Mozilla officials have refused a US government request to ban a Firefox add-on that helps people to access sites that use internet domain names confiscated in an unprecedented seizure earlier this year.
The request came from officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency under the Department of Homeland Security that in February took the unprecedented step of seizing domain names accused of streaming live pay-per-view sporting events. Without giving the owners an opportunity to defend themselves, ICE officials obtained a court order that gave them control of the addresses, which ended in .com, .net, and .org.
That's where MafiaaFire came in. The Firefox add-on, available on mozilla.org, made it easy for users to access sites that used some of the confiscated addresses. It did this by redirecting them to substitute domain names that were out of the reach of US courts, such as those with a .de top level domain.
?You simply type Demoniod.com into your browser as usual,? the add-on's authors wrote in an FAQ explaining how it works. ?The browser sends the address to the add-on, the add-on checks if Demoniod.com is on the list of sites to be redirected and immediately redirects you to the mirror site.
May come in handy for future reference.
Mozilla refuses US request to ban Firefox add-on ? The Register
The request came from officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency under the Department of Homeland Security that in February took the unprecedented step of seizing domain names accused of streaming live pay-per-view sporting events. Without giving the owners an opportunity to defend themselves, ICE officials obtained a court order that gave them control of the addresses, which ended in .com, .net, and .org.
That's where MafiaaFire came in. The Firefox add-on, available on mozilla.org, made it easy for users to access sites that used some of the confiscated addresses. It did this by redirecting them to substitute domain names that were out of the reach of US courts, such as those with a .de top level domain.
?You simply type Demoniod.com into your browser as usual,? the add-on's authors wrote in an FAQ explaining how it works. ?The browser sends the address to the add-on, the add-on checks if Demoniod.com is on the list of sites to be redirected and immediately redirects you to the mirror site.
May come in handy for future reference.
Mozilla refuses US request to ban Firefox add-on ? The Register