US authorities have shut down dozens of websites offering counterfeit goods and pirated music, five months after a crackdown on sites offering movie downloads.
Cori Bassett, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said ICE had "executed court ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names." The ICE spokeswoman declined to provide further details, citing an "ongoing investigation," but Torrent Freak, a website about the popular BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, published a list of more than 70 sites it said had been targeted.
A visitor to the sites Saturday is met with a message reading: "This site has been seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court."
It informs visitors that copyright infringement is a federal crime carrying a penalty of five years in prison and a 250,000-dollar fine, while trafficking in counterfeit goods carries a 10-year sentence and a fine of two million dollars.
The sites targeted included burberryoutletshop.com, cheapscarfshop.com, dvdcollectionsale.com, handbagcom.com, mydreamwatches.com, rapgodfathers.com, sunglasses-mall.com, torrent-finder.com and usaoutlets.net. The move comes almost exactly five months after US authorities launched a crackdown on websites offering pirated copies of movies. The domain names of nine websites offering first-run movies were seized in late June along with bank, Paypal and advertising accounts as part of what US officials dubbed "Operation in Our Sites."