US shuts down over 70 websites engaged in criminal activity
The United States may be umming and ahhiing over whether to remove the painful thorn in its side known as Wikileaks, but it is showing no such qualms about removing another clutch of illegal file sharing websites.
More than 70 sites which the US allege have been engaged in the sale of counterfeit goods or offering pirated content have been closed down in an operation by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
The action saw the domain names of offending sites, including louis-vuitton-outlet-store.com, burberryoutletshop.com and Torrent-Finder.com, a BitTorrent search engine seized, and redirected to a federal holding page.
This reminded browsers of the current financial and custodial penalties associated with copyright infringement and trafficking counterfeit goods.
Any success is likely to be short lived however, a number of affected sites are said to have simply switched to an alternative domain.