Homeland Security Seizes 70+ Suspect Domain Names | Copyright Attorneys Blog

Over 70 websites suspected of copyright and trademark infringement violations, the sale of counterfeit goods and illegally shared media content have been shut down by The Department of Homeland Security, with the cooperation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, executed and posted court-ordered seizure warrants on the website that state that the domain name has been seized as a result of willful copyright infringement or the sale of counterfeit goods.

According to reports, the websites were shut down without any notification or warning to the owners. 

   

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is seizing sites directly from ICANN because of complaints filed against them; the agency is not doing so under the auspices of the Digital Millenium Coptyright Act (DMCA) or a more recently introduced, so-called “censorship” bill, the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act, or COICA, which was created specifically to address the issue of piracy.

 ...the implementation of either law might be better than no law at all.

The owners of the websites have reportedly complained that their domain names were seized without any notice, warning or due process of the law. 

The DHS is bypassing typical laws and procedures to quickly stamp out file-sharing and counterfeiting...it doesn’t sit well with the traditionally American sense of due process and formal litigation through a copyright attorney.

Read More:  Homeland Security Seizes 70+ websites...,NetSparsh