Movie Piracy Crackdown Begins, Internet Sites Seized - Polidicks

[quote] The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) just announced a major takedown of nine movie piracy sites that illegally offered first-run movies, some within just hours of their theatrical release. This action is part of an anti-piracy initiative targeting Internet counterfeiting and piracy "Operation In Our Sites" that ICE and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced Wednesday. ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, seized nine domain names: Movies-links.TV, nowmovies.com, thepiratecity.org, filespump.com, planetmoviez.com, zml.org, tvshack.net, ninjavideo.net and thisninja.net. These sites generate revenue from ads and some also solicit donations. Federal authorities shut the illegal businesses down by seizing assets from 15 bank, PayPal, investment and advertising accounts. They also executed residential search warrants in several states. The head of ICE, John Morton, says that the number of illegal movie sites is dramatically rising both in the U.S. and abroad, and organized crime is behind some of them. ICE is putting movie piracy front and center in this new initiative, by making its first actions to protect the movie studios' intellectual property. [/quote] Source: [url]http://www.cnbc.com/id/38022758[/url] [b]Websites that were [i]terminated[/i]:[/b] tvshack.net, movies-links.tv, filespump.com, Now-movies.com, planetmoviez.com, thepiratecity.org, zml.com, ninjavideo.net and ninjathis.net I personally find this whole situation to be depressing, because I used Ninjavideo.net to watch all of my television shows and documentaries... :hitler:

thepiratecity.org? That's original.

They'll never shut down all the torrent sites, there's too many loopholes keeping them up.

Pfft, good luck.

Like that'll do anything, there's so many damn torrent sites. God damn OP posts once a year.

[QUOTE=Spacewolf;23023822]Like that'll do anything, there's so many damn torrent sites.[/QUOTE] They weren't torrent sites, they offered high quality video streaming. [quote]God damn OP posts once a year.[/quote] and it's more like 2 times every 4 years.

I used Ninjavideo occasionally :smith:

Looks like they [I]Arrr[/I] not going to be offering free video streaming..:smugdog:

lol like this will do anything

movies-links.tv still works :3

They'll all be back up under similar names. I mean watch-movies.net or some shit when down when they were seized, and a week later they were running, with the same content they had before the shutdown.

i <3 you OP

Thepiratecity :v: Yeah, but they can't stop all the torrent sites.

Most of these sites linked you to megavideo, why aren't they shutting down that?

They'll never be able to shut down every download site. That's borderline impossible for them considering what they've tried to pull before. [editline]02:37AM[/editline] [QUOTE=The_Fly56556;23024079]Most of these sites linked you to megavideo, why aren't they shutting down that?[/QUOTE] Because Megavideo has a membership price. Mind you watching and downloading is free, but when they have that membership up, they bypass the law. It's like the Elk Lodge (a bar or pub) serving unlimited amounts of alcohol. Florida law states, that public restaurants have to cut off your supply of alcohol at a certain point. With the Elk Lodges, they charge a small membership, making them a private establishment, and therefore bypassing the law.

Not ninjavideo, now its personal.

[QUOTE=Identity;23024107]They'll never be able to shut down every download site. That's borderline impossible for them considering what they've tried to pull before. [editline]02:37AM[/editline] Because Megavideo has a membership price. Mind you watching and downloading is free, but when they have that membership up, they bypass the law. It's like the Elk Lodge (a bar or pub) serving unlimited amounts of alcohol. Florida law states, that public restaurants have to cut off your supply of alcohol at a certain point. With the Elk Lodges, they charge a small membership, making them a private establishment, and therefore bypassing the law.[/QUOTE] I'm lost, I don't see how making it a private establishments means they aren't legally responsible.

[QUOTE=The_Fly56556;23024198]I'm lost, I don't see how making it a private establishments means they aren't legally responsible.[/QUOTE] I don't get that either.

[QUOTE=The_Fly56556;23024198]I'm lost, I don't see how making it a private establishments means they aren't legally responsible.[/QUOTE] It's a loophole. How many restaurants do you pay to walk into? Not a lot. The law is that in a public (meaning open to all) restaurant, they can cut you off when they feel it's necessary. Now if they charge to get in, you become a member, and that makes it a private establishment. Meaning they don't have to abide by the same rules as a establishment operating under a public setting would.

What a silly loophole, seems like the kind of thing they should sort out, I'm not exactly happy about the sites being shut down, but the law is the law.

-snip-

It's a pretty ridiculous loophole if you ask me.

[url]http://tvshack.cc/[/url] LOL

Heh, I wonder what they're going to do about the file sharing sites these places hosted on.

Aw they took down Movies Links =( Don't know why, they never hosted any movie on their site

So they took down a bunch of sites that nobody knows about? I see no problem here.

Why is Immigrations and Customs doing this, of all the agencies

[QUOTE=Another;23023780]thepiratecity.org[/QUOTE] Read this as thepiratebay.org at first. Scared the shit out of me.

Just going to point out that only the domains were seized. And paypal accounts (possibly bank accounts in the US also). The actual sites can still be accessed.

Dammit, they shut down movie-links.tv. I'll miss it.