We’re sure that law enforcement officers having been trying their best to stem piracy. This is done by going after those who download copyrighted materials, hoping to make an example of them and deter future downloaders, or by going after the websites themselves, hoping to shutdown a source of pirated downloads.
This is what police in the UK have recently tried to do when they went after a torrent website, Torrentz.eu. While the good news is that they did manage to get the domain name suspended, it did little to hamper the efforts of Torrentz.eu’s users, or the website itself, thanks to the fact that there were a handful of alternative domain names that users could simply redirect themselves to.
Torrentz is considered to be one of the larger and more popular torrent websites out there today. It reportedly gets millions of visitors a day. It also seems that despite the suspension of the domain, chances are it will only be a temporary one and that the owners of the website should be able to move their domain elsewhere.
This is according to ICANN’s Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy panel that ruled that registrars aren’t allowed to hold domain names hostage, even if it is at the request of law enforcement agencies. “Although there are compelling reasons why the request from a recognized law enforcement agency such as the City of London Police should be honored, the Transfer Policy is unambiguous in requiring a court order before a Registrar of Record may deny a request to transfer a domain name.”
If anything, this seems more like a minor annoyance and hiccup for the pirates, rather than an actual setback, at least compared to other torrent websites which have gotten themselves into deeper legal trouble, like IsoHunt, for example.