EasyDNS Continues To Fight Bogus Website Seizures By City Of London Police After Verisign Issues 'No Decision'

from the a-decision-of-no-decision? dept

Wed, Nov 27th 2013 2:50pm — Mike Masnick

Back in October, we wrote about the absolutely ludicrous situation in which the City of London Police ordered registrars to take down a bunch of websites and point them to a page designated by the police (which pointed to some commercial services in London). There was no court order. There was no court involved at all. No one had been charged, sued, tried or anything. Just the City of London Police, their brand new "Intellectual Property Crime Unit" (set up at the urging of the RIAA), and a demand that the website domains be yanked and that the registrars bar them from being transferred out. While some registrars, such as the incredibly misnamed "Public Domain Registry," caved immediately to the completely bogus request, EasyDNS strongly and publicly refused (telling the police to come back with a court order) while also questioning (1) whatever happened to due process and (2) how any registrar could do this when it clearly violated ICANN's policy on transferring domain names.

Given this, EasyDNS went even further and filed a "request for enforcement" against Public Domain Registry, for locking the domains from being transferred out (and to EasyDNS). As EasyDNS notes, PDR's decision to lock the domains, despite being asked to do so by the police, violated ICANN's policies. ICANN's policies are pretty straightforward: the only times a registrar can deny a transfer-out request is in a few specific cases. And "asked by random police" isn't one. Instead there's "court order by a court of competent jurisdiction." But, again, there's been no court order.

Given this, the fact that PDR is denying to transfer the domains to EasyDNS it seems like an open and shut case that PDR is violating the rules. Verisign, which oversees all of this, should have made quick work of this in telling PDR to get on with the transfers. Instead... it totally punted, issuing one of the most bizarre statements you can imagine:

Subject: TDRS Case 45337 – Decision Rendered/ No Decision [ ref:_00DA0Zmyt._500A0GS9Pe:ref ]

Please be advised that Verisign has completed its review of Request for Enforcement Case # 45337 and has rendered a decision of No Decision.

REASON FOR DECISION: Pursuant to Section 3.3.4 of the Registrar Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy, the data provided by the Respondent is inconclusive as to the issues presented.

Got that? Verisign reviewed everything and it's issued its decision, which is no decision. How very Abbott and Costello of them. Furthermore, the "reason" is even more bizarre. Basically, PDR -- the registry accused of violating the rules -- did not provide sufficient data. Huh? That's like saying that someone charged with a crime automatically gets off if they don't provide the evidence against themselves, no matter what evidence the police have.

From here, it appears the process was:

EasyDNS: Here's our request for enforcement with lots of evidence that PDR folded like a cheap card table when some power hungry police force told them to shut down sites and block transfers despite no court order. This violates ICANN's transfer rules.

Verisign: PDR, what happened?

PDR Hmm?

Verisign: Well, EasyDNS, we are issuing a no decision decision, because PDR's answer is inconclusive.

EasyDNS is going to continue to push the matter, however, because it notes the dangerous consequences of Verisign's ridiculous non-decision.

We feel we have an obligation to push this to an appeal now, because otherwise it means that Registrars can arbitrarily slam the doors on outbound transfers, ignore any enforcement requests from the registry and then be granted decisions of "no decisions", thus allowing them to simply keep the domains hostage.

Now there's an easy way to reduce customer churn – to zero.

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Filed Under: city of london police, domain registrars, domain transfers, domains
Companies: easydns, public domain registry, verisign

17 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 27 Nov 2013 @ 3:04pm

It's too bad more people don't follow their example and do the right thing.
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London Police, 27 Nov 2013 @ 3:24pm

Blow us
Hi, we don't care about following the law. We're too busy molesting children.
The London Police
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Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Nov 2013 @ 3:35pm

Advertising
Guess which registrar became my "most likely to register a domain with".... (hint: anyone guessing "PDR" was close only in so much as they also appear in this story...)
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Nov 2013 @ 3:52pm

Re: Advertising
I may have already registered with easydns because of this
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Blaine (profile), 27 Nov 2013 @ 4:00pm

Rush said it best
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Nov 2013 @ 4:26pm

"City of London Police" is not the police.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Nov 2013 @ 4:51pm

Re: Advertising
For me, it won't be easyDNS. It won't be any of its competitors either. It will be my country's registry, https://registro.br/. I gave up on gTLDs after one of the many rounds of arbitrary seizures.
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Ryan, 27 Nov 2013 @ 6:40pm

wow
thats ridiculous considering Verisign is known for being very very strict in requiring court orders for doing anything to domains.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Nov 2013 @ 7:05pm

VeriSign is bought and paid for, just like PDR and many legislatures.
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Watching the watchers, 27 Nov 2013 @ 7:57pm

Re:
Or the porn viewing habits of the companies officers have been leveraged.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2013 @ 12:45am

The City of London Police most certainly are the police. They are the the territorial force for the city of London (the financial centre) and primarily protect business interests there. They have 3 stations and a different badge to the the Metropolitan police who police the rest of London.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2013 @ 2:11am

Re: Blow us
It is not the London police force who are doing this. Its the City of London Police. The city of London is a very small jurisdiction within London and I think you are insulting the MET by claiming its the London Police.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2013 @ 3:21am

Re: Advertising
OpenNIC has several domains available for free registration. Been around for over 10 years now.

http://www.opennicproject.org
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2013 @ 5:46am

what else has got to happen, particularly in the UK, to convince people that a totalitarian government, a police state, isn't right on the doorstep?
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Rob Burns, 28 Nov 2013 @ 7:35am

Re: Totalitarian Government
I agree with Anonymous Coward. This is only one small example of the erosion of the rights of UK citizens. Recently some other quasi-government agent banned a radio commercial from Premier Radio that asked people to contact them if they thought that they were being discriminated against because of their Christians faith. At the same time, numerous radio and print ads appear all over London promoting Muslim and other faith within the work community.

Sir Winston Churchill stood alone among leaders to defend the rights of Great Britain against tyranny. Almost 70 years later, many with virtually no decision making powers are spitting in Churchill's face and taking away the privileges, rights and FREEDOMS that were fought for and many died for.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2013 @ 9:31am

Re: wow
"thats ridiculous considering Verisign is known for being very very strict in requiring court orders for doing anything to domains."

When they want to be.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2013 @ 12:00pm

Welp, looks like I'll never use Verisign. Isn't Verisign owned my MarkMonitor? The company that watches bittorrent swarms and logs IP addresses.

If Verisign is owned by MarkMonitor, then there is obviously a conflict of interest going on at Verisign.

Viewed in this light, it's obvious why Verisign issued a non-determination over a copywrong issue.
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