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

[Michael Haffely]

The concerning part about the report from today is that the domain owner
never received any complaint or due process before the domains were seized.
It appears that no Cease and Desist, warrant, suit, or other criminal
complaint was brought up before the domain was taken.  What if (for an
example) this behavior is taken up by the Patent and Copyright "trolls".
What happens to an individual/nonprofit/organization when they have their
domain yanked out from under them?

If ICANN is to seize domains from their rightful owners by demand of a law
enforcement agency we need to have a clear, *rapid* appeals process to
prevent abuse by corporations, law enforcement agencies, and governments.


-Mike H.



On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 8:46 PM, Andrew A. Adams <aaa at meiji.ac.jp> wrote:

> 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/
>
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