One of nine BitTorrent websites currently caught up in 'Operation In Our Sites' has started asking valued users of the site for monetary donations to be used for legal defense.
 
As part of the anti-piracy crackdown, the U.S. government seized nine different domains:  TVShack.net, FilesPump.com, Movies-Links.TV, PlanetMoviez.com, Now-Movies.com, ThePirateCity.org and ZML.com.  

All nine sites were registered and operated in the United States -- and several of them shortly came back online under new names.  Fifteen bank and PayPal accounts were also seized by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations taskforce.

Since NinjaVideo was one of the nine selected for take down, TorrentFreak expects the U.S. government to try and make an example of all of the sites’ administrators.  NinjaVideo never collected membership dues -- like most popular BitTorrent sites -- but is now asking for member contributions to help prepare for a mounting legal defense.

Additionally, it appears NinjaVideo has been aware of pending shutdown and legal notices for some time now.  TorrentFreak reportedly discovered several months ago that U.S. investigators were looking to shutter the site at some point.

"We need you.  Our lives, our very freedom depends on this," pleads NinjaVideo's operator, Phara.  "We can't do it alone.  We have nothing.  Nothing at all.  They took... everything."

It's not a surprising situation NinjaVideo is in, and I'm sure we'll see other donation requests from different site operators.  I've never donated to similar causes in the past, nor do I plan on donating to NinjaVideo, but I'm interested to see how much will be collected.

Despite the high-profile publicity surrounding the site shutdowns, critics say the current war on piracy will be a useless waste of funds.  Supporters say it’s a step in the right direction against piracy and counterfeiting that costs copyright holders and manufacturers billions every year.