City Of London Police Claim That 'The Tor' Is 90% Of The Internet, And Is A Risk To Society

from the say-what-now? dept

We've written a bunch about the City of London Police* and their extrajudicial campaign against "piracy" by trying to scare web hosting and domain registrar firms into taking down websites based on nothing more than the City of London Police's say so. However, Adrian Leppard, the guy in charge of the City of London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit (funded both by taxpayers and legacy entertainment companies) spoke at an IP Enforcement Summit in London and his comments, relayed by Torrentfreak, should raise questions about whether or not this is the right person to have anything to do with stopping "crime" on the internet:

“Whether it’s Bitnet, The Tor – which is 90% of the Internet – peer-to-peer sharing, or the streaming capability worldwide. At what point does civil society say that as well as the benefits that brings, this enables huge risk and threat to our society that we need to take action against?”

Yeah, try to parse that one. Beyond not being true, it's almost entirely nonsensical. And this guy is ordering websites completely shut down based on nothing more than his say so?

This sounds kind of like the idiotic debates that were had a decade or so ago, when clueless folks from the entertainment industry were first getting online.

"The Internet pushes through every border control legislation we have and it is carrying a huge amount of harm to our society, as well as offering creative opportunity for business. At some point there has to be a debate and a challenge about the harm the Internet brings."

Yeah, that debate happened long ago, and people realized (1) the claims of harm are completely overblown by folks like yourself and (2) the benefits are massive. Debate closed.

But, really, what Leppard is doing is trying to declare war on the internet, because it's upset the business model of a few businesses that are funding this effort (which would suggest a less-than-unbiased view of the issue):

"The new legislation that’s necessary is not just about prosecuting people and protecting people, we’ve got to think about some of the enabling functions that allow this to happen that we just take for granted."

"Enabling functions"? He's talking about regulating the internet to add deeper layers of secondary liability, thereby effectively destroying one of the most important ingredients to the internet's success. All because his friends in the obsolete legacy parts of the entertainment industry haven't figured out how to adapt.

It would appear that the City of London Police are the legacy entertainment industry's dream law enforcement group: completely clueless about technology and innovation, and not all that concerned about basic legal concepts like due process and protections against third party liability. That lets them rampage through the internet like bullies trying to shut down anything their friends in the industry don't like, oblivious to any collateral damage it might cause. That's a very dangerous tool, and it's going to cause serious problems before too long.

* I don't know what it is about the City of London Police that always seems to make people want to clarify stuff in the comments, but just to cut all this off: (1) Yes, I know that the City of London Police covers just "the City of London" which is about a 1-square mile area within London, rather than the wider London police force and (2) I also know that many of the big banks and big London businesses are in City of London, so the City of London Police have some amount of powerful connections with businesses. There is no reason to clarify any of that in the comments. We know already.

Filed Under: adrian leppard, city of london, city of london police, copyright, enforcement, infringement, secondary liability, tor

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

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