Just recently, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office had seized the website Torrent-Finder.com. Apparently, this site has been involved with other sites that hosted and shared torrent files of copyrighted materials. This may not be the first time that we have heard news about some sites being shut down, but what is unusual in these cases is that the order to shut down this website was done without notifying the owner and without any court conviction or legal proceedings.
In addition to this website, there were also some reports that around 77 different websites has also been seized and shut down and this was done all without any notification or warning to the website owners.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been seizing some sites directly from ICANN as a response to all the complaints filed against them pertaining to the said websites. And as reported all of these websites are usually shut down without any notification or warning to its owners.
As mentioned above, around 77 domains were already seized and most of these websites are associated with sharing illegally shared media files and distribution of counterfeit goods. Obviously the government has a certain right to enforce its own laws and have the authority to stop the operations of anyone who are engaged in such illegal act. So if copyrights are being infringed upon and goods are being counterfeited, the government may take the necessary action.
However, there were some people who believe that in taking any sites or in potentially putting a business out of it, its owners have the right to represent themselves before it should be imposed. Since most of these domains were shut down without any further notice, there were some people who are questioning the right of the Department of Homeland Security in seizing those sites.
In addition to this, a so-called censorship bill is also being created to specifically address the issue of piracy. If such law passes surely more websites will be affected. Some of these websites are Dropbox, RapidShare, SoundCloud, Hype Machine, etc. Let us just wait and see how far this censorship bill could affect other websites in the future.
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Tags: torrent-finder.com banned, torrent-finder.com seized, torrent-finder.com seized by homeland security, torrent-finder.com suspended
