City Of London Police Keep Shutting Down Websites With No Court Order

from the how-is-that-legal? dept

We've highlighted a number of stories recently about the City of London Police, who have partnered with a few legacy players from the entertainment industry, and are using a bunch of taxpayer money to try to shut down websites the copyright industry doesn't like -- based on no clear legal reasoning or authority. They often seem to just rely on their name and bogus threats to get registrars to kill sites -- a process that has been found to violate ICANN policies for registrars. However, most registrars just give in, because the City of London Police just look so damn official.

Over the weekend TorrentFreak noted that a few more sites have been shuttered based on no court order, no judicial findings, but just the City of London Police's say so. This includes FileCrop, a site that hosted no infringing files at all, but which is just a search engine. Once again, the police make no effort whatsoever to hide the fact that they're doing the bidding of the legacy entertainment industry -- directly linking to their favored sites and flat out saying that they're supported by BPI, IFPI, FACT and the Publishers Association. Whether or not the sites that are being taken down are, in fact, violating the law, everything about this process is highly questionable. Taking down websites without a court order is a blatant attack on free speech. And, yes, while the UK does not have the same free speech traditions as the US, it does still hold itself out as being a believer in free speech. It is difficult to see the shuttering of a website without any due process as little more than blatant censorship.

Perhaps even more troubling is the fact that this censorship is proudly done to support legacy industries who see the internet as something to be shunned and attacked. How would people respond if the City of London Police suddenly, with no court order, shut down BSkyB and proudly announced it was doing so with the support of the BBC? Or shut down AirBnB and announced it was doing so with the support of the British Hospitality industry? Or shut down EasyJet and did so with the support of British Air? Wouldn't people be outraged?

Filed Under: city of london police, domains, restistrars, search engines, takedowns
Companies: bpi, fact, filecrop, icann, ifpi, publishers association

City Of London Police Create Secret 'Pirate Site Blacklist' For Advertisers, With No Transparency

from the hollywood's-private-police-force dept

It really looks like Hollywood has finally gotten its own private police force in the form of the tiny City of London Police (not to be confused with the London Metropolitan Police -- as everyone always wants to remind people). The City of London Police, technically, are in charge of protecting a tiny spec of London, right in the middle -- covering about a square mile, with a population of about 7,400 people. Yet, because of the "London" name, people often think they're bigger and more important than they really are, and the legacy entertainment industry appears to have seized on this in a big, big way, gleefully supporting their efforts. Of course, the UK government has helped as well, by giving the City of London Police £2.56 million ($4.3 million) to take orders from the entertainment industry.

And we've seen just how hamfisted these efforts have become. Last fall, the City of London Police started ordering registrars to shut down a bunch of websites based on no legal authority whatsoever, and no court order (no court proceedings at all). It was just the City of London Police saying so. And the ridiculous part is that many clueless registrars complied, despite it being against ICANN rules to do so.

Over the past few months, the City of London Police have also been targeting advertising on sites that the entertainment industry tells them are illegal -- again with no actual review by a court to determine if those claims are accurate. Their latest move is to create a "pirate site blacklist" that they will give to advertisers, telling them they should not allow advertising to go on those sites. The list was put together "in collaboration with entertainment industry groups." The City of London Police refuse to reveal what's on the list, despite the fact that the list was put together with taxpayer funds in the UK.

This is problematic for any number of reasons, but the biggest may be what happened the last time such a list was put together. As you may recall, a bunch of the same music labels came up with a very similar list for advertising giant GroupM, a part of WPP three years ago. And that list, which eventually was revealed, was such a mess that it included tons of legitimate sites including hip hop blogs, Vimeo, SoundCloud and more. The most ridiculous of all? The list, which was mostly put together by people at Universal Music, included Universal Music artist 50 Cent's own personal website.

One would hope that the labels and the City of London Police will be more careful this time around, but given that they're keeping the taxpayer-funded list a secret, who can tell?

Filed Under: advertisers, bpi, city of london, city of london police, ifpi, pirate site blacklist, transparency

City Of London Police Cannot Seize Domains Just Because Hollywood Says The Websites Are Infringers

from the due-process-matters dept

Last fall, we noted that the City of London Police, who had just set up a special "intellectual property crime unit" which appeared to be taking orders directly from Hollywood, had issued bizarre orders to registrars, based on no court order or ruling, that they hand over domain names to the police, point them to a splash page that advertised Hollywood-approved businesses, and block the transfer of those domains to anyone else. A bunch of registrars actually did this, despite the lack of a court order or ruling of any kind. Just because the City of London Police said so. The only registrar who apparently resisted was EasyDNS, who pointed out that there's such a thing called due process. Furthermore, EasyDNS pointed out that the registrars who complied with the order almost certainly violated ICANN policies for registrars, which has a very specific set of conditions under which a registrar can freeze a whois record, none of which include "because some Hollywood-controlled police force says so."

The owners of at least one of the frozen domains sought to then (smartly) move the domain to EasyDNS, who would actually protect them. EasyDNS went to Verisign with a "request for enforcement" against the registrar who froze the whois, the incredibly misnamed "Public Domain Registry." For reasons that make no sense at all, Verisign responded with a "no decision."

EasyDNS appealed that ruling, and finally after all of that, the National Arbitration Forum has pointed out exactly what EasyDNS said from the very beginning: Public Domain Registry cannot freeze the domain:

No court order has been issued which would prohibit the transfer of the domain names at issue from the Registrar of Record to the Gaining Registrar. Therefore, there is nothing in the Transfer Policy which authorizes the Registrar of Record to refuse to transfer the domain names.

The ruling notes that while one may think it makes sense to obey a request from the police, "the Transfer Policy is unambiguous in requiring a court order before a Registrar of Record may deny a request to transfer a domain name." It further notes, correctly, the nature and importance of due process, as without it, abuse is too easy:

To permit a registrar of record to withhold the transfer of a domain based on the suspicion of a law enforcement agency, without the intervention of a judicial body, opens the possibility for abuse by agencies far less reputable than the City of London Police. Presumably, the provision in the Transfer Policy requiring a court order is based on the reasonable assumption that the intervention of a court and judicial decree ensures that the restriction on the transfer of a domain name has some basis of “due process” associated with it.

Public Domain Registry tried to defend itself, by arguing that it could freeze the domains because "their involvement in fraudulent activity." However, the arbitration ruling says both that this is wrong and a total misreading of ICANN's transfer policy. It's wrong in that no one has actually presented any evidence of fraudulent activity, and because the sites being used for fraudulent activity is not one of the reasons why a registrar can block a transfer.

The Registrar of Record argued that a basis for withholding the transfer of the domain names was their involvement in fraudulent activity. The Response stated that the three domain names “were involved in criminal distribution of copyrighted material directly or indirectly and are liable to prosecution under UK law which serves as evidence of fraud” under the Transfer Policy. First, the Registrar of Record’s assertion is not correct as the London Police Request does not state that it has evidence of fraud. The Registrar of Record apparently contacted the London Police, as the Registrar states that the London Police have “agreed to answer any and all questions that might arise with regards to these domain names.”

Second, the reference to “evidence of fraud” in the Transfer Policy does not refer to fraudulent conduct by the holder of the domain name, but evidence of fraud with respect to the transfer of that domain name

Kudos to Mark Jeftovic and EasyDNS for fighting for basic due process. If you're looking for a DNS provider or registrar, they seem like a good one, who is willing to actually stand up for their users' rights and basic concepts like due process. If you're looking for a registrar to avoid, Public Domain Registry immediately goes to the top of the list, for not only failing to comprehend the official transfer policies it is bound to uphold, but for not even remotely caring about basic due process, and being willing to lock down domains despite absolutely no judicial review.

Filed Under: city of london, city of london police, copyright, domain seizure, domain transfers, domains, uk
Companies: easydns, public domain registry

UK Police Target Advertising On Infringing Sites, Opens Door For Scammers And Malware Purveyors

from the replacing-bad-ads-with-foul-software dept

No good deed by government agencies goes unpunished it seems, although it appears the average citizen bears the brunt of these punishments nearly every time. The UK's long-running battle with porn and infringement recently combined to the detriment of computer users across the country.

City of London Police are claiming credit for the suspension of 40 ad-funded websites that provided unauthorised access to copyright-protected content – but may have caused a rise in the number of web ads carrying malware or promoting pornography.

Operation Creative has resulted in the suspension of 40 national and international websites by domain name registrars during a three month pilot. The campaign was led by the new Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) in collaboration with the creative industry, as represented by FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft), the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) and The Publishers Association.

That's the upside. Dozens of infringing sites suspended and pleased industry execs smiling warmly at the results of their latest attempt to drain the web of infringement using a handful of thimbles.

The suspensions and extra public attention resulted in a 12% drop in advertising from major brands. But, when you create a hole on the internet, something will rush in and fill it.

[A]dverts that led users to sites with explicit adult content or exposed them to malware increased by 39 per cent during the same period...

Almost half (46 per cent) of total ads served to the sites were for unknown or unidentified brands which invited users to click through, often to fraudulent scams.

While infringement may have been dented, the rise in fraudulent activity more than made up for it. And what didn't lead to infected computers led to sites the government is actively discouraging people from visiting with its mandatory porn filtering.

This, of course, was pitched by the masters of the inadvertent disasters as a good thing:

Police put a positive spin on this development, arguing that switching to shadier sources of advertising is unsustainable and that "site owners may struggle to maintain their revenue streams when adverts from established brands are removed".

In all reality, relying solely on low quality web ads isn't really a "business model." What the City of London police have done is slow a trickle of income to a halt and allowed those with shadier (but more lucrative) "business models" to fill the void with malware infections and scams.

BPI's statement on the takedowns seems to imply that this activity has made the web safer, despite evidence gathered to the contrary.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, said: “The early results from Operation Creative show that through working with the police and the online advertising industry, we can begin to disrupt the funding that sustains illegal websites. These sites expose consumers to scams and malware, deny creators their living, and harm brands by associating them with illegal and unsafe content."

Right. Except that disrupting the sites has led to even more malware and scammy behavior. This may be a small win for BPI and its cohorts, but the consumers aren't being protected in any way. But I suppose that's a small price (for someone else) to pay when fighting infringement. If someone looking for illicit content ends up with an infected computer, it's no one's fault but their own, right?

I'm not suggesting the rights holders are actively working to make the web less safe, but that seems to be the end result, intended or not. Maybe the City of London police will throw a little of its investigative muscle into shutting those operators down, rather than just running interference for the copyright industry. Or maybe it will just continue to "enforce" the law by skirting ICANN policies as it has in the past with its highly-questionable domain takedowns that were backed with threats to hold registrars responsible for the alleged infringement happening on the disabled sites.

Filed Under: advertising, city of london police, copyright infringement, liability, malware, uk
Companies: bpi

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

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.

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

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.

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".

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.

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.

Filed Under: city of london police, copyright, freezing, registrars, whois
Companies: easydns, icann

London Police Order Registrars To Shut Down A Bunch Of Websites Without Any Legal Basis; Threaten Registrars If They Don't Comply

from the due-process-matters dept

Just a few months ago, the City of London Police announced that it had set up a special " Intellectual Property Crime Unit" -- which was immediately, and gleefully, welcomed by the legacy record labels. The whole thing seemed fairly bizarre, given that copyright should generally be a civil issue, and even when it's a criminal issue, at best it should be a federal issue, not a local police issue -- especially when you have local police who almost certainly don't understand the basic nuances of copyright issues. However, in what appears to be an effort to justify their existence, the City of London IP Crimes Unit has jumped into the deep end without looking. Beyond quickly arresting some folks, this week they demanded that EasyDNS take down a website for a BitTorrent search engine, claiming copyright infringement, based on their claims alone. They did not present a court order. They did not present a conviction. They just told EasyDNS to do it -- and (worse) threatened EasyDNS with punishment for not obeying, claiming (falsely) that it could lose its accreditation as a domain registrar. EasyDNS's Mark Jeftovic, who is incredibly well-versed in these issues (having spoken out previously on bogus domain name seizures) posted a fantastic response, which we're going to post at length. There's more than this, but it's worth reading the whole thing.

Who decides what is illegal? What makes somebody a criminal?  Given that the subtext of the request contains a threat to refer the matter to ICANN if we don't play along, this is a non-trivial question. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it was something that gets decided in a court of law, as opposed to "some guy on the internet" sending emails. While that's plenty reason enough for some registrars to take down domain names, it doesn't fly here.

We have an obligation to our customers and we are bound by our Registrar Accreditation Agreements not to make arbitrary changes to our customers settings without a valid FOA (Form of Authorization). To supersede that we need a legal basis. To get a legal basis something has to happen in court.

The request also suggests we look at the whois contact information for the domain (which looks perfectly valid) and go ahead and suspend the domain based on invalid whois data. Again, there's a process for that, you have to go through the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint process and most of the time that doesn't result in a takedown anyway.

What gets me about all of this is that the largest, most egregious perpetrators of online criminal activity right now are our own governments, spying on their own citizens, illegally wiretapping our own private communications and nobody cares, nobody will answer for it, it's just an out-of-scope conversation that is expected to blend into the overall background malaise of our ever increasing serfdom.

If I can't make various governments and law enforcement agencies get warrants or court orders before they crack my private communications then I can at least  require a court order before I takedown my own customer.

Furthermore, Jeftovic notes that the police ordered him to redirect all of the traffic to a different site that promotes some content services that the entertainment industry likes, and noted that this was a fairly obscene form of intimidation for the sake of local protectionism of favored industry players:

In other words, they are ordering us to take down competing websites, with no legal basis, hijacking the traffic, and redirecting it to competing commercial services, all of which are based out of (guess where?) London, UK.

This whole thing is fairly stunning, and Jeftovic even suggests he wasn't sure it was real at first, though the headers from the email suggest that it's legit. Furthermore, it appears that this was not a one-off situation. TorrentFreak is reporting that the City of London Police sent out a bunch of these letters to various registrars, targeting a variety of sites -- with no evidence that there's a court order, or indeed any court case at all, with all of them. And while EasyDNS isn't complying, it appears that many other registrars did get intimidated into shutting down these sites.

The thuggish behavior and lack of due process isn't that surprising. Combine a "respect my authority" law enforcement mentality, with people who don't have much (or any) experience with the nuances (or history or purpose) of intellectual property issues, and you're going to get this kind of overreaction. Add to that the likelihood that the legacy industry helped provide the extreme (and wrong and misleading) version of copyright law, and is it any wonder that the police seemed to just start demanding websites be pulled down willy nilly just because the police think they're illegal?

If you only were to hear the legacy movie studios' and record labels' version of things, copyright is about establishing their very important business model, and anything that threatens that must be illegal. If you see a service that enables some form of infringement, well, that must be illegal, too, right? Of course, they won't realize that copyright is not about establishing a business model for those gatekeepers, that blaming tools & services for the actions of their users is a recipe for killing innovation, and (most importantly) that these things are rarely black and white. And that's why you have due process.

The City of London IP Crime Unit has only been around for a little over three months. One hopes that they'll actually learn something before pulling these kinds of censorious, abusive and thuggish stunts in the future. And, while we're at it, it seems reasonable to call for shutting down the whole unit in the first place. IP crimes are not an issue for an ignorant metropolitan police force. The unit never should have been set up in the first place, and this little cowboy censorship action highlights why the unit deserves to be quickly retired.

Filed Under: city of london, city of london police, copyright, domain seizures, due process, london, search engines, uk
Companies: easydns