UK Law Enforcement Also Looking To Be Able To Seize Domains
from the it's-spreading... dept
Ah, the power of censorship. It appears that some other countries may be jealous of Homeland Security getting to seize all those domain names, or the proposed COICA law that would allow even more domain seizures in the US. drew points out that, over in the UK, law enforcement is also asking for official power to force Nominet to shut down domains that it claims were "used by criminals." That seems pretty broad. Lots of domains are "used by criminals" in one way or another, does that mean they should automatically have the right to shut those domains down? And with both the US and the UK looking for such rights, won't more and more countries now start to follow? It certainly makes you wonder about the impact of the overall internet, when various countries can just seek to shut down various domains without any trial determination.
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Filed Under: domain names, seized, uk
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Unless there's some crime-specific search engine that's optimised for "fast getaway car" and "poor security bank" type searches?
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Unfortunately, you probably are not far from the truth. The established trajectory of the actions would put Techdirt in the path of an eventual take down. The pattern of the seizures seems to ignore any freedom of speech issues or the overall legality of the site in question. The only common thread in the seizures is that established industries consider the site inconvenient. Techdirt has had several links to file locker services which the industry considers piracy (never mind that the courts disagree). TD has also had links to multiple artists and works which are not actually under industry copyright, but which various collection societies still claim the right to demand royalties on. Those actions make it guilty of inducing infringement in the eyes of many in the industry.
The knowledge that TD would probably fight a seizure directly is the one thing that might prevent its shutdown. I just hope that Bradley Manning didn't confess under torture that he had any prior contacts with Mike.
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"U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’"
http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-shuts-down-84000-websites-by-mistake-110216/
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My first thought...
... Let alone "just cause" and yes the pun came intended.
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Just save that in your favorites and it doesn't matter who seizes the domain.
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That doesn't solve everything. First thing that springs to mind is email.
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Hopefully this goes full scale soon
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Re: Hopefully this goes full scale soon
Don't worry, if some other country shuts down the domain of a company with lobbying power in the US, it will get turned right back on.
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Re: Re: Hopefully this goes full scale soon
Also Mugabe has a excuse to seize everything, Venezuela will not have to take drastic measures, Bolivia will also have a good time seizing assets from evil international corporations, China will have a blast, South Korea could do it in a focused measure and Europe will try hard to maintain an image but will come down hard on foregein companies specially in Italy, France and Germany, it will be fun.
India could also start seizing assets from big pharma if they business are seized overseas because of counterfeit claims in retaliation.
This will be fun to watch.
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Re: Hopefully this goes full scale soon
America is teaching people how to be anti competitive and this will have profound consequences for U.S. interests.
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Re: Technology progress's for everyone not just one side
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Nothing to do with this
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Re: Nothing to do with this
He wrote this weeks ago and is actually sipping a mimosa on the beach in the Bahamas right now.
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You should see the British timestamps on some of my comments.
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The Nominet issue group brief that will discuss this matter says that
Nominet does not have any clear obligation in its registrant Terms and Conditions that a domain name should not be used in connection with any activity that would constitute an offence under UK criminal law. This is in contrast to many registrars and a number of registries including .org and .biz.
Despite this lack of obligation, apparently Nominet cooperated with the police to take down 1200 UK domains before Christmas this year.
According to the police press release, the sites targeted were selling counterfeit goods. (Though of course that's been conflated with other stuff people don't like...)
Lesley Cowley, chief executive of Nominet, said: "We received clear instructions from the PCeU to take down the .co.uk domain names, which have been under investigation for criminal activity. We worked closely with the police and our registrars to quickly carry out the instruction to shut down access to these sites.
I can find no mention of due process in the press release.
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Some day I shall learn to proof read.
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I figure that the only people who check that are people who are just joking or who check it by mistake. I wonder how much money the government has had to spend running down bogus answers to this question.
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What the hell is taking you so long? Do you need some help?
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Many years ago I remember a story of someone who ticked the box and wrote underneath "Sole purpose of visit".
He still got in - but that was in the days when officials still had a sense of humour!
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This will mean that we just have to back to memorizing IP addresses...
Let's see, did that old Techdirt domain name point to 208.53.48.128 or .129?
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