Feds seize pirating websites.

The full article follows.

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Adding some swashbuckling to its tough talk on fighting piracy, the federal government on Wednesday seized several websites that had offered downloads of pirated movies such as "Toy Story 3" and "Iron Man 2" within hours of their release in theaters.


Federal authorities announced that they had seized domain names from nine websites engaged in the "criminal theft of American movies and television." The websites include TVShack.net, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org and Ninjavideo.net. Combined, the sites drew 6.7 million visitors a month, authorities said.


Officials also seized assets from 15 bank, investment and advertising accounts and executed residential search warrants in North Carolina, New York, New Jersey and Washington, according to a statement from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which coordinated its investigation with the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.


The crackdown, which involved 100 agents working in 11 states and the Netherlands, was part of a renewed campaign dubbed Operation in Our Sites by federal authorities to curb Internet counterfeiting and piracy. The announcement comes a week after the Obama administration unveiled a detailed plan on how to tackle global piracy, including targeting illegal websites.


ICE chief John Morton, speaking at a Walt Disney Studios sound stage where he was joined by movie studio executives and union representatives, trumpeted the bust as the beginning of a "long-term effort to turn the tables on these thieves." The targeted websites, he added, are "run by people who have no respect for creativity and innovation."


The studios say they lose hundreds of millions annually to piracy.
Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that the actions were necessary to protect the jobs and livelihoods of "ordinary working people" and warned others engaged in similar websites.
"If your business model is piracy, your story will not have a happy ending," Bharara said.

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If you ask me, hollywood needs to figure out why pirating movies is so damn popular. I personally refuse to spend over $20 to go see a movie that history has told me will probably be complete crap. Perhaps this is the free markets way of saying Movie Cinema's are losing their popularity and people are no longer willing to see movies in theaters.



There are two way's I could think they could limit pirating of their property without whining to the fucking Feds.



1. Give incentives for people to actually go see them in theaters and/or lower the cost.



2. Stop flooding the market with complete crap. Perhaps if more of their product was of a high enough caliber people would be more willing to spend the extra money to see it on the big screen.


The funniest part is how utterly ineffective this bust was. I just googled "watch free movies" and 4 out of the top 5 results are still active sites. Good job government, just like with any black market, you are further proveing you are incapable of doing anything other than harrassing a handful of culprits. I'm turely greatful our government consists of a bunch of incompitents and that I can be assured the government is and always will be incapable of eliminating any Black Market, unless of course they simply leagilize the products being traded in said market.

They should have more policeman patrol for corrupt businessman. As for the store that sold me my Rush bootlegs, of concerts that no one has any professional recordings of, like Milwaukee, 1986, I hope that business thrives, because there's nothing better than being at the show.

Due to jurisdiction the US has no power over sites based in foreign countries and they will always struggle to stop movies being made available by these sites.

Yea, that 'raid' didn't last long.

TVShack took less than two hours to move to tvshack.cc in a China-sponsored domain.

They will continue to waste our resources on that which they fail to understand.