101 Domains Seized Over Cyber Monday for Counterfeiting

101 Domains Seized Over Cyber Monday for Counterfeiting

With Thanksgiving over, bricks and mortar retail establishments got busy organizing their Black Friday sales. But savvy consumers figured out you can avoid the entire experience of jostling in queues and rubbing shoulders with other shoppers if you makes your purchases online. For this reason online retailers held sales for Cyber Monday.

To coincide with the date, authorities in the United States of America and Europe proceeded to crack down on domains selling counterfeit goods such as sports apparel and designer bags. In the US, a total of 101 domains were seized while the number in Europe tallied up to 31. Over the course of the day, the offending sites were handed over to the government which then replaced the pages with a warning about the penalties of piracy.

The seizures are part of an initiative titled Operation In Our Sites, which was launched in 2010. Its purpose is to seize websites used to distribute infringing goods and content. ICE says that it has seized a total of 1529 domain names and forfeited 684 of them to the government since the program started. However, since the take-downs are enforced without any trial, activists for information and electronic rights question their legality and validity.

Source: ICE via Arstechnica