A lawyer for Mozilla reported Thursday that the company received a takedown request from the Department of Homeland Security for a "MafiaaFire" Firefox add-on that the developer is not acceding to, yet.

A lawyer for Mozilla reported Thursday that the company received a takedown request from the Department of Homeland Security for a "MafiaaFire" Firefox add-on that the developer is not acceding to, yet.

Harvey Anderson, who works at Mozilla as its vice president of legal affairs and its general counsel, said that the DHS had recently contacted the company to remove the MafiaaFire add-on, which automatically redirects Firefox users to a new domain, if and when authorities seize the original sites, as they have done before.

The add-on refers to a common perjorative against the MPAA, and RIAA, two organizations that have led civil, federal, and legislative action to crack down on the trafficking of copyrighted goods. Those efforts have included the seizure of domains. Visitors to Torrent-Finder.com and other sites last November, for example, were met with a notice that the site's domain name had been shut down by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement - Homeland Security Investigations department, pursuant to a seizure warrant that would apparently be issued by a judge in the future.

The MafiaaFire add-on was a quick and automated way around that. "It can be a pain to remember alternative domains when the main domain is moved or illegally seized," the add-on's description says. "Rather than mess around in your hosts file or keep a list of alternative domains and copy/paste this add-on automatically redirects you to the correct alternate site."

The DHS, apparently, felt that the circumvention was worth blocking.

"The ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit alleged that the add-on circumvented a seizure order DHS had obtained against a number of domain names," Anderson wrote.

"Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order," Anderson added.

Anderson said that the company had asked the DHS whether or not a court had found the MafiaaFire add-on unlawful, or whether it had a seizure order that would require Mozilla to take down the offending add-on. To date, Anderson wrote, the company had received no answers to its questions.

The creator of MafiaaFire, meanwhile, posted a statement on the MafiaaFire blog.

"No court order no nothing, which just goes to show how little they have legally - because if they did have something to pin on MAFIAAFire they already have a sweet lady judge (##Link to article about former RIAA spokesperson now in judges seat##) who is a former RIAA employee to sign off on it," the author wrote.

"They did not even try to contact us," the author added. "Hat's off to Mozilla for sticking up to them, at first we were afraid if Mozilla would even host it due to it's contriversal nature but they truely backed up their open source supporting words with actions."