Slashdot Mirror
It's Official: Registrars Cannot Hold Domains Hostage Without a Court Order
Stunt Pope writes "Back when the City of London Police issued those 'takedown requests' to domain registrars, most complied. However, as previously reported here, easyDNS didn't. A bunch of the taken-down domains wanted to move to easyDNS. One problem: their registrar wouldn't let them. It took awhile, but easyDNS fought it. They've finally gotten a ruling (PDF) under the ICANN policy that ordered the hostage domains transferred."
As someone who had godaddy hold my domain hostage, this is great news.
GoDaddy had received a single complaint from an anonymous source, which was apparently enough for them to threaten to revoke my domain if I didn't pay their $200 extortion fee.
MABASPLOOM!
... so ICANN cares. Where were they when people were asking them for help shutting down spammer-friendly (and scammer and thief friendly) registrars? When the registrars could make more money, ICANN was happy to comply. Now something is up that could interfere with registrars' ability to make money, so we see from them again.
The rest of us, of course, can all go to hell as far as ICANN is concerned.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
how about like when whole domains are being used for malware, phishing, or fraud?
do we have to go thru a court ....
How about when Anonymous Cowards like you are murdering babies? Do I have to go through the whole judicial thing to stop it? Shouldn't my word just be enough to come over and judicially execute you and have all your property transferred into my name as compensation for my time? I think all this "judicial stuff" is just getting in the way of my killing off idiots^W^W^W protecting the family.
EasyDNS is a great registrar. Some years ago I had an issue with one of my domain names because a law firm in North Carolina registered a very similar name. The only difference was that they inserted a hyphen in their name and I didn't have one. Naturally some of their clients omitted the hyphen in the address and I received the emails instead, which I passed on to them.
That was a mistake. The law company was very angry at me, and they accused me of intercepting their mail, using my domain in bad faith, etc. They ignored the fact that my domain name was registered over 5 years before they registered their name. They attempted to get EasyDNS to lock my domain and transfer it to them. They attempted to harass both me and EasyDNS. Eventually they attempted to take my domain through ICANN name dispute resolution proceedings, which failed. They even attempted to get the FBI involved, which resulted in an interesting interview with two agents, but nothing else.
EasyDNS was wonderful. They investigated and they decided there was no reason to interrupt my domain service. They supported me through the resolution proceedings. I would not use any other domain registrar for any domain name I really care about.
EasyDNS isn't the least expensive registrar, but they aren't the most expensive either. The fact they in Canada (and therefore outside USA jurisdiction) is an added bonus.
Why should he registrar be responsible for content? Is the phone company responsable for publishing phone numbers of unscrupulous businesses? The responsibility for mal-content is that of the host, not the directory.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Better 100 idiots without a scanner installed get infected than one innocent site get shut down by an asshole with an agenda.
Registrars can takedown domains for net abuse, the main thing is their terms of service are between them and their registrants, they enforce their policies.
The easyDNS Plain English terms of service state domains will be taken down for net abuse, but if you want to compel a takedown from the outside because *you* say it's illegal, you need a court order.
Better one pithy expression pulled out of his ass than 100 sophisticated economic analyses.