The US Government has today classified some of the largest websites as notorious piracy venues. The USTR list draws heavily on recommendations from copyright holders and includes popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and cloud-hosting service RapidShare. DVD ripping software vendor Aiseesoft is also mentioned, even though its products are perfectly legitimate in many countries.

In its annual “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets”, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has listed more than a dozen websites said to be involved in piracy and counterfeiting.

The list is based on input from industry groups and copyright holders including the RIAA and MPAA, who submitted their recommendations a few weeks ago. While the USTR admits that the list is not meant to reflect legal violations, the responsible authorities could use the list to take legal action.

“The United States urges the responsible authorities to intensify efforts to combat piracy and counterfeiting, and to use the information contained in the Notorious Markets Review to pursue legal actions where appropriate,” USTR states.

One of the prime targets is The Pirate Bay. According to USTR the site continues to facilitate downloading of copyright-infringing material. The Government further highlights the site’s resilience, mentioning recent domain name changes and the release of TPB’s censorship-resistant browser last summer.

“The site released its own web browser designed to evade network controls and reportedly has plans to offer software to circumvent conventional methods of enforcement. Network security experts have criticized The Pirate Bay for failing to follow security best practices in the development of their software,” USTR writes.

The last part feels a little out of place. The Pirate Bay can be accused of a lot of things by the Government, but not following security “best practices” is not the first thing that comes to mind.

While the inclusion of The Pirate Bay comes as no surprise, RapidShare’s listing is quite unexpected. The cloud hosting service has taken extreme measures to deter piracy and as a result was excluded from the most recent “Notorious Markets” list.

Even though visitor counts continued to drop in recent years, the USTR now believes that the site deserves to be included again, mentioning a recent ruling where RapidShare was ordered to pay $26,000 to a Czech movie director.

“Although RapidShare.com’s popularity has diminished since its 2012 listing, it remains one of the most active sites worldwide as well as in the Czech Republic, where it is best known as Share-rapid.cz,” USTR writes.

Another surprising mention was given to Aiseesoft.com, a software vendor that sells video converter and ripping tools. While this software may not be permitted in the US, it’s perfectly legal in other countries.

The Government, however, classifies the company as a notorious market and its competitor SlySoft.com was awarded the same label.

“Rights holders indicate that this site’s operators, reportedly based in China, develop and make available to customers worldwide various ‘high-quality’ DVD converter tools […] that, according to the site, allow users to circumvent technical protection measures and view video content in an unauthorized manner,” USTR writes.

In addition to the domains listed above, the US Government is also pointing a finger at the following sites:

PutLocker, Baixedetudo.net, Darkwarez.pl, Ex.ua, Extratorrent.cc, Free-tv-video-online.me, KickassTorrents.com, Kuaibo.com ,Mp3skull.com, Rapidgator.net, Rutracker.org, Seriesyonkis.com, Torrentz.eu, Uploaded.net, vKontakte.com, Wawa-mania.ec, Xunlei.com, Kankan.com, Zamunda.net, Arenabg.com and Zing.vn.

The “notorious markets” list is meant to be a pressure tool on the sites and the countries from where they are operated. Meanwhile, the sites remain accessible in the U.S. itself and thus far no attempts have been made to have local ISPs block any of them.