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City of London Police Take Down Proxy Service Over Piracy Concerns
Mr_Silver writes TorrentFreak is reporting that the City of London Police (a private police force in government-backed livery with an authority that does not go beyond the corporate-controlled City of London area — so not to be confused with the Metropolitan Police) has seized control of a number of domains including Immunicity, a general proxy server that was set up as a censorship circumvention tool. This appears to be their next step after placing banner adverts on websites.
I don't want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don't care about the presents
Underneath the Christmas tree
I just want them for my own
More than they could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is
My own bloody private police force!
The police, who wants to fight piracy which is claimed to be happening by the corporations, go bust servers with neither warrants nor court orders. What exactly are making these claims legit enough to skip due process? Or is due process some sort of privilege that we shouldn't expect them in the first place?
The City of London Police (who are proper police officers and subject to the same rules etc as any other officer and not a 'private' force) have a remit from the government to tackle certain specific types of crime on a national/pan national basis.
They have a unit that is responsible for this sort of stuff so it does not surprise me that they have done this.
I know it's bad form to provide accurate information on Slashdot but the City of London police are not private at all. Indeed the Wikipedia page linked to in the summary states that it's a govt entity on the very first page.
I apologise in advance for being accurate.
The City of London Police Force is not a private police force, its a public body that receives government funding and is the same as any other police force in the UK, bar the fact that it doesn't have an elected police commissioner. It answers to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary just like any other police force. The reason its separate from the Metropolitan Police Force is nothing more than a historical curiosity rather than anything to create conspiracy theories about.
There does seem to be an attempt here on Slashdot, in this story and past stories, to cast the City of London Police in a false light.
Regarding the authority "issue" - the City of London Police seizing a domain name is no different to the Metropolitan Police seizing it, the jurisdictional "issues" are the same. The reason the City of London Police are doing this a lot is because they are highly specialised in economic crime detection, investigation and enforcement, so combating criminal level copyright infringement is in fact one of their specialities.
The City of London is a borough of greater London. It is an ordinary government district and the police force for the City of London is a normal, governmental police force. What a fucking pile of hogwash this summary is.
CoLP, while not actually private, is the closest you can get to a law system controlled solely by it's corporate backers. Since there are no actual people in the city, just corporations and commuters, there is no such thing as public scrutiny or pursuit of the public interest, their agenda is written solely by private interests. Coupled with private prosecution, it rounds up to a nice libertarian-fascist justice system.
City of London Police (a private police force in government-backed livery with an authority that does not go beyond the corporate-controlled City of London area — so not to be confused with the Metropolitan Police)
The poster didn't read the Wiki on the City of London Police;
The City of London Police is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the City of London, including the Middle and Inner Temples.
The police authority is the Common Council of the City,
The Common Council of the City is an elected body. The City of London police is also publicly funded.
What may confuse you Americans is that most British cities have "corporation" in their official name. For example, I live near "The Corporation of the District of Sannich".
The City of London Police is overseen by an elected body and funded through taxes. It is not a private police force. I think that was just a transparent attempt to sensationalize a news story.
Rome would be so proud .. Of what Londinium has become.
The Romans would even understand the Mayor's ramblings
I make no applogies for corruption or incompetence in CoLP (if any).
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Wow... where is the option to vote the summary and TFA as troll?
Seriously. They full of misrepresentation (CoLP is just another area force like all the others in the UK. CoLP is NOT a private force. The fact that corporations vote in CoL is irrelevant here as voters have no direct influence on the force - policy comes from national level. CoLP are national specialists on this kind of 'soft' crime and are the force responsible for national level investigations of this type. Seizures would have needed to have been court sanctioned/ordered and as is often the case with ongoing investigations where the details would be sealed until said investigation was completed. The fact that large scale copyright infringement is a crime was made by the elected national government and not by the CoLP.)
Wilfully continuing to aid criminals after you are aware of providing such aid (except on threat of personal safety) is in itself a crime in the UK.
ICANN etc have operations in the UK and are therefore have legal responsibility/requirement to comply with such court orders in the country they operate in. This is identical to the many cases where a USA court orders extradition for some minor thing on a non US company director just because they have a sales/import office with 5 staff at some container port in Florida.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
Do they have a Corporate Congress yet?
Yes, corporations with premises in the City of London are given a number of votes in local elections based on the number of employees they have.
The City of London Police have their powers, policy and jurisdiction defined by the Police Act of 1996, the same as the Metropolitan Police. Their powers come from the House of Commons, not the Guildhall.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
According to Wikipedia, the City of London has a resident population of about 7000 and a commuting.working population of about 300,000. There are certainly many "actual people in the city". Or do you believe Wikipedia is wrong on this score?
Both residents and representatives of the businesses vote in the elections. It is true that the former are outnumbered by the latter.
In fairness its been that way in one form or another since the 17th century.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
"The National Arbitration Forum has just handed down its decision in respect to the three domain names locked down at Public Domain Registry in response to the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit takedown requests. The decision is in favour of easyDNS and orders the three names to be transferred to us. - See more at: http://blog.easydns.org/2014/0...
The City of London is not London. It's roughly equivalent to the old walled medieval City and is now mainly a financial district 'The Square Mile'.