Domain Name Seizure

[IceHogsFan]

The only time I have ever referenced broadcasts through other websites is when the Hawks are on WGN (Sucks!)



Anyways, I go on atdhe dot net to see if the game will be on there tomorrow and there is a special notice that comes up saying the domain has been seized by the DOJ and two other enforcement agencies. Is this for real? Anyone else aware of this?

 

[phranchk]

The only time I have ever referenced broadcasts through other websites is when the Hawks are on WGN (Sucks!)



Anyways, I go on atdhe dot net to see if the game will be on there tomorrow and there is a special notice that comes up saying the domain has been seized by the DOJ and two other enforcement agencies. Is this for real? Anyone else aware of this?

Homeland securities has been claiming a lot of domain names from sites that support illegal downloading. It's bullshit, IMO. Don't know where they have the rights to be able to do that, but they do. I think it might be Patriot Act loophole.

Anyways, they're only seizing the names, not the actual servers. You can still access it at atdhe.me instead of atdhe.net.

 

[TSD]

see what happens when you are willing to give up freedoms to fight an intangible ideal(terrorism).

 

[bookjones]

The only time I have ever referenced broadcasts through other websites is when the Hawks are on WGN (Sucks!)



Anyways, I go on atdhe dot net to see if the game will be on there tomorrow and there is a special notice that comes up saying the domain has been seized by the DOJ and two other enforcement agencies. Is this for real? Anyone else aware of this?

It's real. The Feds have really been cracking down on pirating in the past 14 or so months with the domain seizures, working with private industry intellectual property rights holders to enforce the DMCA. More often than not they have seized torrent/P2P sites but they have branched out to streaming sites. They usually do "rounds" where they target a specific "type" of perpetrator, i.e. film, music. This week's focused on sports----it's assumed that the seizures are supposed to be a preventative strike leading up to the Super Bowl. They got Atdhe as well as Channelsurfing, HQSports and the hugely popular P2P site Rojadirecta of Spain in these very latest rounds.



The seizures are legitimate because the domains are operated by US companies and that's all it really takes under DMCA enforcement. Precedence for these types of seizures has been established for while now. Sites like Atdhe and Channelsurfing are simply NOW doing the obvious for a workaround which is changing their url names slightly and registering with non-US domain name hosts as well as using Google developer tools to re-route the traffic they would have gotten in searches from their old url names.



As phranchk already mentioned, Addhe was already back up within hours of the seizure under a slightly changed url of: http://www.atdhe.me/ and Channelsurfing.net is working on something similar I believe.

 

[BigPete]

It is new territory and not clearly defined in anything that the FCC has on file or in legal precedent thus far. However, the DOJ has been trying to for some time to be able to do this. It is no different than the FBI stopping by my house and arresting me on the nights that I have backyard big screen movies for an admission fee that I fail to share with the producing company of the movie.



If those streaming sites don't send money to or get express permission from the NHL and the Blackhawks (for instance) then they are pirating that broadcast. DOJ should be able to shut em down. We are a capatilist society where a business should enjoy certain protections...

 

[bookjones]

It is new territory and not clearly defined in anything that the FCC has on file or in legal precedent thus far. However, the DOJ has been trying to for some time to be able to do this. It is no different than the FBI stopping by my house and arresting me on the nights that I have backyard big screen movies for an admission fee that I fail to share with the producing company of the movie.



If those streaming sites don't send money to or get express permission from the NHL and the Blackhawks (for instance) then they are pirating that broadcast. DOJ should be able to shut em down. We are a capatilist society where a business should enjoy certain protections...

Agreed. To clarify, I only meant that there was precedence in the fact that they have seized a fair share of torrent/P2P sites in the (admittedly recent) past successfully to the extent that the sites have not been able to get their domains back to-date or in some of the oldest cases and with a slight difference where the threat of seizure has led some domain holders to "turn over" their domains in agreements with the DOJ. This isn't to say that one day a federal court might not have something to say on the matter regarding issues of say jurisdiction or like they have in the past in pirating suits perhaps joinder issues despite the DMCA.There's still a helluva lot of shit that's going go down and shit that needs to be determined in this brave new (relatively speaking, heh) cyber world.

 

[Shantz My Pants]

IHF, I actually when to ADTHE tonight to see if I could catch any of the Bruins game. I looked up some info and supposedly they seized it just recently because of the Superbowl.