in or encouraging unauthorized copying of works covered by copyright, why should BREIN and the MPAA simply get to shut them down without any sort of trial?


http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-shuts-down-29-bittorrent-and-nzb-sites-101215/
Update: TorrentFreak requested a list of the affected domains from BREIN and received this response from Tim Kuik.

“No that would amount to free PR for the sites that intend to continue their unlawful activities at another hosting provider. These are not large sites and we want to keep it that way.”

In response to a question about how the sites were taken offline:

“The sites were taken down by the hosting provider,” said Kuik.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101215/11300412292/dutch-anti-piracy-group-wi...
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9 comments // Dutch Anti-Piracy Group, With MPAA's Help, Able To Grab 29 US-Hosted Domains... With No Trial Or Notice

  • corndog67
    • 0
      corndog67  

    • Oh well, every virus my PC has ever picked up came from Bearshare, I guess that is the price I pay for 10,000 free songs.

      Right at the moment, my PC is down because of Trojans that came from Bearshare or Limewire, and Limewire seems to be history right now.

    • 1 year ago
  • CalgarC
    • +1
      CalgarC  

    • by the time the mpaa/riaa/cria etc... shutdown bittorrent everyone will be using rapid share, when they shutdown rapidshare we will all have another source.

      hackers are always 2 steps ahead...

    • 1 year ago
  • Dagum
  • KSirys
  • CalgarC
  • UtopianSky
    • 0
      UtopianSky  

    • I'm going to guess they took the domains by a legal and commonly used method- the people who owned the domain accidentally let it expire.

      BREIN could have had a bot constantly checking for when those domains are up for renewal, and snapped them up.

    • 1 year ago
  • toyotabedzrock
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