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

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."

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City of London Police, NOT Metropolitan Police

[Anonymous Coward]

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.