Wednesday, April 27, 2011

ICE Uses Seized Domains for Best Anti-Piracy Video Ever

By David Kravets
Wired | Article Link


The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau is hoping to lay a little guilt on movie downloaders by dramatizing the stark human toll BitTorrent inflicts on Hollywood boom mic operators … or something.


ICE released the above 76-second public service announcement to YouTube late Tuesday, and began promoting it on 65 of the 120 domains the agency seized in its anti-piracy program “Operation in Our Sites.” Visitors to dvdcollects.com, for example, are greeted with an ICE message that the domain has been seized, and a link to the video.

“The public service announcement,” ICE Director John Morton said in a statement, “will help raise awareness that American businesses, and American jobs, are threatened by those who pirate copyrighted material and produce counterfeit trademarked goods.


The public service address shows a peddler on a New York street giving away free movies he said were downloaded from the internet. Beside him stands a soon-to-be unemployed worker. ”What’s more important,” he asks, “the movie or this human being?”