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Police Demand Summary Domain Takedown, Traffic Redirection
Stunt Pope writes "This morning, Toronto-based domain registrar easyDNS received a request from the City of London (UK) police demanding that they summarily take down a BitTorrent search site based out of Singapore — or else they would 'refer the matter to ICANN' — suggesting easyDNS could lose its accreditation. The police further directed easyDNS to point all traffic for the domain to an IP address that promoted competing commercial online music services based out of London, UK."
easyDNS raises some important questions in the blog post they put up after receiving the request. Quoting: "Who decides what is illegal? What makes somebody a criminal? Given that the subtext of the request contains a threat to refer the matter to ICANN if we don't play along, this is a non-trivial question. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it was something that gets decided in a court of law, as opposed to 'some guy on the internet' sending emails. While that's plenty reason enough for some registrars to take down domain names, it doesn't fly here."
But again, who decides what is Illegal? The UK demanding a Canadian based firm use UK law while in Canadian, while domain in question is for a company in a Singapore? There are three different countries that have laws here. so what law do you follow? Should the UK just block all traffic to that site? its ahell of a lot more complicated then you make it out to be.
Yep, we should close all for-profit news channels, they benefit from all the horrible things happening in the world.
This isn't an e-mail. This is a business making a legal demand.
If you actually read the message, you'll see what it is. It isn't a demand, thus fails the test of "legal demand".
It starts with a simple statement. Paraphrasing, "we believe that someone you are providing registration services for is doing something illegal and has invalid registration data." Then it makes a request. "Please investigate whether your customer is violating your terms of service " Who decides "what is illegal" in this case? easyDNS does. It's interesting that you claim that easyDNS is "above the law", since they are the ones who are making this determination. If easyDNS doesn't think they should be making this kind of determination, they should remove it from their TOS.
They ask for a hold to be put on the DNS registration data, and that if easyDNS does act to cut off service to the client that the domain name be pointed to a certain place. That's if easyDNS decides to act.
And then, most egregiously, they ask "please let us know what you've decided, one way or the other."
Yes, they point out the ICANN rules about correct registration data being a requirement. Big deal. I've pointed out the same requirements to the registrars of spammers many times. I've obviously been overstepping my bounds as a private citizen and demanding people be put in jail. Not.
Tempest in a tea pot.
they do not only benefit from them, they are the cause! (same as the "piracy" argument)
Sometimes it's better not having signature
This is the correct reply. Force them to work in the proper jurisdiction of action.
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.