Monday, August 29, 2011

ICE Arrests Another Person For Allowing Access To Streams From Elsewhere

The latest in ICE's actions to be Hollywood's private police force came earlier this week when the group "protected our borders" by arresting a teen in NY for setting up a website that let people access streams of various Pay-Per-View events. His two domains were seized back during the February "Superbowl weekend" seizures.

There are a few problems with this, of course. First, it doesn't appear that the guy arrested, Mohamed Ali, actually provided the streaming content himself. He just linked people to it. Second, for all of the talk about how ICE is cracking down on these criminal endeavors because they're making tons and tons of money... yet again we see that there's barely any money here at all. Over the course of a year, he made about $6,000 according to the complaint. And, remember, ICE insists that it's only seizing the biggest "pirate sites."

Furthermore, as TorrentFreak notes in its coverage of the arrest, Ali appeared to abide by takedown orders. After Zuffa (the company behind UFC) went after him, he stopped allowing UFC streams, stating on the site "We don't want our site to get into troubles (sic) with Zuffa!" In other words, it seems like existing civil takedown procedures would have worked, rather than wasting ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money to go after a guy for hosting a website pointing people to some streaming sporting events and not making much money doing so.

Aren't there real threats that ICE could be focused on these days?

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110825/14081115685/ice-arrests-another-person-allowing-access-to-streams-elsewhere.shtml

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