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In a move that has sent chills throughout many industries, including the online gambling sector, a federal judge out of Nevada has ordered the seizure of over 700 domain names related to counterfeit products in addition to demanding that Google, Facebook, Bing and Twitter delist the named websites.
“So are they (the US Government) going to seize eBay.com’s domain too since they sell ‘fake’ Chanel products,” asked one individual upon being informed of the seizures.
It could very well happen.
In July the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that eBay and others should play a more active role in stopping their sellers from trading in counterfeit L'Oreal goods.
Nevada Judge Kent Dawson on Tuesday ordered that luxury goods designer Chanel now has the legal right to seize domain names of over 700 sites that are attempting to sell counterfeit Chanel products.
From DigitalTrends.com:
According to Arstechnica, an additional 228 sites were seized earlier this month after an investigation was presented to the courts. The investigation involved a private investigator hired by Chanel to make purchases on a sampling of the sites. The investigator ordered counterfeit items from approximately one percent of the sites on the list in order to provide proof of illegal activity to the courts. The judge made no indication on a timeline for de-indexing the domain names from search engines and Google still lists the mentioned domain names within search results. The judge also didn’t explain how search engine companies and social networks should censor the links outside of the United States. It’s also highly unlikely that social networks will be able to filter links that are using third party URL shortening services.
The BBC noted that many experts were surprised at the scope of the Nevada judge's ruling. US firm GoDaddy, which manages around 45 million domain names, has been given control of the web addresses of the 600 firms. It has been told to ensure that none of the sites can be accessed.
Google said that it had no comment to make at this stage because it was yet to be served with the judgement. Facebook said was looking into the matter.
Domain seizures of online gambling sites have occurred over the past year with the US Government claiming such offshore ventures to be “illegal”. Most have switched over to .eu and .ag (Antigua) extensions as a result.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
