Plods to get dot-uk takedown powers - without court order Police in the UK could get new powers to suspend internet domain names without a court order if they're being used for illegal activity, under rules proposed to .uk registry manager Nominet. A Nominet volunteer policy team has recommended the creation of an "expedited" process for shutting down addresses when the police say " …
Dear 'The "issues group" behind the creation of the recommendations'
Please list all sites using a .uk domain that have lead you to introduce this rule. I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that list will be zero.
Thanks for introducing another rule that will take down legitimate sites and leave the criminals untouched.
>>"Whilst I'm all for protecting the average Joe/Julie Bloggs this, to me at least, sounds like the start of a VERY slippery slope..."
But *any* change /could/ be viewed as the start of a slippery slope, given a suitably-chosen direction of gravity.
Except that in reality, once people are actually standing on them, most slopes seem to be decidedly less steep or slippery than some people feared.
I'm sure that there were people arguing that the removal of the requirement for vehicles to be preceded by someone carrying a red flag was a slippery slope to people being allowed to drive at 300mph through village streets.
Isn't the important thing to examine a particular suggested change and make a judgement as to whether that change is good, bad or neutral in itself, rather than considering some hypothetical scenario which may be a bit like the suggested one, but taken to some distant extreme?
And even when examining the possible benefits/drawbacks of a particular proposed change, surely the sensible thing is not to focus /solely/ on the potential worst cases, but on the likely overall balance of good and bad, or consider steps which might be taken to reduce the chances of the worst outcomes happening (like having meaningful compensation in the case of a domain being unfairly blocked)?
Am I to take from your post that you think that giving Plod this level of judicial authority, without formal oversight by the courts, is a good thing? And as for "consider steps which might be taken to reduce the chances of the worst outcomes happening (like having meaningful compensation in the case of a domain being unfairly blocked)?" exactly how much compensation did you have in mind, how do you actually formulate 'meaningful' compensation. And who would foot the bill for said compo? Would that be the particular Plod taking the action personally paying the compo? No, it would end up being the rest of us shelling out for Plod's screw-ups as usual.
I believe the 'slippery slope' referred to is the political expediency of giving Plod ever increasing, unchecked judicial 'authority' without reference to the courts. (Cue police state).
Plod needs to be put back in his collective box, and reminded that his purpose is to uphold the law, and that it is the court's purpose to enforce the law.
>>"I believe the 'slippery slope' referred to is the political expediency of giving Plod ever increasing, unchecked judicial 'authority' without reference to the courts. (Cue police state)."
But the basic problem with 'slippery slope' arguments is that they're fundamentally lazy and typically logically inconsistent.
They seem to assume an effective /inevitability/ about the future being a wild extrapolation of some proposed change to the current situation.
However, if that is a valid logical argument now, then presumably if the exact same logic had been applied in the past to one of any number of past changes, the conclusion then would presumably have been that where we currently are is already past what would have been previously imagined as some point of no return.
Either that past conclusion is correct (in which case we may as well give up) or it isn't, in which case the slippery slope argument logically fails.
It's also a fairly patronising kind of argument, implicitly suggesting that /other/ people will be too stupid/idle/sheeplike to do anything in the future even if things actually do get bad, while simultaneously demonstrating how foresighted the proposer of the argument is now, even though many other people taking a more pragmatic view of the situation are perfectly capable of /imagining/ potential extreme extrapolations while understanding that those aren't necessarily the primary thing that should be taken into account when looking at a particular proposal.
Given the *actual* change under discussion rather than paranoid worries about what it possibly could (or 'obviously will') lead to in the distant future, what seems to be important is what would actually happen in the cases where a domain is wrongly seized where that seizure wouldn't have happened in the current situation - how quickly could a decision be challenged, and what (if any) compensation might be available.
>>"Am I to take from your post that you think that giving Plod this level of judicial authority, without formal oversight by the courts, is a good thing?"
If wrongful seizures can be appealed, there would be oversight after the event, as there is in all kinds of other situations, such as considering whether an arrest or seizure of property was legal.
As for how bad or good it might be, what seems most important is not whether there's a theoretical possibility of misuse or abuse, since there will be that possibility in the case of any power granted to anyone, but how much that misuse/abuse will happen in practice and what kind of redress there might be.
How much happens in practice is something that is only clear over time, even if educated guesses can be made, (though I'd venture that the people assuming maximum possible abuse are probably not making the most educated of guesses).
What kind of redress there might be is something that isn't currently clear.
Personally, I prefer to wait for adequate information before making a judgement, though I understand that some other people feel differently.
One thing that does seem probable is that if the suggested power was repeatedly used to seize domains where there wasn't a valid legal case, whether through malice or incompetence (in the way that many slippery slope people seem to assume it necessarily would be), that would be likely to cause reactions which would lead to a modification of the power or changes in its application.
Though even if that happened, it wouldn't seem to be at all likely to make the lovers of slippery slope arguments actually think about what they'd predicted and how things ended up - they'd only see any misapplication of the power as proving they were right all along, but ignore whether the power had actually been used for the common good in other situations, and also ignore any corrective action taken which was seemingly moving the world up the slippery slope, rather than down it.
>>"how do you actually formulate 'meaningful' compensation. And who would foot the bill for said compo? Would that be the particular Plod taking the action personally paying the compo? No, it would end up being the rest of us shelling out for Plod's screw-ups as usual."
I guess in a decent system, it'd be up to courts to consider potential compensation, bearing in mind any losses suffered.
Would personal financial accountability mean that if a judge currently makes a wrong decision in granting a right to seize a domain, (or in other areas, like making an incorrect ruling which leads to a wrongful criminal conviction) the /judge/ should be personally liable to pay compensation?
If so, who'd be a judge?
If not, then why should the police be treated differently?
And as for who ends up paying, surely the logic is that the primary aim of compensation is to recompense someone for losses unfairly imposed on them, with penalising the people responsible and/or getting them and others to be more careful in future being a different issue, and one which could be pursued in various ways.
I have a word for you. RIPA. now go back, read your post again in relation to what happened with RIPA and reflect on what a load of hopeful, but for that dangerous, nonsense it is. And BTW it's not the slippery slope metaphor, but the thin end of the wedge metaphor which applies here. The slippery slope metaphor implies you lose control at an increasing velocity, which is not how it works. The thin end if the wedge argument implies the government are free to keep tapping the wedge with a hammer every now and again at a time of their choosing. Tap it sharply but lightly and no one is motivated to complain.
Nobody likes bad service or long wait on the phone to receive impersonal customer service, but according to your argument, it's patronizing to suggest we could get a society where people are herded like sheep and do nothing about it - sorry, bad news for you, but it seems we already got that. The problem of bad customer service isn't fixed because no one individual has enough to gain by "taking on the system" so we all just relate tales of woe re: how bad our experience with Virgin, or BT or whoever else has been. And when there is inaction, a further problem is government policy like this starts to inject fear into the system. Not out and out obvious, "they're burning down the houses" fear, but fear of an interruption to easy life. "I'll leave it to the activists to take action, I have a business and a family and too much to do and too much to lose."
Lastly, your argument can be summarized as the "don't worry it won't happen" argument. But history has proven it can and does happen. Do you thunk the Germans had a different inferior class of civilized society and democracy than the rest of Europe before the Nazis grasped power?
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
The above quote is historical. It is powerful precisely because *it happened*
@david wilson
Having someone walking in front of a car seem ridiculous now. I'm sure at the time it seemed ridiculous to many at the time. But it was part of the transition to a vehicle driving society, along with buggy whips, we take for granted today.
So maybe having the courts sanction take down orders is the equivalent of someone walking in front of a car. Is that so bad to start with? If the courts (and parliament) find the police are responsible and proportionate in their use of another power - and when case law exists to help those innocents subject to take down orders - then society can agree that there are more limited circumstances needed for a court order.
I agree everyone want to see criminals prosecuted and their ill-gotten gains confiscated. But not at any cost. How many entirely innocent (and probably small and therefore to all intents and purposes defenceless) businesses will be closed as a result?
This is the police asking for powers above and beyond. You can't fault them for asking. That's their responsibility. But it's societies responsibility to push back and/or seek adequate safeguards.
A lop-sided extradition agreement was agreed with the US in the wake of 9-11 to help prosecute terror suspects. Who would have thought that within less than a year it was being used to extradite UK nationals for offenses not obviously related to terrorism? But officialdom will always use legislation intended for one purpose to handle another unless there's explicit reason no to. It's not a dig at officialdom: you and I would probably do the same. Its recognizing that powers without adequate checks are not a good thing.
More worrying to me, is witnessing fraudulent retail and pay-by-card services websites which are obviously hoovering up thousands if not millions of £GBP, and there appearing to be no efficient means by which they can be squashed in time to stop people losing their money.
A while ago, there was a site, selling everything for about 50% of what it should cost - iPhones, laptops, mobile phones, you get the picture... and all of its products were RSS-ing straight into Google Product Search. Nobody I spoke to had a clue what to do about this. Plod needs a quick procedure of stopping this kind of thing - and likewise fraudulent ticket sales scams and the like, among other scams.
...outrageous.
The whole point of the court order is to inject some common sense and allow the request to be heard from a neutral stand point precisely so that the police do not just arbitrarily go around causing havoc.
What next? allow the police to simply arrest and jail someone without due process because its "urgent"? "It will never happen!" I hear you cry but this is the start of a very slippery slope indeed.
We are slowly sleepwalking into a bloody nightmare.
We live under a dictatorship - we only get to choose the dictator.
>>"The whole point of the court order is to inject some common sense and allow the request to be heard from a neutral stand point precisely so that the police do not just arbitrarily go around causing havoc."
At the moment, would an initial court order generally be the result of a one-sided presentation of evidence to a judge by police or lawyers acting on behalf of the state, or would there typically be any involvement of a domain owner?
At least for cases which legality of a site seemed borderline or where it seems an owner might well be unaware of supposed illegal content, I'd wonder how often a domain owner who is actually contactable currently is contacted before attempts are made to seize the domain, and if that happens to a meaningful degree now, would that be likely to change much even after a change to the seizure system?
Try running a personal website with a .co.uk which might have a link to a friends online shop. Unless you take down the link they will unleash your personal details on the public internet. To keep your personal details, personal; your not allowed ANY advertising or money making or ANY links to any website that makes money on your website. How harsh! Now the police can shut-down any website they don't like. Regardless of the complaint being withheld or not the damage is done.
Because .org.uk, .co.uk mean nothing and who can use what is not means administered. Certainly when I brought the domain nearly 10 years ago I wasn't aware of the implications.
You could assume .co means 'cooperative' or a 'group' of people. Some 'groups' don't want to be labelled organisations because they are not, they are simply a group and not organised with leaders and followers.
So I run a co-operative website/forum for a group that isnt an organisation, I make NO money and I want to keep my personal information safe, why cant I!
>Because .org.uk, .co.uk mean nothing and who can use what is not means administered. Certainly >when I brought the domain nearly 10 years ago I wasn't aware of the implications.
>You could assume .co means 'cooperative' or a 'group' of people. Some 'groups' don't want to be >labelled organisations because they are not, they are simply a group and not organised with
>leaders and followers.
It's made perfectly clear what the intended use of the suffixes are for.
See http://www.nominet.org.uk/registrants/aboutdomainnames/rules/
Part 6 appendix A has a nice summary table.
And anyway, are you sure it is Nominet who exposed your personal details and not just your registrar's automated systems ?
>Try running a personal website with a .co.uk
Why? That's what org.uk is for......life would be simpler and neater, though granted less profitable for Nominet, if only a UK Ltd company could operate a co.uk.
As with all good ideas and Standards online, greed takes over and ruins it right at the fundamentals.....and don't even start me on the demise of hostnames in favour of w3 all the frigging time.
well as far as my company is concerned this will now makes it's way onto the risk register, which means shareholders will be in a position to hammer directors if we lose money due to our website being taken down. Especially when the compensating control was as easy as "use .com domain instread".
I wonder how much business nominet will lose due to this ?
but the due diligence would have to factor in the chances that a US court will issue a takedown notice BEFORE the action, against the fact that there is no such safeguard in the UK.
It all depends on the possible impact. If you're web presence is incidental to your core business, you might figure it's a risk worth running, and would grade your audit accordingly. However, if losing your web presence for (say) 48 hours, while you file some (expensive) legal motion for a judicial review, means you could go bankrupt (e.g. amazon.co.uk) then you might figure that instigating a compensating control is worthwhile.
Don't forget, in big business a lot of contracts do involve an exchange of DD documents. I know one big bid (hundreds of thousands) my company made required bank statements, DR plans, and business growth plans before they would sign (they did). In fact it got so common we published the DR plans on our website. Caused quite a shock, as it stated that after 24 hours of office outage, key staff would be relocated to the London office (from Brum). Which was first they knew of it.
You're right if due diligence was actually properly considered. The problem is that from all appearances it isn't. Otherwise we wouldn't be ending up with this sort of siutation:
http://gizmodo.com/5762161/feds-accidentally-shut-down-84000-websites-over-wrongful-kiddie-porn-accusation
The warrants they use in the US would appear to be worthless and little more than part of a process of legitimising what the authorities are doing over there.
are the reason the warrants are worthless as the police and other authorities have tame judges who will sign any court order without question.
The same would be the case in the UK as I have no doubt that the police know precisely what skeletons are in which Judge's closets...
Plus they're all bl00dy Masons anyway... the chief constables and judges...
With a little mission creep here in expanding beyond .uk domains (via ISP's maybe?) and expanding the list of offences to include oh say public disorder and rioting, could this be the method by which the police could shut down Facebook or twitter during times of civil unrest, without 'any new powers' as mentioned in earlier news article??
pass my tin hat please...
I did a quick Google search for 'government repression of information' and came up with a list of former government leaders who suppressed newspapers and other media types over the years. Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chí Minh, Hussein, Gaddafi, Kim Jong il...
Never heard of that lot, but I assume things worked out for them in the end.
The Met involvement in serious organised crime... corruption & bribery in particular... would justify the take down of Met.police.uk.
And for that matter... if you're going to target serious organised crime, Murdoch's NewsInternational.co.uk too.
Suppose someone, somewhere makes an accusation, your domain name gets seized, your business grinds to a halt, and so on, and so forth. That might turn out very expensive. Do they have an "expedited" review mechanism? Some way to provide compensation in case the seizure turns out to be wrongful? Anything, anyone?
I think they ought to have all that, and more, as they're insisting on reinventing the justice system just for domain names. Then that must include redress.
your ongoing due diligence should have flagged this up to your risk audit team. They should have codified the risk, and investigated a compensating control. Depending on their assesment of *likelihood* and *impact* of risk, then the most obvious is "use a .com instead".
For a UK based firm, (say a bank) then while likelihood of a domain takedown is probably as close to zero as you can get, the impact would be catastrophic. I don't think it would be hysterical to say that for some companies, this could trigger bankruptcy.
Once the DD has been flagged, the onus is on the directors to direct, and mitigate the risk - if they don't, it could be their arse in a sling.
Notice, the DD doesn't need to factor wether the takedown is legitimate or spurious. Just that it could happen.
As another AC above pointed out, this news will precipitate a few companies switching to .com, or at least maintaining a .com mirror.
A ,com mirror, or a ,eu mirror, would make sense as part of a general strategy of protecting against failures. You have back-up servers in another location, and you have back-up name servers and domains.
Oh, I can see the point about needing to protect against fast-happening crimes: imagine an event like the HP fondleslab sale being a fraud, You'd have a couple of days after taking the money to do a runner, before people got suspicious. But I can't see the system being able to react fast enough.
I think this is something dangerous (and the police have always had tame Magistrates who can be depended on to issue warrants in the "right" sort of case). It needs some pretty strong checks, with statutory backing.
I can see child porn applications for this, but counterfeit shops can be dealt with by court order.
phishing sites are another nice target, but anyone on a largeish ISP will have already cached the DNS entries anyway.
copyright infringement? seriously, just strike it from the legislation if you don't recommend it...
This is a stupid, ignorant and incredibly dangerous suggestion.
If the police want to close down a site, they should get a court order. End of story.
The only possible reason for not wanting to get a court order to close down a site, is that the applicant thinks that they probably won't get it.
If they don't think they would be able to get a court order, then they shouldn't be trying to take down the site in the first place.
Court orders do not take very long to get.
If this actually does happen, then the first couple might happen quietly but pretty soon a legitimate small business or organisation will be affected and they *will* go all the way to the EU if necessary.
I'm increasingly worried by the attitude of some police organisations who behave as if the law doesn't apply to them. That's the attitude that those rioters had - how about the police try setting a good example instead of a bad one?
For all occurrences of 'not' in that article, substitute 'not yet'.
Once it's in place, the first thing they will do is think up all sorts of reasons why it has to be expanded just a little bit. And just a little bit more. And ...
It's not a matter of pointing out previous times they've done exactly this. More a matter of has there ever been a single time when they have *not* done so.
It doesn't matter what Nominet, the police, or anyone else claims about how this would work, every bit of experience we humans have about power relationships points clearly to the fact that at some point the system WILL be abused, the injured party's path of recourse turns out to be impractical or non-existant, they will get royally screwed, never get more than a fraction of lost revenue back (if indeed anything at all) , and whoever screwed up or abused the system will get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
If this really gets implemented I could write the news story now, and then just fill in the blanks with names and dates when it inevitably happens within the next 5 years. It would be depressing except that it's Friday and I refuse to be depressed - so beer :)
Gosh, I'm so happy the world at large is going to be a safer place because Plod can take down a .uk address.
Although, I have to ask, isn't it remarkable easy to get a whatever-ever-you-bleeding-want address within seconds thus negating this faster than said Plod can apply to Nominet?
Shh, don't tell teh crooks there are .cc addresses to be had for free.
the policy proposal makes frequent mention of the motivation being the need to expedite the process and criminal activity being committed in this time window.
it would therefore seem self evident that any suspension should only last for a time appropriate for the police to obtain an injunction.
more broadly to whole proposal is deeply worrying. who is going to be the arbiter of what is and what isn't appropriate. when the EDL plan a rally that turns into a protest who is going to decide if that is criminal or free speech. If paypal refuses to block payments to some organisation that is distasteful to the police who decides if it's ok to block that? Traditionally the courts make these decisions that's what they are there for.
Of course they'd never block anyone or anything that might fight back.
How long does it take to get an injunction anyway? The need to be swift is often used as an excuse for ignoring basic rights.
Hang on a minute! Copyright infringement? That's NOT a 'serious organised crime', in fact it's not a crime at all. Copyright infringement is merely an infraction under CIVIL law and any powers given to the police should have no bearing on it whatsoever given that they enforce CRIMINAL law.
The simple fact that several members of the 'MAFIAA'-backed 'FACT' are ex-police officers themselves should be setting alarm bells ringing when the police force (their old colleagues) are being given powers to enforce such action to directly represent of the commercial interests of a few select entertainment media corporations.
Are the people in this country really so asleep that they can't see how comprehensively their freedoms are being sold to powerful companies? This is PURE Fascism in play right now, in plain sight.
If you take a piece of copyright work and either illegally duplicate and sell it, or illegally distribute it for free to the point where the copyright holder's business is impacted, you are breaking the law.
The police have every right to confiscate the copies you've made of the work, the equipment you used to copy it, any money you made from it, they can arrest you and you can be prosecuted. You would be a criminal.
There are other situations where copyright infringement becomes a criminal matter too. Go read a summary of the relevant acts.
Quite right about the distinction between Civil and Criminal law, but there is a cross over when it comes to Copyright Infringement;
Copying a DVD = Civil Law
Making 10,000 copies to sell = Criminal Law
Massive copyright infringement for commercial reasons is a criminal matter, whilst mostly everything else is civil law.
In either case, I'm not sure it should be on this list at all. It doesn't harm consumers as you generally pay less for a fake/copy (and if it's advertised as real then that would be fraud, which should be on the list).
There's way too much scope for abuse, and it will be abused (probably quite quickly). As others mentioned, if the rule goes in it's going to be something else on the risk register.
How totally Naïve of Alex Bowers to expect this not to be used as a path of least resistance. The law is the law, nothing should side step it! If there is an urgent drugs related matter, the Police need a court order. What's the difference here. They can get it fast if they really need it fast. Fact is law enforcement don't understand, nor care for the net, so it will simply be, if in doubt, shut it down. Nominet and their carefully constructed "issue group" are frankly spreading their legs wide open for the Police and Politicians here. Foolish and ignorant to the judicial system.
>>"I can just see the Met in particular using this to silence anybody critical of their trigger-happiness, ignoring of 'phone hacking, etc."
Yeah, right, because if they're bothered about their image, there couldn't be any possible publicity /downside/ to doing something like that, could there?
This *COULD* have been done properly - take out all less-serious crimes from their list and only suspend a domain for maximum 48 hours (better set the limit at less, but I won't insist).
If the police cannot get a court order within that time, the domain should be unblocked and owner should automatically be sent a template for complaining to the relevant authorities.
DNS is just about who you trust as root, it's up to everybody what they use, just like the many recent certificate problems.
I run a server which has all TLD available for purchase, just $50 for google.com + Youtube.com + wikipedia.org, one time offer. It's on the internet and anyone can query it, they just have to make the connection.
counterfeiting, fraud, prostitution, money laundering, blackmail and .... shock horror ....copyright infringement
copyright infringement ?
yeah that's on a par with ounterfeiting, fraud, prostitution, money laundering, and blackmail
except that while the ose are criminal offenses, copyright infringement is not
Apologies if this has already been noticed by the vast majority of commenters and appropriate action taken, but for those who may have missed it, the very last paragraph of this article reads:
"In the meantime, UK internet users are encouraged to submit their opinions. The draft report, and information for filing a comment, can be found here [http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest?contentId=8617]."
Isn't that the tree you should be barking up to?
Well, if someone posted my credit card details on the Web, I'd want the police to be able to take them off again before anyone could see them. Even if the card would still have to be cancelled.
There are appropriate cases where there is no time to lose - the recent Wikileaks news item, where the lives of people heroically exposing human-rights violations have been put in danger give an example of that.
If your credit card details or any other 'juicy' data was on a website long enough for the police to notice, than they've been up long enough for everyone interested to find them as well.
This is really talking about situations where the police don't want to bother getting a court order - in other words, the occasions where they don't think they can get one.
So, that's when they don't have enough (or any) evidence and when they have no intention of actually trying to catch and prosecute someone but just want to 'disrupt' their activities.
The goal of the issues group was supposedly about sites selling fakes or non-extant product, eg tickets to Glastonbury or the Olympics.
There are already ways to do that, and those ways include methods of actually catching the people responsible.
Getting the domain closed down won't help catch anybody.
Got five lines into the article and realised this is just hyped up non-news. This is not new powers granted to the police, this is not new laws, this is NOTHING more than a RECOMMENDATION from a policy group with zero actual powers. FFS, can some of you tinfoil wearers please get a clue and READ the article before tryping (sic) on and on and ON about how it's a "police state", 1984, etc, etc, etc. What a hilarious bunch of kneejerkers. Major down-vote for the alarmist tone of the headline, more suited to the Daily Mirror/Mail/Sun than The Reg.
No court oversight, no legal powers to do so.
Someone in Nominet set this group up to make this suggestion, and Nominet are the company who would act upon it.
The Issues Group included several ISPs and a couple of privacy campaigners, all of whom said "DEAR GOD NO" to the proposal.
There are also two police representatives and some academics.
It all smells very fishy - the concept looks oddly similar to corporate suicide to me.
"Police in the UK could get new powers to suspend internet domain names without a court order if they're being used for illegal activity..."
...according to whom, exactly? This reads as if the plod will be able to shut anyone down on a whim, and then argue about it at leisure - for months or years, judging by the glacial rate at which our laughingly called "justice" system operates.
Nominet are suggesting that any "trusted law enforcement entity" can just ask them to close down think-of-the-children.co.uk and they will.
No court oversight, no evidence - just "Please turn off this domain because we want you to."
They say it's supposed to be a "last resort", but they would have no way of knowing if they actually are the last resort or the first.
The ISPs think it's a stupid idea.
That's why it's so weird - it's a sure-fire way to make .co.uk poor value for any company, and the number one result is to open Nominet to legal challenge.
Then I can take down google.co.uk that will be the warm up to taking gov.uk offline, remember gov.uk have engaged in copyright infringement such as with the Iraq dossier they copied off the net without permission or attribution so the law will be on my side, and if anyone in the government wants to interfere with me going about my duties as a police officer I'll be glad to arrest them all from the PM on down.
Hello.. is that Nominet? PC99 here, I've found a domain that is both providing links to and is storing pirated material along with a wagonload of illegal smut... the name... it's Google.com.
[for the non webmasters out there Google is not just a search engine it also provides file hosting]
Apart from a few notable exceptions I am astounded at the comments on here. I expect this type of hysterical ranting on Digital Spy which is why I don't go there.
So Nominet changing its rules to allow Websites that are engaged in serious criminal activities to be shut down rather than having to find a loophole to do the same thing is bad?
Nominet obviously think there is a need to be able to do this so they are looking for solutions. Which don't appear to be found here!
The Police just don't have the knowledge and experience to make decisions like this. Decisions should be made by a court which can ensure proper consultation - it need not be a lengthy process - there are many other decisions which require court approval and procedures are in place to run them through quickly, even out of hours - why can't this be done here?
Anything like this must be transparent and accountable - something that's seen by the authorities as unimportant nowadays.
What would you guys think if (a) they couldn't shut down a site, but only suspend it for 2 hours ( and that to retain the suspension, they'd need an injunction ), and (b), nominet operated a certified contact register, which busineesses could register themselves on to prevent such takedowns ( ie they couldn't take down domains whose certified contact details they had on file , withut a court order).
The slippery slope argument is a bad one in principle - but it can highlight legitimate concerns.
The usual government response, sadly, is "we won't use the powers in that way", or even "we will include guidelines [with no legal force] to ask people please please not to use the powers in that way".
What OUGHT TO happen is that the primary legislation should include both strict limits on how the powers can be used, and credible deterrent penalties for breaching those limits. And a mechanism for detecting, reporting on, and prosecuting breaches of those limits.
The penalties should include fines to the organisation, in proportion to the harm done, and penalties for the INDIVIDUALS abusing the process. BOTH components to the penalty are essential.
Unfortunately, that never seems to happen.
It's almost like they didn't want to prevent misuse of the new powers...
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