How does ICE seize domains, and how to avoid it?

[thizzladen]

Hypothetically speaking, I know a guy that owns a movie site. About a week ago his competitor's domain was seized by ICE.

I was just wondering how they can do that. Do you have to have offshore server hosting, offshore domain registration, or both to avoid it?

What is it that puts your site on the ICE radar other than being a copyright intrusive site? I think it's bullshit how they take the domain. Is it only top level generic domains being taken?

If someone has a list of legit offshore domain registrars, please post it here. Is there any risk with registering with these offshore providers (like domain theft, etc.?).

It's a pretty cloudy area of discussion, but please post your experience with ICE seizures or anything you are sure to know about it.

thizzladen Reviewed by thizzladen on 2nd Jun 2011. How does ICE seize domains, and how to avoid it? Hypothetically speaking, I know a guy that owns a movie site. About a week ago his competitor's domain was seized by ICE. I was just wondering how they can do that. Do you have to have offshore server hosting, offshore domain registration, or both to avoid it? What is it that puts your site on the ICE radar other than being a copyright intrusive site? I think it's bullshit how they take the domain. Is it only top level generic domains being taken? If someone has a list of legit Rating: 5

[damnyou]

The only way to avoid the domain seizure is to registrar those domains which are not controlled by verisign and afilias. Few examples are .eu .ph etc

[NewEraCracker]

You can always reduce the changes of having your domain seized by nullrouting their IP Address ranges:
http://www.besthostingforums.com/sho...0&postcount=10

[okone]

That won't help if the Protect IP Act goes through in the US.

They seize the domains by changing the DNS at the root level, its pretty simple really.

But technically speaking, this is easily bypased. For example, if you set a site to point to a particular ip in your hosts file, then if your domain is seized, it won't actually have any effect on you.

The issue is that the majority of people don't know how to do this and it might be beyond their abilities. This is why solutions such as http://www.mafiaafire.com/ have sprung up.

Essentially, for those who know how, these measure are easily got around, and for those who don't, it will just be another seized site.

[SuicidalMedia]

Don't worry, your domain won't be seized. You need to do something pretty fucked up to be on governments radar, when they don't seize domains of child pr0n sites, they won't seize domain of some average warez site. We can't know for sure why certain domains got seized, of course they say it's because of Internet piracy, but I doubt it. There are bunch of similar sites, and they aren't even touched. So they could have been using their site for something else except of streaming, sharing links and what not.

Or it was quite simple, someone powerful reported them. But as I said, we'll never know for sure.

[snowmanrene]

1. Get backup domains that are not .com/.net/.org/.us/.biz
2. Let your users know that you have alternative domains in case one goes down.
3. Maybe let them know the IP as well and tell them how to edit their hosts file?
4. Change your registrar to one outside of the US, maybe Rebel.com in Canada.
5. Shutdown your site

[wrestledld]

^ .........................

[thizzladen]

Well, I've seen a really popular movie streaming site get seized. The one my buddy has is growing pretty fast, going from 50-100 UVs a day to 2000+ UVs a day in a couple weeks. He doesn't want his to be at the top of Google SERPs just enough to get attention from the wrong people and get fucked over.

So, his best bet would be to buy an international domain and redirect all traffic from the .com to the international one?

Would they still be able seize the .com?

[SuicidalMedia]

@sNo
#1) It's always good to have all gTLD's registered, and if he wants to localize his site, cTLD's are also good. But for a regular site, there's no need for so many domains.

#2) That's also good, but most likely it will never happen unless you piss someone off.

#3) Good idea!

#4) All domains are controlled by IANA (now ICANN)

#5) Never give up!