TorrentFreak notes that The United States Trade Representative’s 2015 Out of Cycle Review of Notorious Markets (PDF) calls out “sites and online services that reportedly engage in and facilitate substantial piracy and counterfeiting to the detriment of U.S. creators and brand owners, as well as legitimate sellers and distributors,” including the always awesome Kickass Torrents,
This BitTorrent indexing site is now the biggest torrent site in terms of visitors and popularity after surpassing ThePirateBay in 2014. KAT.CR has the highest global Alexa ranking of all the online notorious markets on this List. Over 6 million torrent files attracted more than 25 million unique visitors in one month. Reportedly based in Canada, over the past several years the site operators have changed the domain name numerous times, obscured or hidden their locations, and have used multiple servers in various countries to evade or otherwise frustrate enforcement actions. The site originally operated as KICKASSTORRENTS.COM but moved to KAT.PH, until Philippine authorities took enforcement action. The .tt domain registry cancelled the domain KA.TT in 2013, followed by the .so domain registry which cancelled the domain KICKASS.SO in February 2015 and the .im domain registry which cancelled KICKASSTORRENTS.IM in April 2015 within hours. The domain hopping tactics deployed by KAT.CR allow the site to reappear at the top of search results and evade court-ordered injunctions.
The odd thing about the USTR report is that it also targets Canadian domain registrar Rebel as a facilitator of piracy and other illegal activities,
This Canada-based domain name registrar allegedly knowingly licenses domain names to a disproportionate number of illegal online pharmacies. Rebel maintains less than 0.05 percent of the total domain name market but reportedly more than 17 percent of the entire illegal online pharmacy market. One submission estimated that Rebel sells domain name registration services to 4,850 illegal online drug sellers. Private organizations and regulatory authorities have notified Rebel of the illegal nature of the online pharmacies it sponsors but Rebel has reportedly not taken action and has allegedly become a “safe haven” for criminal enterprises specializing in counterfeit drugs. This year’s submissions reflect that, while the role of domain name registrars remains an ongoing subject of important discussion, Rebel’s outlier status is evidence that it is not taking measures that other domain name registrars have found to be reasonable to address infringement, such as having policies that prohibit domain names from being used in furtherance of criminal activity and acting on complaints as appropriate to suspend or lock domain names of illegal online pharmacies.
In an earlier story on the USTR listing, TorrentFreak quoted the Computer & Communications Industry Association (which includes Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other companies), as rejecting this sort of classification of registrars. In a submission to the USTR, the CCIA wrote (PDF),
CCIA is deeply concerned with comments2 requesting that domain registrars be branded as “notorious markets” and included on USTR’s list of notorious markets, following the 2014 list’s discussion of domain registrars, including Canadian registrar Tucows.
Domain registrars are not notorious markets. As EFF’s comments explained, domain registrars are intermediaries that are protected by U.S. law that limits their liability, codified in 17 U.S.C. § 512 and 47 U.S.C. § 230. These two laws form the foundation of the thriving U.S. Internet economy.. . .
CCIA cautions against heeding ongoing calls for infrastructure regulation as a content protection strategy. Such calls are attempts to revive SOPA and PIPA. Proposals to interfere with crucial Internet infrastructure like the domain name system (DNS) were rejected along with SOPA and PIPA, but these poorly-conceived suggestions and attempts to obtain site-blocking authority continue to surface in other venues and with other stakeholders. USTR is one of the policymakers increasingly hearing these pleas, as evidenced by this round of comments.