Spanish website Rojadirect - a sports website - found itself confronted with the seizure of her .com and .org domains by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) some time ago. Rojadirect believes that the seizure is without ground and has now appealed the order with the U.S. courts.

ICE seized the domain names under the 'Operation in our Sites' initiative, dedicated to effectively tackling websites that distribute or sell counterfeit products or copyrighted works. Remarkably, Operation in our Sites allows officials to file secret applications in court for the seizures that become public only after a judge has approved the request.

According to ICE Puerto 80, the Spanish owner of Rojadirect, infringes the intellectual property rights of American sports teams by offering links to sites that offer illegal streams and games.

Puerto 80 denies that Rojadirect is involved with copyright infringement. Users might post links to infringing streams, but these actions should not be attributed to Rojadirect as a hosting provider, the site claims. As a counterclaim Rojadirect states that due to the seizures the sites' goodwill and loyal user base is at risk.

Interesting detail is that Rojadirects service has reportedly been approved by the Spanish courts on several occasions.

Besides Rojadirect ICE has seized 92 other domain names with U.S. hosting providers. However Puerto 80 is the first to appeal the seizure order at the court.

Whoever thinks that the secret U.S. domain seizure procedure is going too far, there are some even more far stretching measures in the pipeline.

Source: TheRegister