ICE takedown of pirate websites may not work

A much publicized federal effort to take down websites hosting first-run Hollywood movies hasn't quite worked, according to an analysis by network researcher Craig Labovitz.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced on July 1 that they seized the domain names of nine websites with pirated intellectual content such as movies posted online "often with hours of their theatrical release."

In a Los Angeles press conference where ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton was flanked by representatives from major movie studios, the Motion Picture Association of American and entertainment unions, Morton said the effort targeted "people who have no respect for creativity and innovation." In addition to seizure of the domain names, ICE seized funds and searched four residences.

But, Labovitz, chief scientist for Chelmsford, Mass.-based Arbor Networks, found that at least one of the sites seized by the federal government has simply registered itself anew, only this time with a Chinese registrar and a Chinese country code top level domain. Hence, TVshack.net is now TVshack.cc.

The Chinese-registered pirate site--on which viewers can on July 6 stream the latest installment of the Twilight movies--saw its North American traffic seriously interrupted for about half a day and has since recaptured a significant chunk of its pre-raid popularity, according to Labovitz. The network scientist says TVshack uses a Dutch hosting provider, Ecatel, and based his analysis on Ecatel numbers.

Labovitz also questions how far legal authority over domain names goes. If domain names can be seized, then do courts have jurisdiction over Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or national registry number allocations? "Could a foreign court order U.S. providers to stop accepting BGP ASNs or revoke IPv4 address assignments?" he asks. It's a question that appears unresolved today but which the future could provide an interesting answer.

For more:
- read the ICE press release on the pirate sites seizure
- read Labovitz's analysis in full

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