A couple of my questions resolved by the arrival of an ICE press release in my inbox today. The whole thing was timed for "Cyber Monday" I'll forward the release in a separate mail. j On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Joly MacFie <joly@punkcast.com> wrote:
Well, despite rumors of the whole thing being a hoax or stunt the NIPRCC appears to be genuine <http://www.ice.gov/iprcenter/> and the takedowns legit, but the confusion is understandable - the methods were obscure and devious. The inclusion of two visitor tracking scripts especially raised suspicions.
http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/the-background-dope-on-dhs-recen...
ICE did take out some sites in June, but did announce it officially http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1006/100630losangeles.htm and checking one of the officially seized sites http://tvshack.net/ <http://tvshack.net/> reveals a smaller graphic and none of the analytics scripts
It does raise some questions
1) Why no confirming PR from ICE? http://www.ice.gov/news/
2) Why track visitors?
3) Why use third parties and hide behind anonymous whois?
4) Why are the redirected sites not Section 508 compliant?
5) Why do it over Thanksgiving holiday?
As the above article notes it will be interesting to see if Afilias registered sites are the next target, and it is evident that COICA is required to similarly block non US registered domains.
joly
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org ---------------------------------------------------------------
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org ---------------------------------------------------------------