As part of a three-month investigation, federal authorities announced that they seized 150 domain names on Friday--days ahead of the "Cyber Monday" post-Thanksgiving sales peak period.

The cleanup was conducted under the auspices of the Operation In Our Sites program, and resulted in seized domains being redirected to seizedservers.com. A message at the new page informs visitors of the seizure warrant. According to Wired, the message has recorded 77 million page views so far.

It is understood that the affected domains were seized after federal law enforcement agents were able to successfully purchase products from the retailers suspected of dealing in counterfeit goods. Offended items were found to violate copyright and trademark rights, and include counterfeit sports jerseys, DVD sets, handbags and footwear.

The domains are seized under the same civil-seizure legislation that allows the government to take over the properties and bank accounts of illegal activities. The seizure is technically simple and entails a modification of the domain name records of identified domains. This is possible because the registrars for the .com, .net and .org domains are U.S organizations.

In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said: "Intellectual property crimes harm businesses and consumers, alike, threatening economic opportunity and financial stability, and today we have sent a clear message that the Department will remain ever vigilant in protecting the public's economic welfare and public safety through robust intellectual property enforcement."

While seizure orders were obtained only after verification that received items were counterfeit, some observers have questioned why targeted websites were not given an opportunity to defend themselves before being taken down.

For more:
- check out this article at Wired
- check out this article at InformationWeek

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