Firstrow.tv Down

Firstrow.tv Down But Not For Long!

One of the largest sports streaming site on the internet was taken down by ICE yesterday in a new wave of domain seizures made by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations departments in the US.


The funny twist to the Feds takedown though is within hours the owners of Firstrow restored the site within hours creating a new domain name and boasting that "ICE has far too much time on it's hands".

Firstrowsports.eu returned to the net much to the delight of internet users looking for free sport streams that otherwise they couldn't afford to watch.

The owners thought to be residing in Portugal and India tweeted a simple but powerful statement after the attack:

"ICE have alot free time to lose with this but ok usa dont rule the world but let them fill the ego new domain" Twitter @ Firstrowsports

This latest round of seizures wasn't only restricted to sport streaming sites though, in the 300+ domain takedown included many sites selling counterfeit sporting goods mostly those based around NFL products were a keen target for the American authorities in the build up to the Superbowl.

American does have control over .tv top level domain names, so this was rich pickings for ICE, but how far will they try to push for taking control of domains outside of their jurisdiction?
.eu names in reality can't be touched by the USA but with the recent signing of ACTA that could all change in a heartbeat.

At present Firstrow maintain that with servers based in Sweden that actually they are breaking no laws as Sweden have a very relaxed stance on intellectual property on the net, only time will tell if the US interferes with their laws and kills the internet for good!

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• Feds Seize Sports Streaming Domains in New Super Bowl Crackdown (torrentfreak.com)
• US shuts 16 sports streaming websites (ibnlive.in.com)