Federal officials seize movie piracy websites in sweeping raid

[central101]

Federal officials seize movie piracy websites in sweeping raid
June 30, 2010 11:50 AM

" LOS ANGELES, Calif. - U.S. officials on Wednesday announced a major crackdown on movie piracy that involved seizing several websites that were offering downloads of pirated movies just hours after they appeared in theatres.

Officials also seized assets from 15 bank, investment and advertising accounts, and executed residential search warrants in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and Washington.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials worked with the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The raids were the first actions in a new initiative to combat Internet counterfeiting and piracy called "Operation In Our Sites."

The nine websites that were seized include TVShack.net, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org and Movies-Links.TV.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said money lost because of copyright infringement translates into lost jobs.

"That's why we took the actions that we did," Bharara said in a statement. "If your business model is movie piracy, your story will not have a happy ending."

Not sure if this is true as all website are still running as normal. Well see as more news emerges. "

Source: Federal officials seize movie piracy websites in sweeping raid

[Detale]

Honestly though, who in the piracy game doesn't know that you can't host your site in the USA? I'm sure having a US bank acct doesn't help much either. IMO they were just asking for it anyway.

[Darth Sushi]

Honestly though, who in the piracy game doesn't know that you can't host your site in the USA? ....

Yup, hosting a pirate site in the US is the same as giving yourself a prison-bitch name before going to prison.

[darkstate01]

And wiping the lube on the hole and having a tattoo saying who's first.

[sez]

um..thought they said they could take down sites in any of 44 countries...gonna really miss ninjavideo though,they had lots of docus.

[Pwner101]

Never even heard of any of the sites mentioned before so seems like more of a failure than a win.

[brilman]

I'm sure it works as a good scare tactic, "the man brought down all those sites"

[central101]

In all honesty they really didn't do much... all they did was take the domain names for the particular websites. Big Deal; a few of them already have new domain names IE: tvshack.cc, Watch-Movies-tv.info

[sez]

http://twitter.com/SaveNinjaVideo
now accused of drug possession and corporate fraud lol.

[bobbintb]

i like it when they get these stupid little pirate sites. keeps them occupied so that the people who really know where to go to get them arent bothered by their sites going down.