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."

Comments

Re:In before it starts...

[girlintraining]

If you actually read the message, you'll see what it is. It isn't a demand, thus fails the test of "legal demand".

*facepalm*
(re-reads)
*facepalm*

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

Legal, def.: of, based on, or concerned with the law.
Demand, def: .1. ask authoritatively or brusquely. 2. an insistent and peremptory request, made as if by right.

No, I dare say, it meets the literal and true definition of a legal demand.