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Further proof that the whole anti-piracy scene is getting out of hand:

British website owners could face extradition to the US on piracy charges even if their operation has no connection to America and does something which is most probably legal in the UK, the official leading US web anti-piracy efforts has told the Guardian.

The US's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) is targeting overseas websites it believes are breaking US copyrights whether or not their servers are based in America or there is another direct US link, said Erik Barnett, the agency's assistant deputy director.

As long as a website's address ends in .com or .net, if it is implicated in the spread of pirated US-made films, TV or other media it is a legitimate target to be closed down or targeted for prosecution, Barnett said. While these web addresses are traditionally seen as global, all their connections are routed through Verisign, an internet infrastructure company based in Virginia, which the agency believes is sufficient to seek a US prosecution.

As well as sites that directly host or stream pirated material, ICE is also focusing on those that simply provide links to it elsewhere.

(my italics)

So why aren't ICE starting a little closer to home? Visit a search engine, add the magic word "torrent" to any movie/CD/TV show you like, and ka-pow, a zillion links to pirated material! I just tried "avatar torrent" with the following results:

google.com:   103,000,000 hits
bing.com:       2,830,000 hits

Do I need to stress that both are not only .coms but also ... ahem ... US-based?


Follow Geoff Palmer on Twitter

Comments

Like all bullies, MAFIAA, the copyright trolls and their govt. assets prefer to go after weaker targets that don't have the ability or the resources to defend themselves as well as Google and Microsoft.

Google and/or Microsoft probably own more lawyers than the RIAA and ICE combined - I can't see them being legally challenged.

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