Via Mike Fleming of Deadline New York:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) announced the launch Wednesday of “Operation In Our Sites,” a new initiative aimed at Internet counterfeiting and piracy.
In the first action carried out as part of the initiative, authorities seized nine domain names of Web sites that were offering first-run movies, often within hours of their theatrical release. Seven of those sites were targeted for seizure by the SDNY. Agents from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) also seized assets from 15 bank, Paypal, investment and advertising accounts, and executed four residential search warrants in several states.
ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton, joined on a Los Angeles soundstage by senior representatives from major movie studios, entertainment unions and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), made clear that the theft of such intellectual property is a serious crime and one the U.S. government has made a priority combating. Copyrighted material is known as intellectual property (IP) under the law.
“ICE and our partners at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center are targeting pirate Web sites run by people who have no respect for creativity and innovation,” said ICE Assistant Secretary Morton, who was in Southern California to meet with the leaders of the movie industry. “We are dedicated to protecting the jobs, the income and the tax revenue that disappear when organized criminals traffic in stolen movies for their own profit.”
“Criminal copyright infringement occurs on a massive scale over the Internet, resulting in billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office handled the seizures of seven domain names Wednesday. “That translates into lost jobs and real hardships for ordinary working people. That’s why we took the actions we did. If your business model is movie piracy, your story will not have a happy ending.”
“Content theft online has become increasingly ubiquitous as technology and software improve and access to the Internet increases,” said Mike Robinson, chief of operations, content protection for the MPAA. “We are committed to working with law enforcement to get the illegal choices out of the marketplace and instead focus on continuing to offer more innovative and flexible legal options to consumers to enjoy the movies and TV shows that we all love. The American motion picture and television industry is one of our nation’s most valuable cultural and economic resources. We are grateful to ICE, the Obama Administration, and the federal agencies that have made the protection of intellectual property a priority for the United States.”
“We are facing a dramatic rise in the number of foreign and domestic Web sites that are in the business of making films and television shows – created by our members – available for illegal download or streaming,” said Kathy Garmezy, associate executive director of government and international affairs for the Directors Guild of America. “If left unchecked, this illegal activity threatens the very ability of filmmakers to both earn a living and create the content that is enjoyed by billions around the world.”
“We commend the action of ICE and the IPR Center in striking a significant blow against those who seek to profit from the copyrighted, intellectual property of others,” said Matthew D. Loeb, president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). “Intellectual property is the basis of our modern economy. The stealing of digital content is not a victimless crime; it’s also the theft of tens of thousands of American jobs.”
The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), based in Virginia and managed by ICE, is directing the government’s response to a crime that is estimated to cost American industry billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs every year. Its “Operation In Our Sites” is targeting not only films and music, but other items distributed over the Internet, such as counterfeit pharmaceuticals, software, electronics, games and other products that threaten public health and safety.
The investigation involving the SDNY together with the ICE New York Special Agent in Charge and the IPR Center, resulted in the seizure of seven domain names: TVSHACK.NET, MOVIES-LINKS.TV, FILESPUMP.COM, NOW-MOVIES.COM, PLANETMOVIEZ.COM, THEPIRATECITY.ORG, and ZML.COM. In an undercover capacity, investigators downloaded various newly released movies from the Web sites and their affiliates, to identify those Web sites that were involved in the distribution of stolen content.
Also on Wednesday, as a result of a months-long operation, the IPR Center seized the domain names and Web site content of NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net, both of which generated revenue from donations and advertising. These sites allowed visitors to stream or download popular television shows and movies. Over the course of the investigation, agents observed links to more than 200 movies and more than 300 television programs on the NinjaVideo site. This investigation resulted in the execution of federal search warrants for their content and domain name at servers in the United States and the Netherlands. HSI agents also executed four residential search warrants in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and Washington. The case is ongoing.
The IPR Center has united the U.S. government agencies that combat intellectual property theft. In addition to ICE, the partners include: U.S. Customs and Border Protection; the FBI; the Department of Commerce; the Food and Drug Administration; the Postal Inspection Service; the General Services Administration, Office of the Inspector General; the Naval Criminal Investigative Service; the Defense Criminal Investigative Service; the Army Criminal Investigative Division’s Major Procurement Fraud Unit; and the Government of Mexico Tax Administrative Service.
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Yes, the pirates are definitely the ones without respect for property rights here.
We are dedicated to protecting the [...] tax revenue
Operative phrase!
Peter FTW. Where you want your Internets sent?
STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!
Yes because we want creativity only once a generation, and then we will grant permission on who next is allowed to be creative. Such respect for creativity!
to sm oliva:
do you still believe in ip, or has there been a damascene conversion of the last years?
Hmm. I’d say that over the years, I’ve “converted” from minarchism to anarchism, and a byproduct of that is the understanding that IP cannot exist without a massive state apparatus.
happened to me, too. i just can’t remember when the shift occurred.
It took me a while to understand that minarchism does not exist. But once the veil was removed, the clarity made me feel extremely naive’.
Unless you’re contractually obliged to not share the information as the terms and condition of the purchase. IP isn’t necessarily something that can only exist with a large state apparatus. IP can exist as private contracts and you would lose the ability to freely share the images of a movie or words in a book if you agreed to not share it as the terms of purchase.
Unless you’re contractually obliged to not share the information as the terms and condition of the purchase.
what does such a contract look like??
I thought you were more imaginative. Are you the same guy I used to exchange internet emails with?
The argument that IP cannot exist without a government, is imprecise, but still approximately correct. You need a centralised legal system to determine out of the infinite number of abstractions, which are relevant for the definition of property. I demonstrated over and over again that the choice is arbitrary, so the chance of an overlapping decision in a decentralised system appears less likely.
Yes to the last statement but note that multiple governments would not be operating in a vacuum: each would be aware of the other. Thus, if all governments in a panarchy were pro-IP, it would be in their interest to harmonise their IP rules.
The more pertinent question is whether some governments would be anti-IP, and whether individuals would gravitate to those governments instead of the pro-IP governments. Obviously, there would be at least one govt. that is anti-IP, initially, since many on this board are anti-IP. [Or would they form a government?]
The issue then becomes: how does a pro-IP government handle disputes between its own members and those of an anti-IP government? Would the two governments be able to achieve a side-agreement compromise, or would there be a shunning between the two groups — or outright war?
If you want to have proof that the media industry in in the middle of its death throes you have to look no further than to initiatives like these.
Do the ICE and the SDNY seriously believe they will deal a serious blow to “pirates”? No, even they are not that stupid. They are just following orders from above. And orders from above say “something must be done to appease the media conglomerates paying millions to lobbyists”.
I doubt the stupidity will again reach the heights we’ve seen with the Pirate Bay fiasco’s but who knows?
I’ve made this point before, but I think it’s worth repeating given this story. There is a connection between unions and IP, at least with respect to Hollywood. We can damn the studios to Hell for colluding with the government on this new “anti-piracy” crusade, but it’s not as if the studios could simply abandon IP either. The entire system is based on state-backed cartel agreements with unions like Writers Guild of America that demand “residuals” on every specific rebroadcast of a movie or television episode. The whole point of the last WGA strike was to expand this system to Internet broadcasts. As long as the residual system exists, IP enforcement will remain a top political and industry priority.
I would go a step farther and say: as long as government exists, IP and patents will exist.
What’s that Sandvich? Kill them all? Good idea!
I like this one:
“…it’s also the theft of tens of thousands of American jobs.”
Malarkey! Let the propaganda machine grind on!
Correct DayOwl, can the gov’t, or hollywood point to one job lost as a result of piracy? Perhaps if they put out decent movies, at a fair price, that might help sales.
I’m wondering, how does one “seize” a domain name? Do you go look up the physical location of the servers that serve that domain and seize those servers? Or do you go to the people with whom one registers domain names and demand that they unregister this domain (and register you to it)? Or what?
John: There is an organization out there that manages the Domain->IP pairs. They go to them. Usually. Sometimes they do seize the actual computers, but only when they think it’ll be extremely profitable to do so (like if there is child porn on it).
Anyways, I said earlier today that I don’t get angry. I now feel anger. Not often something can do that. Heck, I might be feeling hate too…
I’ve never released anything important with copywrite, and I never will.
I may be a bit naive but…
If there are large amounts of money being lost from streaming and file sharing then how does it seem that so many more tv stations pop up, tv shows being produced and DVD’s being sold in so many stores . Where does this money come from to broadcast more content if the money is being stolen from those who produce television media and music.
If the money wasn’t there then people would let the business fold. If you had a nickle mine (not to many people use nickle anymore) and you tried to sell the mine.. you won’t get much for it, most people don’t need it and really have no desire for it.. so if no one wants it.. then it is valueless.
I understand that people (artists and the like) want to protect their intellectual property and I totally appreciate that and want the same rights for myself but I find that the greed produced by the larger companies cut the artists out of what is due to them. So in essence it is the company and not the artist who wins battles such as these.
Whoever gets higher profits, whether the recording company or the artist. We should still respect property rights and we have no right to pirate what is rightfully theirs. Thus, I think pirates should definitely be punished.
you talkin about Somalia? What they have to do with it?
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