In a major crackdown, the US Government’s ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit has seized the domain of a major BitTorrent meta-search engine, along with other domains that link to alleged pirated music sites.
Within hours of a Swedish appeals court deciding to uphold the decision that three of the co-founders of the Pirate Bay website are indeed guilty of encouraging illegal file sharing, which they were originally convicted of last year, ICE seized the meta BitTorrent search domain.
The US authorities seized the domain Torrent-Finder.com in a move clearly aimed at halting illegal downloads of music and other media it deems counterfeit or pirated.
Visitors to the site are greeted with a graphic showing three US security bodies – the Department of Justice, the International Intellectual Property Rights Center and Homeland Security Investigations.
According to the website TorrentFreak.com, the owner of the domain was given no notice of the seizure.
The move follows the seizing of a number of hip-hop torrent sites, including RapGodFathers, OnSmash.com and DaJaz1.com.
