Feds play whack-a-mole with Dutch pirate

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Those pirates sure are pesky.

Just days after the the federal government thought it had shut down a Dutch website that had been offering pirated movies and TV shows, the site reappeared Hydra-like under a slightly different name.

Netherlands-based TVshack.net was one of nine sites that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Justice Department announced last week that they had seized the domain names of and were putting out of business.

But the shack was back this week under a slightly different domain name -- TVshack.cc. Along with the familiar pop-up advertisements for Russian mail order brides, it offered free versions of such movies as ‘The Twilight Saga: Eclipse’ and TV shows including HBO’s ‘Entourage’ and Fox’s ‘Family Guy.’

Fortunately for Hollywood, the feds got word that the site had resurfaced and once again brought down the hammer Thursday afternoon.

‘ICE is in this for the long term, and if a site reappears, so will we,’ a spokesman said.

-- Richard Verrier