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London Police Ink Shadowy Deal With Industry On Website Takedowns (eff.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the shady-business dept.

AmiMoJo writes: The EFF is warning about unregulated activity against websites by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) of the City of London Police. A program called RogueBlock accepts notifications from IP holders, which the PIPCU then acts on, giving private companies legal jurisdiction over the entire internet, with appeals in the case of malicious reports and mistakes being extremely difficult to make. For example, Spanish sports streaming site Rojadirecta had its domain name seized by the U.S. government for over a year, despite the site being lawful in its native Spain. The EFF terms this kind of activity "Shadow Regulation."

23 comments

  1. they already took all the poker domains by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and you're just getting worked up about this now?

    you're all idiots.

  2. Um, No... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 2

    A program called RogueBlock accepts notifications from IP holders, which the PIPCU then acts on, giving private companies legal jurisdiction over the entire internet

    That's a HUGE jump, from the ability of IP Rights Holders to directly complain to saying they have "legal jurisdiction". Um, no.

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    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Um, No... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      And don't they? In many countries, a private company is specifically tasked to be the sole entity charged with some specific task that the government would otherwise have to do on its own (here in Europe, it can be, for example, collecting royalty fees for authors under some collective licensing arrangement), but usually in exchange for very close scrutiny by the government. Here you have officials apparently forwarding decision making to non-governmental entities in what appears to be a very similar thing. Under a reasonably broad definition of "jurisdiction" (the always-helpful Google suggests "the territory or sphere of activity over which the legal authority of a court or other institution extends"), this phrasing could be reasonable.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:Um, No... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 2

      Either way, it doesn't seem likely that it would apply to the "entire" internet; that seems like hyperbole to me. It really depends on how the regional governing entity wants to handle requests from other governing entities outside of its jurisdiction.

      In the example of the Spanish sports streaming site, the site owner registered it under a .com and a .org, both of which are in the US's jurisdiction, thus the US government can force its seizure. It doesn't matter if the servers were located elsewhere; they could always have registered it under a .es domain and kept the site up, and the US wouldn't touch it (think ThePirateBay and KickAssTorrents, which the US government surely hates.) To say that a governing entity has jurisdiction over the "entire" internet isn't logical, because after all, the name was domestically registered to the country that took it down.

      Anyways, TFA doesn't state which domains the London police were taking down, but I could see the following happening: Suppose a website registers under a US TLD. Then suppose it hosts content which is illegal in the US, but nobody in the US notices, so it doesn't get taken down. But suppose it does get noticed in the UK by a UK rights holder. UK rights holder asks its government to use diplomatic leverage (treaties, trade agreements, etc) to ask the US to take it down. US might comply in accordance to its own laws (that is, it is against US law, so the US can justify taking it down.)

      And really, this is no different than one country extraditing criminals to another country. And in fact, the US doesn't extradite people for breaking laws in another country if what they are wanted for is an activity that is protected by the US Constitution. So for example, in Germany, spouting racist propaganda is illegal, meanwhile it is protected by the first amendment in the US. Thus, the US won't extradite somebody to Germany simply because they are wanted in Germany for hate speech crimes. Likewise, I'm sure Germany would love to have the website stormfront.org (a neo-nazi website) taken down, but because this site doesn't break any laws in the US, the US isn't going to remove it if Germany asks it to.

    3. Re:Um, No... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      I agree that the international aspect ruins it. That I was not disputing.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:Um, No... by Xest · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Given that PIPCU is funded by the IPO, and that the City of London police is a defacto private sector police force, I don't think it's really actually much of a jump.

      It's not like this is London's Metropolitan Police or anything we're talking about where public control is retained. The City of London police is directed by the City of London Corporation, and the IP Office is the organisation that represents rights holders with government funding which is past on to fund PIPCU.

      The reality is if rights holders say jump, PIPCU and the City of London police simply ask how high. If they're providing a place where they can submit take down requests make no mistake, the City of London police and PIPCU have shown themselves more than willing to pursue it unquestioningly. This story is basically just about increased automation of how they control their pet police force to do their bidding.

      The problem is that there's really very little residential population in the City of London's square mile, and so the representatives that are elected there are therefore elected on behalf of the corporations rather than average citizens. Hence why it's a different beast to other police forces and is in fact basically a private police force.

      Personally I wouldn't mind if they stuck to their square mile, but unfortunately they attempt to apply extra-territorial jurisdiction to other parts of the country, where our local police forces act and where those police forces priorities are supposed to be decided by those of us who live in these areas by our elected police crime commissioners. As we're seeing here, they also try and apply international jurisdiction by trying to apply the standards of their corporate owned square mile to service providers across the world. The square mile is where all the banking crimes happen in the UK (Libor trading scandal for example), but the City of London police turn a blind eye to it - imagine the uproar about jurisdiction if say South Yorkshire police went down to the square mile and started arresting criminal bankers? Shame the same isn't true when the City of London police go and arrest some minimum wage labourer for selling a Kodi box in South Yorkshire.

      As such, frankly, I believe the City of London police force should be axed as it's way overstepping it's mark, and policing in the square mile should be handed over to the Met, who are at least accountable to the people to at least some degree still. City of London police are an affront to the concept of policing by consent which is precisely what the UK policing system is meant to be based upon.

    5. Re: Um, No... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The pirate bay is using .org

    6. Re:Um, No... by ewanm89 · · Score: 1

      No, they don't they have jurisdiction to one square mile of the walled City Of London, which is controlled by the City of London Corporation which almost has complete control over that square mile and has it's hands so deep in the economy that the Palace of Westminster has little choice but to bow to their wishes as long as they remain within some sort of reason. That said, this "policing" is far overstepping their jurisdiction of their quasi-police force of that 1 square mile.

    7. Re: Um, No... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      As of recently, yes, though I suspect they'll get hit sooner or later. My guess is that the legal process has already started, but these things do take time.

  3. Contradictions Abound by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    PIPCU then acts on, giving private companies legal jurisdiction over the entire internet, with appeals in the case of malicious reports and mistakes being extremely difficult to make

    So government actions give legal "jurisdiction" over the entire net to a private party? And appeals which are easily made because this is government action are extremely difficult to make because this is private action in shadows? Brilliant. And luminous.

  4. City of London Police, NOT Metropolitan Police by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those not familiar with the language employed, this is the police force of the "City of London" (a.k.a "The Square Mile" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) NOT the London Metropolitan Police, the police force responsible for London itself. The "City of London" has only about 7,000 residents, all of whom are significantly wealthy. Hundreds of thousands of people work there during the day, but only these 7,000 count as resident.

    The "City of London" is run by a corporation which basically operates at the behest of the financial institutions that operate in its borders. It's long been known for rather undemocratic behaviour (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval) and almost universally acts in corporate interest.

    1. Re:City of London Police, NOT Metropolitan Police by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The "City of London" has only about 7,000 residents, all of whom are significantly wealthy.

      I don't know how many significantly wealthy residents have qualified for council flats in Golden Lane Estates, which together with The Barbican makes up almost all of the residential property in The City. There may be some significantly wealthy residents with their city pad in the Barbican, but mostly it is middle class residents who bought when living in the city was seen as undesirable, and units rarely come up for sale there.

    2. Re:City of London Police, NOT Metropolitan Police by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      I thought I remembered something like that. City of London police has been in the news before for some nefarious practices and things that are outright illegal in civilized areas of the planet.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:City of London Police, NOT Metropolitan Police by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are right, I stand corrected. There are poorer people in the estates. That said, property changes hands for nothing under 500,000 GBP, and for even a 2 bed flat this jumps to 750,000. I doubt many middle class people wouldn't jump at the chance to sell up and move somewhere a bit cheaper (you can get similar property for around half that price, and certainly much larger homes for around the half-million mark in London - Stoke Newington's only about 30 mins away by bike.

      Anyway, the point is that the CoL Police act in the interests of the large businesses. I don't think that's changed by this (admittedly correct) information.

    4. Re:City of London Police, NOT Metropolitan Police by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, they're just a hired security company- like mercenaries?

    5. Re:City of London Police, NOT Metropolitan Police by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      CGP Grey has more information about the City of London

      https://www.youtube.com/playli...

      It should be noted that the "City of London" is London itself and older than antiquity. What we know of London today was where the political powers were removed from the City of London to Westminster and thus "London" grew around it.

  5. This is not a police force as you know it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is a private organisation paid for and owned by the "City of London" It has one employee for every eight actual full-time residents in the area and is not a police force in the common understandING of the term..

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Police

  6. City of London by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bad actors.

  7. Defacto true by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Yet it's defacto true, the IP holder complains to partner City of London police, who then ACT on that complaint often OUTSIDE OF LAWS.

    So they'll ignore jurisdictional limits and grab domain names for entities outside the City of London, outside the UK even, entities that don't do business in the UK. They grab domains without court orders.

    They do false grandstanding arrests, so for example, they arrested a VPN proxy owner for criminal copyright infringement. It's clearly intimidation and of course the case was thrown out, but it served its purpose of intimidation.

    They'll get police ads injected into webpages they've declared to be copyright infringing... THEY declared. It's not a legal process, it's more an abuse of police powers.

    RogueBlock isn't based on UK law. Really it's the issue with City of London police, they have been used far too often to distort UK law for the whole of the UK, so the special exception that is the City of London police exists outside UK law. And CIty of London's claim to existence is no longer true, financial institutions have moved out of the square mile, and City of London police was never good at investigating fraud in the City. It always turned a blind eye to that. So they needs to be brought back within UK law and their special exemption abolished.

  8. Private enforcers for private companies? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We're headed straight for armed mercenary armies with a vague semblance of legitimate authority doing whatever they damn well please.

    Pretty soon, even fair use is only going to have a chance if it's backed by nuclear weapons.

  9. I'd like articles like these titled differently. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Something like "EFF criticizes [something] over due process and transparency", since the post is about EFF's press release, and because this provides the point in a nutshell for those unwilling to be taught the nuts and bolts from the ground up.

  10. Rogue police by Wowsers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just an FYI, the City Of London police are rogue, they are not real police, they are above any other UK law, they are not regulated by anyone like all other UK police forces are. In short, they do what the hell they like. They should never have been allowed to start, let alone be outside the control of / accountable to the public. They also seem to protect The City's worldwide money laundering.

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