[Infowarrior] - Feds seize sports sites

[Richard Forno]

Feds seize sports sites

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48692.html

The websites are said to illegally provide access to content from the NFL. | AP Photo Close

By JENNIFER MARTINEZ | 2/2/11 12:53 PM EST

The federal government has seized the Web addresses of ten websites that allegedly livestream sporting and Pay-per-View events online, shutting them down just days before one of the biggest televised sporting events of the year: the Super Bowl.

The U. S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York, working in conjunction with the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency, seized the Web addresses Tuesday. The seizure affidavit was unsealed Wednesday.

The websites affected, which include Channelsurfing.net and Spain-based Rojadirecta.org, were said to  illegally provide access to content from the major professional sports organizations, namely the National Football League, National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. The sites do not host the pirated sporting content themselves, but instead provided links to other places on the Web where people could illegally access it.

Government officials argue that the sites are not only illegally distributing pirated content, but in the process are also denting the revenues of the professional sports leagues and broadcasters as well as negatively impact viewers.

“The illegal streaming of professional sporting events over the Internet deals a financial body blow to the leagues and broadcasters who are forced to pass their losses off to fans by raising prices for tickets and pay-per-view events,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan. “With the Super Bowl just days away, the seizures of these infringing websites reaffirm our commitment to working with our law enforcement partners to protect copyrighted material and put the people who steal it out of business.”

Fans have increasingly abandoned watching sports games on their television sets, opting to watch them on their computers via the Web instead. The shift has jolted the professional sports organizations, who are grappling with how to control the growing problem of illegal streaming of sports games online in real-time. The organizations copyright the content of its sports games — from the audio, video, text and images — and restrict others from distributing the content without prior written approval.

The federal government launched a similar campaign in November that shut down 82 websites that offered counterfeit goods and digital music and movie content. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and ICE Director John Morton had warned that the two agencies were committed to going after more websites that illegally offered copyrighted content.

Morton repeated that message during Wednesday’s operation.

“This swift action by our Homeland Security Investigations New York special agents and analysts sends a clear message to website operators who mistakenly believe it’s worth the risk to take copyrighted programming and portray it as their own,” Morton said. “(W)e will continue to aggressively investigate this type of crime with our law enforcement partners.”