ICANN: We Won't Pass Judgment On Pirate Sites (torrentfreak.com)

From a TorrentFreak report:Following more pressure from rightsholders, domain name oversight body ICANN has again made it clear that it will not act as judge and jury in copyright disputes. In a letter to the president of the Intellectual Property Constituency, ICANN chief Stephen Crocker says that ICANN is neither "required or qualified" to pass judgment in such cases. This week, ICANN's Dr. Crocker responded to the April letter from IPC, confirming that his group will "bring enforcement actions" against registries and registrars that fail to include abuse warnings in their end-user agreements. However, ICANN also made it crystal clear that it won't be getting directly involved in disputes involving allegedly infringing domains. "This does not mean, however, that ICANN is required or qualified to make factual and legal determinations as to whether a Registered Name Holder or a website operator is violating applicable laws and governmental regulations, and to assess what would constitute an appropriate remedy for such activities in any particular situation," Dr. Crocker added.

Comments

Who will, then?

[Sigvatr]

Do we have a body at this level that does do that?

Re:Who will, then?

[amiga3D]

Courts. That's the way it's supposed to work. Using bureaucrats and other organizations
for that job is madness.

Re:Who will, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly right: They need a Legal Judgement in a Court of Law for the Juristiction they're claiming Infringment in. Otherwise, they'll take everyone that's not a member Off-Line for infringing and damn the actual legality of the matter.

Re:Who will, then?

[sconeu]

Courts. That's the way it's supposed to work. Using bureaucrats and other organizations
for that job is madness.

But that whole "evidence" thingy is a pain. It's so much easier just to ask ICANN to do it.

Re:Who will, then?

[DamnOregonian]

Well spoken, sir.

Re:Who will, then?

[beastofburdon]

It's not madness, its corruption.

Good reason to keep them in control then

[fustakrakich]

If they lose it, the replacements won't hesitate to censor everything they can.

Re:Good reason to keep them in control then

[youngone]

If they lose it, the replacements won't hesitate to censor everything they can.

They already are in a way. There's another story on this site about how that music streaming site you love is going to go broke because the licensing fees they have to pay make them unprofitable. That's what a consolidated market with strict IP laws get you.

Good

[vomitology]

That sounds tantamount to having a car dealership monitor your driving history, and repossessing the car if you use it to rob a bank.

Re:Good

[KiloByte]

A better car analogy would be the dealership repossessing your car if you become an Uber driver.

Unlike robbing a bank which is rather hard to defend, those "pirate" sites merely run afoul a dubious regulation that's not universal.

Re: Good

[ComputerKarate]

One big difference is that you will never own that domain you use today. You have the expectation you will someday own your car.

Looking for an easy enforcer

[QuietLagoon]

The Intellectual Property Constituency is just looking for an easy enforcer that they can trigger with an email, instead of using the legal system designed and intended to handle intellectual property issues. It looks like little more than laziness on the part of the Intellectual Property Constituency.

great point

[Anonymous Coward]

Great point. Why go through all the rhetoric of the legal system (and continually lose) when you can send out thousands of automated emails? Hmm who do we know that loves to do that? Pretty obvious where this pressure is coming from. Kudos to ICANN for their response, it was appropriate. Now if they would only do something about the thousands of new garbage TLD's they themselves created.

This brings to mind Cardinal Richelieu

[knorthern knight]

Show me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough therein to hang him

You'll see slight variations, depending on how the original French is translated... "Qu'on me donne six lignes de la main du plus honnete homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre".

Add in the HR assholes who insist on hiring only people with Facebook accounts, and bosses will be able to manufacture a reason to fire any employee at any time.