Federal prosecutors are asking a judge not to return the domain names of one of Spain’s most popular websites, seized as part of a major U.S. crackdown on internet piracy.

The legal filing over Rojadirecta.com represents the government’s first legal response to a lawsuit challenging “Operation in Our Sites.”

Commenced last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has seized as many as 208 domains the authorities claim are linked to intellectual-property fraud. The court-ordered seizures are aimed at web sites that sell counterfeited goods, as well as sites that facilitate illegal music, film and broadcast piracy.

The Rojadirecta .com and .org domains were seized in January along with eight others connected to broadcasting pirated streams of professional sports.

“Returning the Rojadirecta domain names at this time would provide Puerto 80 with the very tools it used to commit the crimes the government has alleged it engaged in prior to the seizure,” (.pdf) the government said in a legal filing Monday. “Accordingly, Puerto 80’s petition should be denied.”

Puerto 80, the Rojadirecta site owner, last month asked a New York judge to return them. The petition is believed to be the only legal challenge lodged against Operation in Our Sites.

Federal authorities are taking .com, .org. and .net domains under the same civil seizure law the government invokes to seize brick-and-mortar drug houses, bank accounts and other property tied to illegal activity. The government leaves behind messages to visitors that a site has been seized.

Puerto 80, which claims the Rojadirecta site sports 865,000 registered users, said it has committed no copyright infringement. The site claims it is a discussion board where members can talks sports, politics and other topics, and it additionally links to sports streams — some of which is pirated

“The government has not shown and cannot show that the site ever was used to commit a criminal act, much less that it will be in the future. By hosting discussion forums and linking to existing material on the internet, Puerto 80 is not committing copyright infringement, let alone criminal copyright infringement,” (.pdf) according to the site’s legal filing last month.

Federal prosecutors in New York, where the government is handling Operation in Our Sites, do not agree with Puerto 80’s characterization of the site in question. The government said the site went beyond linking and affixed advertisements to the streams.

The government added that Rojadirecta was not authorized to broadcast the events.

“In addition, advertisements that were separate and distinct from any commercials that may have been aired during the stream of the sporting event broadcast were periodically displayed at the bottom of the video during the live stream,” the government said.

No hearing date has been set.

The Firefox browser supports an add-on that redirects seized domains. The browser’s maker, Mozilla, declined the government’s request to remove it.

See Also: