Sign of things to come? A notice greeting visitors to seized file-sharing search engine torrent-finder.com. Federal graphic artists have been hard at work designing this new splash page for websites the DOJ intends to shut down.

Lame-duck Congress resumed today, and international headlines are resounding with cries of unprecedented web censorship on news of a heavy federal hand laying a virtual smackdown on internet freedom as we know it.

During this otherwise quiet past Thanksgiving week, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE) executed seizure warrants against dozens of domains that ICE alleges to be facilitating illegal file-sharing of digital goods such as music and video, along with those that “appear to be connected to physical counterfeit goods.”

While affected domains so far all fall under the purview of copyright infringement, one has to wonder what this could mean for any other sites on the DOJ’s list of domains-non-grata.

ICE first became actively involved in matters of online gaming with the government’s case against Daniel Tzvetkoff, a payment processor for Full Tilt and PokerStars who was the first person publicly indicted for UIGEA violations.

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The idea of using online gaming tax revenues to help fund elements of health care reform became part of the Congressional conversation this weekend. On Saturday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a possible amendment to the Baucus bill (America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009) that would rely on the passage of Rep. Barney Frank’s HR 2267 to set up a regulatory structure that would provide health care revenue.

According to the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, the tens of billions of dollars collected by the U.S. government from online gaming could offset health care costs going forward:

An increased focus on the benefits of Internet gambling regulation are expected as the Senate Finance Committee considers a proposal introduced on Saturday to use Internet gambling revenue to offset the costs of health care reform. The amendment offered by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) would dedicate Internet gambling tax revenue generated through implementation of the currently pending Internet Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2267) to increase low-income subsidies provided through the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. A PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis shows that collecting taxes on regulated Internet gambling would allow the U.S. to capture up to $62.7 billion over the next decade.

Wyden is a chairman of the Senate Finance subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness.