Wikileaks Calls For Global Boycott Against eNom

souls writes "The folks at Wikileaks are calling for a boycott against eNom, Inc., one of the top internet domain registrars, which WikiLeaks claims is involved in systematic domain censoring. On Feb 28th eNom shut down wikileaks.info, one of the many Wikileaks mirrors held by a volunteer as a side-effect of the court proceedings around wikileaks.org. In addition, eNom was the registrar that shut off access to a Spanish travel agent who showed up on a US Treasury watch list. Wikileaks calls for a 'global boycott of eNom and its parent Demand Media, its owners, executives and their affiliated companies, interests and holdings, to make clear such behavior can and will not be tolerated within the boundaries of the Internet and its global community.'"

Comments

How About GoDaddy?

[jellie]

GoDaddy is another bad registrar, and has been mentioned on Slashdot many times, including here and here. I'm assuming Dynadot should also be boycotted.

Re:How About GoDaddy?

[cp.tar]

What we need is a list of known good registrars and a set of instructions how to escape bad ones.

information versus action

[yakiimo]

Perhaps it doesn't fit with what the wikileaks people intended when they started it, but I wish that wikileaks would let/encourage others to fight using their facts (however much is fact) rather than wikileaks themselves doing it. Somehow their active stance makes me more wary of the information on the site.

Re:information versus action

[zhrike]

I strongly disagree. Wikileaks is not attempting to act on information someone posted on their site; they are acting in response to something that was done to them directly.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the information they host, aside from the fact that the information that they host was a reason for the acts by eNom et al. It also does
not reflect on the veracity of their information, and interpreting it that way seems odd to me.

Re:Howto change a registrar

[JavaRob]

It's not all that complicated. The horror stories you see here and there are the exception, not the rule.

I don't have any domains registered with eNom, so I'm not sure of the specific procedures for them, but the gist of it is:
* Sign in to your current registrar
* Make sure your email address with them is valid (there will be confirmation steps using it!)
* Unlock your domains (many registrars have "locking" features to prevent others from stealing your domains, plus to make it a little trickier for you to leave
* You might as well disable automatic renewals as well (if they have them), just in case
* Go to your new registrar and click through to "transfer" your domain, and pay for it. Normally they'll honor your existing expiration date (even if it's a couple of years away) and add your new years to the end of that.
* Make sure you set up the domain at the new registrar with the correct nameservers for your host, and you won't have any downtime because of the switch.
* The next steps will often take a few days -- new registrar will submit request to old registrar, who will email you for confirmation (and you'll have to click through to provide that)... possibly multiple confirmations... and then the domain will be transferred, and you're done.

Anyone want to provide details for eNom, or add anything I forgot?

I can also mention that most of my domains are currently hosted with GoDaddy -- who I'm not particularly fond of, but they're cheap and haven't screwed me over personally. Suggestions for alternatives are welcome... it's something I haven't researched in a while.

Seems to me its a matter of establishing a .....

[3seas]

standard procedure for which to handle domain shut down requests.

a take down request should be specific and start with a request to remove the offending material, not the whole site.

It could be done with laws but would need to be done in any country hosting.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but this is a hosting site issue, not a domain registry issue (or it shouldn't be a domain registry issue).
Registry is like an ID, messing with an ID is like identity theft or other wrongful manipulation of a persons ID. There should already be laws for this.

Anyways, there is the possibility to organize a standards group on the issue just as there is the OSI, linuxs standard base ,
etc.. and openly rate and publish hosting policies compliance level and even registry policies if that is indeed an issue.

There should also be recourse against those who violate. Or at least a bad mark on the open rating report.

Use Registrars in a Neutral Country?

[Aero77]

Rather than cry about eNOM's vulnerability to the US Justice system, Wikileaks should be protecting their domain name with the same care as they do their content.

Re:I don't get it

[Aluvus]

The court ordered that wikileaks.ORG be shut off. The Wikileaks people argue that eNom incorrectly interpreted the temporary restraining order to also apply to wikileaks.INFO. Additionally, eNom kept the domain out of commission even after the original temporary restraining order had been dissolved and the wikileaks.org domain had been restored.