US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has caused tremendous controversy over the past year by seizing domain names belonging to sites that allegedly infringe copyright or sell counterfeit goods. This all sounds rather pointless—the actual servers aren't seized, and it's a simple matter of registering a similar site name with a non-US domain name registrar—but ICE insists it works. We decided to check.

Earlier this year, ICE boss John Morton said in a speech (PDF) that even he was shocked by his own success:

Of great interest, and frankly unanticipated, was the collateral impact of this enforcement action. According to industry analysis, 81 other sites that had been offering pirated material voluntarily shut themselves down. In my many years in law enforcement, I have not seen that type of deterrence. Indeed, we were advised that seizing these domain names would be the proverbial Whac-a-Mole game with new ones popping up faster than we could obtain court orders. That did not occur and while two of the original domain names seized did reemerge in another form, the vast majority did not and two months ago, we seized one of the two that had been resurrected and was offering pirated movies again. It has not reemerged since.

ICE has seized domain names in waves, going after both intellectual property violations and child pornography. For our purposes, we'll consider the ten sports streaming domain names seized just before the Super Bowl in February.

ICE grabbed a set of linking sites which did not host content themselves but which linked to various live sports streams around the 'Net (some, like HQ-STREAMS, charged money for access to better connections; others rely on ads and obnoxious pop-up windows to make some cash). The ten seized domain names were: ATDHE.NET, CHANNELSURFING.NET, HQ-STREAMS.COM, HQSTREAMS.NET, FIRSTROW.NET, ILEMI.COM, IILEMI.COM, IILEMII.COM, ROJADIRECTA.ORG and ROJADIRECTA.COM. Now that several months have passed, we decided to check up on the sites; how many are back in business?

Molewhacking 101

In our tiny sample of six properties spread over 10 domain names, 4 of the 6 are still in business. ATDHE.NET is back up at ATDHE.TV, FIRSTROW.NET is back up at FIRSTROWSPORTS.EU, and the ILEMI variants are back at ILEMI.EU. Spanish site ROJADIRECTA is up at ROJADIRECTA.ES. A simple Google search on the old address will point you to the new one.

HQ-STREAMS and CHANNELSURFING.NET both appear to have stayed down, though this may be because both sites were operated by US residents. Indeed, the Texas man behind CHANNELSURFING was arrested over his operation of the site.

ICE also points out that, even if sites set up shop elsewhere, many casual users still hit up the old addresses. The government takedown banners that replace the seized domains have collectively received many millions of hits, ICE says.

Still, US-based sites have always been easy to hit; rightsholders can simply file a lawsuit. (HQ-STREAMS was slapped with a temporary restraining order last year after the company behind the Ultimate Fighting Championship sued it in federal court; the restraining order apparently worked to keep UFC content off the site.)

It's the foreign sites that ICE has largely targeted, but these sites simply grab another top-level domain and keep operating. While ICE's seizures may have some short-term effect on traffic, new sports streaming sites will probably just not register with US-based companies in the first place; at that point, ICE can't do anything.

Web developers aren't standing still, either. The new MafiaaFire Redirector is a Firefox extension that automatically directs users to a site's new home after an ICE takedown. According to its developer, it was created out of "anger and frustration."

"When I saw Torrent-Finder.com," he wrote, "a site that does not have any torrents or any download-able content seized for being 'illegal' as well as RojaDirecta.com which was declared legal in Spain, on two separate court trials! I thought to myself enough is enough."

Listing image by Ryan Boren