U.S. Government Seizes BitTorrent Search Engine Domain and More

[Andrew A. Adams]

Very similar moves are happening in the UK, with Nominet (UK non-profit with
the .uk (and .gb) country-code delegation) engaging with the UK's SOCA
(Serious and Organised Crime Agency *) to remove 1200 "sites engaged in
selling counterfeit goods" recently and now doing a more explicit deal with
the police to take down the DNS registration for sites "alleged to be
involved in criminal activity".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/25/nominet_crime/

(*) The SOCA is a rather dodgy organisation, IMHO. When it was set up the
then home secrewtary made a big thing of it not being actually police and
therefore not bound by the requirements that the police have to respect the
human rights of citizens. THat's a recipe for a secret police operating
extra-judicially and here we see exactly that kind of approach.

I am very worried by these kinds of moves. Zittrain's "The Future of the
Internet" and Mueller's "Networks and States" concerns about censorship
becoming the norm not the exception online seem to be coming true. While I'm
not in favour of criminals having free reign, the trouble is that all the
hard won freedoms such as due process, balance of rights, etc. seem to be
being thrown out in the digital domain.



--
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/