The Registrars Who Shut Down Websites After Demands From City Of London Police Likely Violated ICANN Policy
from the not-how-it-works dept
We recently wrote about the City of London Police ordering various registrars to shut down a list of websites based on the City of London Police themselves deciding they must be illegal. That is, without a court order or any judicial oversight, the police just decided the sites were illegal and needed to be taken offline. On top of that, the police force's new "IP Crime Unit" threatened registrars that if they didn't obey, then they might lose their accreditation from ICANN. This was based on a total misreading of both copyright law and ICANN's rules.In fact, Mark Jeftovic, the head of EasyDNS, the one registrar that appears to have both refused the City of London Police's demand and also spoken out publicly about this terrible attack on due process, is now noting that all of the other registrars who complied with the orders are almost certainly in violation of ICANN's policies because they obeyed the police. The main issue is that part of the demand from the police was that the registrar not only redirect the site to a propaganda page, but that it also "freeze the whois record" to block any further changes.
But, as Jeftovic points out, ICANN has very specific rules about these things, and because some random police force demands it is not an approved reason to do such a thing:
Since there were no charges against any of the domains and no court orders, it may be at the registrars' discretion to play ball with these ridiculous demands. However – what they clearly cannot do now, is prevent any of those domain holders from simply transferring out their names to more clueful, less wimpy registrars.Jeftovic further notes that the registrars who folded upon receiving the police threat have now opened themselves up to significant liability problems, because the sites that got taken down can respond via the Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy (TDRP), which could mean that the registrars will have to pay "substantial" fees for blocking the transfer without a valid basis.If any of those registrars denied the ability to do that, then they would be in clear violation of the ICANN Inter-Registrars Transfer Policy.
Section 3, Obligations of The Registrar of Record clearly spells out the reasons why a registrar may deny a transfer-out request, and they are limited specifically to cases of fraud (the domain was paid for fraudulently), a UDRP proceeding or, hey, get this one "Court order by a court of competent jurisdiction", as well as some administrative reasons (like the domain was registered less than 60 days ago).
What is conspicuously absent from the list of reasons why a registrar that actually complied with this lunacy can now deny a transfer-out request is "because some guy sent you an email telling you to lock it down".
It certainly would be interesting to see the full list of sites the City of London Police decided to censor, as well as who the various registrars are, and how they reacted. While such a list doesn't appear to be out yet, I imagine it's only a matter of time.
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Filed Under: city of london police, copyright, freezing, registrars, whois
Companies: easydns, icann
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SHEESH! Didn't these registrars bother to consult their attorneys or any lawyers experienced with these matters?
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I doubt it, the case of "City of London Police" step in it fairly new, in terms of that it's in fact an official law enforcement unit... just that they don't have the right to order the registrars blocking transfer of domain, etc. It's understandable for the registrars to not realizing the police have no right to do so without checking the rulebook.
That said, I agree that before these registrars do something unusual regarding their business, they should have checked what the rulebook says.
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I smell a class action lawsuit in the works as well
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Why not
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You as well as I know that the London Police did not just up and do this on a snap decision. Someone pushed them hard to do so. I imagine when the list comes out of who not to have a domain registered with it will also come out just who pushed to have it done.
If you ever had a reason not to buy from the majors it's staring you right in the face on this one.
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The "City of London Police" is a very small force that police the small portion of London known as the "City of London" which is a small sector in the centre that houses the financial district.
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It's nice to see that in Europe, the U.K. or whatever they want to call themselves (I wish they would stick to one name for the whole country) that they don't even bother going to court. They take the mentality, "we're the police so we can do whatever the hell we want to do".
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Response to: kenichi tanaka on Oct 11th, 2013 @ 7:52pm
The U.K. and Europe are different groups of countries not individual countries.
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The country's name is England, which is part of the United Kingdom (which contains 4 countries and related territories), which is further part of the continent of Europe (which contains around 50 countries).
Try educating yourself, it's not that hard. You've just basically complained that California can't make up its mind whether it's called California, the USA or North America. Yes, you do look that stupid.
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FYI...
"Europe" is a continent (like Asia).
"UK" is the United Kingdom (consisting of England Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland).
In the same way China and Japan are both in Asia, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all parts of the UK, and indeed all part of Europe as well.
It looks like you would also therefore assume China and Japan are the same place with an identity crisis, in the same way you have assumed that the UK, Europe, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are all the same place!
It might be better if you go and revise/study your geography (before negating your valid points by posting rubbish) before embarrassing yourself the same way again ;-)
HTH
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10
That should clear up any confusion on your part.
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http://www.internetgovernance.org/2013/10/11/the-core-internet-institutions-abandon-the-us-governmen t/
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And driving them deep underground is just making it harder to monitor and investigate those that need to be investigated.
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Fascism
One must comply or find themselves, water-boarded and thrown into a secret prison or can be assassinated if they refuse to do what you say.
Brought to you by United Police State
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All highly dubious
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Re: All highly dubious
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