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“I don't want to go to jail . . . or court. None of us do. And if we can't be accepted, how about we're acknowledged? Not as pirates but as a generation you can learn from. Work with us. Learn from us. We're your future. We're here and we're strong and we're not moving.”

JUST SIX DAYS after the US launched its Joint Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, NinjaVideo was shut down.

The June 28 2010 raid saw Beshara arrested, along with four others, and on track to prison. The raid was credited to US Attorney General Eric Holder’s IP Task Force, created in February to lead the fight against copyright infringement. But they didn’t act alone. Also involved was a huge cast of agencies: US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, which in itself pulled together an extraordinary number of agencies inside and outside the US. Among them, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, investigation services from all branches of the military, the investigative units from commerce and postal services — all with extensive powers. Outside the US, Interpol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Mexico’s tax service were also partners. There was also the Department of Justice (DOJ) Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, which saw Cybercrime chief assistant US Attorney Jay Prabhu in on the raid.

Prabhu and East Virginia US Attorney Neil MacBride, key figures in the Megaupload case, both signed off the NinjaVideo indictment.

The takedown also saw the US Immigration and Customs Service launch “Operation in Our Sites”, an aggressive and controversial action which saw seizure orders obtained through court to shut down websites operated in the US. It didn’t go unnoticed at Megaupload, where Dotcom read an article on the Torrent Freak news site with a headline stating: “Pirate Bay and Megaupload escape domain seizure by US.” Along with NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net, Operation In Our Sites had also seen the removal of VShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump. com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, and ZML. com. Dotcom emailed the story to Ortmann and Sven Echternach.

Dotcom: “This is a serious threat to our business. Please look into this and see how we can protect ourselfs”. “Should we move our domain to another country (Canada or even HK?)”. Echternach: “In case domains are being seized from the registrar, it would be safer to choose a non-US registrar.”

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