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.UK Registrar Offers To Let Police Close Domain

Posted by samzenpus on from the shut-it-down dept.

judgecorp writes "The .uk registrar, Nominet, has proposed rules that would give the police powers to demand Internet domains be shut down without a court order, in certain circumstances. The powers were requested by the Serious and Organized Crime Agency and have aroused concern that legitimate sites might be closed on suspicion of wrongdoing. Nominet's suggested implementation is online for public consultation."

5 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. "Certain circumstances"? by Lunaritian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The policy would cover cases in which a site is involved in crimes covered under the Serious Crimes Act 2007, including fraud, prostitution, money laundering, blackmail and copyright infringement."

    Always copyright infringement. Is it really a "serious crime"? And will this rule really have any effect?

    1. Re:"Certain circumstances"? by 1s44c · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The policy would cover cases in which a site is involved in crimes covered under the Serious Crimes Act 2007, including fraud, prostitution, money laundering, blackmail and copyright infringement."

      Always copyright infringement. Is it really a "serious crime"? And will this rule really have any effect?

      The thing is it's not 'sites involved in', It's 'sites accused of being involved in'. This rule is wide open for abuse, they can shutdown anything with it.

      Besides it's a totally stupid rule as the current DNS setup lets anyone anywhere register anything anywhere else. Not to mention you don't even need a domain name to host a website.

      This is stupid political powermongering types giving excessive power to corrupt police. Again.

    2. Re:"Certain circumstances"? by 1s44c · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "The policy would cover cases in which a site is involved in crimes covered under the Serious Crimes Act 2007, including fraud, prostitution, money laundering, blackmail and copyright infringement."

      The interesting thing is that it should be trivial for the cops to get a court order if there is any evidence that the site is involved in any of that.

      So why do they need powers to take down websites where they have no evidence of any wrongdoing?

      Maybe for the same reason they need powers to stop and search people without even the faintest suspicion of any wrongdoing. That is they are corrupt and just looking to increase their power.

  2. Sounds very reasonable. by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But just before you go ahead, Nominet, could you be a love and identify, oh let's say three examples of where a .uk domain has - ever - caused "serious and immediate consumer harm" before due process resulted in a court order shutting it down?

    That's all I'd want to see. Three clear examples of harm, actual harm, not theoretical, and that ended in a court order. An actual court order, that was upheld, of course.

    Nothing sub judice about that, court proceedings are public, so of course it won't be a problem to provide those three examples. Will it?

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  3. Re:Repressive by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's kinda like the inquisition trials. No, I'm not trolling. One of the core features of an inquisition trial was that accuser and judge were united in the same person or party.

    And that's basically what's going to be used here. Accuser and judge will be rolled into one party: The police. I just doubt that one other feature of the inquisition, the guidance of the holy spirit to lead the judge to a fair and considerate verdict, would be with them...

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