Torrent Finder Domain Seizure

Copied from: [http://torrent-finder.info/torrent-finder-domain-seizure.php]

On Thursday, the 25th of November 2010, the Torrent Finder domain ( www.torrent-finder.com ), registered with Godaddy, was seized by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without any prior takedown notice or specific allegations of infringing activity. The Domain IP was suddenly changed without the registrar's knowledge and the system displayed a "Pending Registry Action" message on the domain's status. No contact was given until Wednesday, the 1st of December, when Godaddy replied to my inquiries, giving a contact for an ICE agent.

On Thursday, the 2nd of December, David Snead who is representing Torrent Finder contacted the ICE agent in charge who told him that "the orders are under seal, but that the seal will be lifted today or tomorrow". However, we have not heard from them until writing this post. Another email from Godaddy clarified that the action was taken by VeriSign: "please understand that these actions were taken by Verisign at the Registry level; and not by Go Daddy". The story was first reported on TorrentFreak and NYTimes.com.

Torrent Finder is a meta search engine that searches other search engines through iframes redirecting users to other domains and websites that Torrent Finder does not manage or control; most of the sites are suggested by Torrent Finder users through URL suggestion form. There have been many explanations about the mechanism of Torrent Finder Search on the media and how it works just like Google or Bing despite that Google does link to .torrent files directly. "So, when is the U.S. Government going to seize the Google domain?" Inquisitr.com asks. And Torrent Freak writes "When a site has no tracker, carries no torrents, lists no copyright works unless someone searches for them and responds just like Google, accusing it of infringement becomes somewhat of a minefield - unless you're ICE Homeland Security Investigations that is" and many others ask the same question, for instance Techdirt and Technobuffalo.com.

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For more visit: http://torrent-finder.info/torrent-finder-domain-seizure.php

 

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