The domain sharebeast.com has been seized by the US government. Although the site's operators had prohibited "...Content that violates the rights of others, such as Content that infringes any copyright..." and promised that
If your copyrighted or trademarked works are on the ShareBeast website without your permission, please contact abuse@ShareBeast.com describing the work that has been infringed, where it is located on the website, and provide your contact information and a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner, or authorized by the owner, of the copyrighted or trademarked work. Illegal files will be removed immediately after notice with sufficient information.
the RIAA applauded the closure. Its chairman said:
This is a huge win for the music community and legitimate music services...Sharebeast operated with flagrant disregard for the rights of artists and labels while undermining the legal marketplace.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 15 2015, @01:37PM
Is there any independent information about whether they actually held their premise? I mean all the summary tells us is that they themselves promised to respect copyright, and that the RIAA claimed they didn't respect it. Now I consider both sources untrustworthy in this respect, for obvious reasons.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 15 2015, @05:22PM
Hi, I was the submitter. The phys.org story seems to be entirely based on a press release from the RIAA [riaa.com]. Variety [variety.com] also told the RIAA's side of the story. Billboard [billboard.com] called it a "music piracy site" and published some quotes from its users. A site called Tech Times [techtimes.com] named some specific works that were said to have been infringing and hosted on the site. Business Insider [businessinsider.com] also has a report. I didn't find any statements by the owner(s) of the site about the seizure. Everything I read roundly condemns the site, except when I looked at its ostensible policies, which at least had the appearance of respectability.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 15 2015, @05:30PM
Seems like a pretty straightforward defense if they were complying with the DMCA Safe Harbor requirements. The RIAA is no genius-squad but I'm pretty sure they are clever enough to try takedown notices first, though.
(Score: 3, Touché) by davester666 on Tuesday September 15 2015, @07:29PM
Why would they need to send any notices? The US gov't is the one that took the site down, and if they did go through any legal proceedings, did they have to prove that the admin's didn't do a good enough job of processing DMCA notices? Unlikely.
If anything, it's better to not send any notices, because then, there MIGHT be less infringing content, making it more difficult for the domain to be seized.
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Tuesday September 15 2015, @01:57PM
Can they do that without any warning?
For a car analogy, can the government take away your car just because it can be used for speeding? Don't they have to send a speeding ticket first?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 15 2015, @02:18PM
its a .com TLD, which the US-gover...corporations controls, no surprise. I've moved all my domains away from .com a long time ago.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday September 15 2015, @02:39PM
Can they? - yes. Should they? - no.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 15 2015, @02:52PM
"send a speeding ticket first"
They can "send" all they want. I don't pay fake bills arriving in my mail box. A ticket isn't valid unless it has my signature on it, as well as the signature of the police man issuing the ticket. Everything else is fake - spam - trash.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday September 15 2015, @04:55PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name#Seizures [wikipedia.org]
U.S. Government Seizes BitTorrent Search Engine Domain and More [torrentfreak.com]
Feds Seize 130+ Domain Names in Mass Crackdown [torrentfreak.com]
Torrent Site Owner to Protest Domain Seizure in Court [torrentfreak.com]
The Pirate Bay Moves to .AC After Domain Name Seizure [torrentfreak.com]
Pirate Domain Seizures Are Easy in the United States [torrentfreak.com]
Pirate Bay Founder Appeals Domain Seizure Decision [torrentfreak.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 15 2015, @06:23PM
So the US practices unconstitutional censorship. Not surprising.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2015, @02:55AM
for all these seized domains, can I setup my os so if I would happen to go to any of them in the future I will still go to their real place?
if I click on a link on a webpage to one of them I still want to go to the website despite they had to change to a new domain name. linkrot is a bad thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2015, @03:41AM
... and if I give an answer to your question, can soylentnews.org get seized?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2015, @01:36PM
That depends. If the site is still there, you know its IP, and it still accepts connections using the old domain name, then you simply can add an entry in /etc/hosts (or your operating system's equivalent).
(Score: 1) by rob_on_earth on Wednesday September 16 2015, @07:09AM
When Megaupload got snatched there were plenty or reports that innocent people/businesses were affected. Goverment/police departments, high school teachers and Joe public lost access to tons of digital works they had created and owned all the rights to.
This is what pisses me of about bit torrent haters, there is lots and lots of perfectly innocent stuff, Linux ISOs, open source data/films etc.
Stop demonising the messenger!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2015, @01:41PM
Well, those innocent people just didn't have the big pockets the RIAA has.
But if you lost access to works you created (as opposed to works someone else created, but you accessed with permission), then part of the blame goes to you, for not keeping a local copy.