registrars – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Who Needs SOPA: Judge Orders Every US ISP To Block Entire Websites Accused Of Enabling Piracy

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

Almost exactly a decade ago, a few months after the US Congress rejected the site blocking setup of the SOPA copyright bill, which would enable copyright holders to force ISPs to block access entirely to websites deemed as being dedicated to “piracy,” we wrote a post about how it wasn’t even clear SOPA was needed when courts were willing to issue such blocking orders already. That was in a case around counterfeiting, where Louis Vuitton sought, and obtained, an order from a judge that demanded that domain registrars and ICANN effectively wipe certain website domains off the internet entirely.

Fast forward almost exactly a decade and TorrentFreak points us to a somewhat similar series of orders that demand that every ISP in the US block access entirely to three websites accused of infringement by a series of movie, TV, sports, and news content providers in Israel. The three orders are all embedded below, though they’re all basically the same — but they order non-party ISPs to block access to three domains that are accused of showing infringing streams: israel-tv.com, israel.tv, and sdarot.tv.

For all three of the websites, no defendants showed up in court (not too surprising, given that the cases were filed in the US). Without a defendant showing up, the court ruled for the plaintiffs in a default judgment — which is pretty typical. However, what is atypical, is that the judge then basically set the 1st Amendment on fire, and basically ordered a ton of non-parties to do things to stop enabling any access to these websites. It first issues a permanent injunction for anyone operating or working with those websites, but then issues an order for EVERY single ISP in the US to block access to these websites.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all ISPs (including without limitation those set forth in Exhibit B hereto) and any other ISPs providing services in the United States shall block access to the Website at any domain address known today (including but not limited to those set forth in Exhibit A hereto) or to be used in the future by the Defendants (“Newly-Detected Websites”) by any technological means available on the ISPs’ systems. The domain addresses and any NewlyDetected Websites shall be channeled in such a way that users will be unable to connect and/or use the Website, and will be diverted by the ISPs’ DNS servers to a landing page operated and controlled by Plaintiffs (the “Landing Page”) which can be reached as follows:

Domain – zira-usa-11026.org IP Address: 206.41.119.50 (Dedicated)

The Landing Page will include substantially the following information:

On April 26, 2022, in the case of United King Distributors, et al. v. Does 1-10, d/b/a Sdarot.tv (S.D.N.Y., Case No. 1:21-cv-11026 (KPF) (RWL)), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an Order to block all access to this website/ service due to copyright infringement

It’s unclear who created this particular landing page, but it does not exist, and at least it doesn’t include the silly badges with eagles on it.

The blocking order shows a very long list of ISPs, covering nine pages. For unclear reasons, the list shows not just the names of the ISPs, but also the estimated population covered, the number of states they cover, and their max speeds. As far as I can tell, the list appears to come from BroadbandNow’s “Internet Providers in the United States of America” list. This is the first page that comes up if you Google “list of US ISPs” and it also displays the exact same data sets in the exact same order. The list doesn’t match exactly, though, so it appears to be a subset of the larger list — though the court order says that it should be considered to apply to any US ISP.

And Judge Katherine Polk Failla doesn’t stop there. After ordering every ISP to block these websites, she also orders all third party service providers to cease doing business with these three websites. This includes an incredibly long list of possible service providers (notably a list that is even more in-depth than would have been required under SOPA — which, again, Congress rejected):

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, that third parties providing services used in connection with Defendants’ operations — including, without limitation, ISPs, web hosting providers, CDN service providers, DNS service providers, VPN service providers, domain name purchasing service, domain names privacy service, back-end service providers, affiliate program providers, web designers, shippers, search-based online advertising services (such as through-paid inclusion, paid search results, sponsored search results, sponsored links, and Internet keyword advertising), any banks, savings and loan associations, merchant account providers, payment processors and providers, credit card associations, or other financial institutions, including without limitation, PayPal, and any other service provider which has provided services or in the future provides services to Defendants and/or the infringing Website (including without limitation those set forth in the list annexed and made Exhibit C annexed hereto) (each, a “Third Party Service Provider”) — having knowledge of this Order by service, actual notice or otherwise be and are hereby permanently enjoined from providing services to the Website (through any of the domain names set forth in Exhibit A hereto or at any Newly-Detected Websites) or to any Defendant in conjunction with any of the acts set forth in subparagraphs (A)(1) to (A)(6) above;

And, as if that was not enough, she also orders domain registrars effectively kill those domains as well and hand them over to the plaintiffs:

1. That all domain names associated with the infringing Website, including without limitation those set forth in Exhibit A hereto, as well as any Newly-Detected Websites, be transferred to Plaintiffs’ ownership and control; and
2. That in accordance with this Court’s inherent equitable powers and its power to coerce compliance with its lawful orders, and due to Defendants’ on-going operation of their counterfeiting activities, in the event Plaintiffs identifies any Newly-Detected Website registered or operated by any Defendant and used in conjunction with the streaming any of Plaintiffs’ Works, including such Websites utilizing domain names containing any of Plaintiffs’ service mark or marks confusingly similar thereto, Plaintiffs shall have the ongoing authority to serve this Order on the domain name registries and/or the individual registrars holding and/or listing one or more of such the domain names associated with the Newly-Detected Websites; and
3. That the domain name registries and/or the individual registrars holding and/or listing one or more of the domain names associated with the Newly-Detected Websites, within seven (7) days of service of a copy of this Order, shall temporarily disable any domain names associated with the Newly-Detected Websites, make them inactive, and channel them in such a way that users will be unable to connect and/or use the Website, and will be diverted to the Landing Page (as defined in Paragraph B, above); and
4. That after thirty (30) business days following the service of this Order, the registries and/or the individual registrars shall provide Plaintiffs with all contact information for the Newly-Detected Websites; shall transfer any domain names associated with the Newly-Detected Websites to the ownership and control of Plaintiffs, through the registrar of Plaintiffs’ choosing, unless the Defendant has filed with the Court and served upon Plaintiffs’ counsel a request that such Newly-Detected Websites be exempted from this Order or unless Plaintiffs requests that such domain names associated with the NewlyDetected Websites be released rather than transferred;

Again, this is way, way beyond what even SOPA would have allowed. But Congress didn’t do it — and for good reason. This ruling has some really significant 1st Amendment issues. Ordering the complete takedown of a website like this is the equivalent of shutting down a magazine — ordering that the landlord evict the publisher, that the printing presses be destroyed, that the postal service refuse to send copies of the magazine, that the local waste management company refuse to pick up the garbage, etc. etc. An order like that would obviously have tremendous 1st Amendment problems as an attack on speech, even if you recognize that some of the content was infringing.

Of course, given that the websites chose not to show up in US court, it seems unlikely that they will challenge the order. It is possible that some ISPs might push back on it, not because they want to support piracy, but because of the extraordinarily problematic general precedent of allowing a judge to order such an extreme internet kill order. Allowing these kinds of orders to survive creates tremendous instability for the internet, and hopefully some ISPs will push back.

Filed Under: blocking orders, cdn, copyright, dns, israel, new york, registrars, site blocking, sopa, website blocking
Companies: dbs satellite services, hot communication, screen il, united king film distribution

Registrar Killing Zoho Over A Few Phishing Claims Demonstrates The Ridiculousness Of Having Registrars Police The Internet

from the this-is-not-good dept

For years, we’ve pointed out the dangers of the attempts to move the “policing” function up the internet stack (or down the internet stack, depending on your perspective) from the end-user internet services deeper to infrastructure players. We just recently warned about the mess that will be created by focusing on infrastructure players. Indeed, for years, we’ve worried about targeting domain registrars with takedown notices. There are a variety of reasons for this: first off, registrars are not at all prepared to be in the content moderation business. They just run a database. But, more importantly, their only tool to deal with these things is incredibly blunt: to effectively turn off an entire site by not allowing the URL to resolve.

And yet, there’s increasing pressure for registrars to police the internet. This is mostly because of people (starting with the legacy copyright players, but others as well) over-hyping the fact that if some content/services are taken down, it just pops back up somewhere else. So, those who focus on censorship try to look further and further along the stack to see where they can block even more.

A story this week shows just how damaging this can be. Zoho is a very popular online service provider of tools for businesses. We’ve used Zoho a bunch at times, as they offer a really nice and fairly comprehensive suite of business apps at prices that are much more affordable than many of the larger players (while often being just as good, if not better). But earlier this week Zoho disappeared from the internet for a lot of users, after its registrar, Tierranet pulled the plug on their service, claiming it had received too many complaints of phishing attempts via Zoho. Zoho points out in response that (1) it had received a grand total of three reports from Tierranet of attempting phishing, and it had promptly removed the first two accounts and was in the process of investigating the third when all this went down, and (2) it received no warning that Tierranet was about to pull the plug on them and was given no way to reach out to the company in this emergency situation (leading the company to take to Twitter to try to get attention).

But, because Tierranet decided it needed to “police the internet” with its ridiculously blunt tool of completely removing an entire service from the internet — despite its millions of users who rely on it for critical business services — Zoho was put in the unenviable position of trying to explain why its entire suite of services completely disappeared. Apparently, (according to Zoho’s explanation) Tierranet will automatically cut off websites after receiving three complaints — which is astounding. It’s even more astounding that a service the size of Zoho only received three such complaints. In a detailed post mortem / apology, the company says it’s going to become its own registrar to avoid having anything like this happen again.

You have my assurance that nothing like this will ever happen again. We will not let our fate be determined by the automated algorithms of others. We will be a domain registrar ourselves.

But, really, every internet service out there shouldn’t have to be their own registrar to avoid having someone take down their whole site for no good reason. We need to rethink this idea that someone must be policing every interaction online and that if anything bad gets through, liability and blame should flow through to everyone in the stack. It’s not only a recipe for mass censorship, but for one that takes down important services by good actors.

Filed Under: domains, infrastructure, intermediary liability, phishing, points of failure, registrars
Companies: tierranet, zoho

Sending Liability Up The Stack: Domain Registrars Potentially Liable For Infringement By End Users

from the tertiary-liability dept

For quite some time now, we’ve been concerned about the continued expansion of “secondary liability” concepts, adding more and more liability for copyright infringement to parties who are often far removed from any actual infringement. There are two major concerns with this. First, putting liability on one party for the actions of another just seems generally problematic. But, perhaps more importantly, when you put potential liability on an unrelated party, the end result is almost always excessive policing in a manner that hinders or entirely blocks perfectly legitimate activity and speech.

That’s why a recent court ruling in Germany is so problematic. It’s the followup to an earlier ruling that found a domain registrar, Key-Systems, liable for actions done by the users of a torrent tracking site H33T. H33T just hosted the torrent (which, we should remind you, is not the actual infringing file), and some users used that tracker to torrent the album Blurred Lines. When H33T failed to respond to a takedown notice, Universal Music went after the registrar, and the court said it was Key-System’s responsibility to stop the infringement. Of course, the only way for the registrar to do that is to yank the entire domain.

The case was appealed, but the appeals court upheld the lower court ruling. Even though the registrar pointed out (accurately) that it had no way of knowing if the torrent was actually infringing, the court said that the registrar was responsible for assuming it must be infringing once it had contacted the domain owners and not received a response. That’s an interesting shifting of the burden of proof. The court also seems unconcerned that the only way the registrar can remedy the situation is to take everything down, saying that if the website didn’t want this to happen it should have responded promptly to the takedown notices it had received.

Much of this seems to focus on assuming guilt unless one can prove innocence, and further believing that it’s somehow “obvious” to recognize when someone is infringing on copyrights. As the Universal Music lawyer tells TorrentFreak in the link above, the company is quite excited about this new power, and will “have this in mind when looking at other domains.”

Filed Under: copyright, germany, liability, registrars, secondary liability, tertiary liability
Companies: h33t, key-systems

FDA Is Angry That ICANN Won't Just Censor Websites On Its Say So

from the what's-wrong-with-a-court-order? dept

It’s not just the City of London Police demanding that websites be taken offline without any due process. It appears that the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is getting in on the game as well. The Wall Street Journal recently published a detailed article about how angry the FDA is with ICANN (there’s also a corresponding blog post which may not face the same paywall restrictions) for not simply killing domains that the FDA deems “rogue pharmacies.” That’s not to say that there aren’t reasonable concerns about rogue pharmacies. There are clearly some concerns about those sites, but it seems like there are better ways to deal with those than just barging in and saying that ICANN and registrars need to take down sites based solely on their say so.

In July, the FDA teamed with Interpol and dozens of countries to try to shut down more than 1,300 websites suspected of selling drugs without a prescription. Officials sent a list of all the websites, carrying names such as buyoxycontinonline.com and approvedonlinepharmacy.net, to the Chinese company that registered them. The company replied with a request for a court order and then sent a terse follow-up email: ?It is not possible for us to take action.?

In frustration, officials turned to the Internet?s central administrator, an organization called the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann. Its contract with the registrar, BizCN.com, requires the company to investigate reports of illegal behavior.

But here’s the thing. Everyone in the articles (including the reporters) seem to take it as perfectly reasonable that ICANN and/or these registrars should have just taken down these sites. No one points out that BizCN seemed to respond properly by asking for a court order. ICANN isn’t in the business of censorship. It shouldn’t be the one to determine if a site is an illegal pharmacy or not. There’s a reason why we have due process and courts to adjudicate decisions like that. Putting the entire burden on registrars and/or ICANN to act as internet cops, ready to take down sites at a notification’s notice seems tremendously problematic.

It’s a recipe for censorship, stifling free speech and hindering innovation. And yet, that’s what the FDA and others want:

Because of its central role, regulators and law-enforcement agencies around the world say Icann could be crucial to their crackdown on illicit Internet operators of all kinds.

Already, just in the online pharmacy space, we’ve seen how certain pharmaceutical companies like to conflate the small number of truly “rogue” pharmacies that sell either counterfeit drugs or real drugs without proper procedures, with perfectly safe and legal Canadian pharmacies that many Americans rely on for cheaper drugs. The big pharmaceutical companies would like to shut down that competition, even as American politicians have explored expanding the ability of US citizens to get their drugs from such pharmacies. And that’s why it’s reasonable to ask for an actual court order before taking down sites — rather than just assuming that some bureaucrat at the FDA can accurately determine which sites are “good” and which are “bad,” and then demand that registrars or ICANN automatically take action.

Filed Under: canadian pharmacies, censorship, fda, icann, interpol, pharmaceuticals, pharmacies, registrars, rogue pharmacies, rogue sites
Companies: bizcn, icann

City Of London Police Issue Vague, Idiotic Warning To Registrars That They're Engaged In Criminal Behavior Because It Says So

from the say-what? dept

This was mentioned briefly in our recent post about EasyDNS changing how it deals with online pharmacies, but it’s still dealing with bizarre requests from the City of London Police. As we’ve been detailing, the City of London Police seem to think that (1) their job is to protect the business model of the legacy entertainment industry and (2) that they can do this globally, despite actually just representing one-square mile and (3) that they can do this entirely based on their own say so, rather than any actual court ruling. It started last year when the City of London Police started ordering registrars to transfer domains to the police based entirely on their say so, rather than any sort of due process/trial that found the sites guilty of violating a law. The police wanted the domains to point to sites that the legacy entertainment industry approved of, which makes you wonder why the police are working on behalf of one particular industry and acting as an ad campaign for them.

Speaking of advertising, the City of London Police’s more recent tactic is inserting ridiculous and misleading banner ads on websites based on a secret blacklist that has no oversight and no due process or way to appeal. Such lists often include perfectly legitimate sites. But, I’m sure we can trust the City of London Police to get this right, given that the guy in charge of the City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), Adrian Leppard, believes that “the Tor” is 90% of the internet and that “Bitnet” is a “huge risk and threat to our society.”

The latest move, as detailed in a post by Mark Jeftovic from EasyDNS, is sending registrars like EasyDNS a “notice of criminality” that doesn’t directly tell the company to do anything, other than to think long and hard about who they do business with.

Classification: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED Dear Sir or Madam,

Notice of Criminality

[domain name redacted by easyDNS]

EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

Receipt of this email serves as notice that the aforementioned domain, managed by EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC. 28/03/2014 is being used to facilitate criminal activity, including offences under:

Fraud Act 2006 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Serious Crime Act 2007

We respectfully request that EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC. give consideration to your ongoing business relationship with the owners/purchasers of the domain to avoid any future accusations of knowingly facilitating the movement of criminal funds.

Should you require any clarification please do not hesitate to make contact.

Kind regards,

PIPCU Anti-Piracy | Operations | Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit | PIPCUantipiracy@cityoflondon.police.uk<PIPCUantipiracy@cityoflondon.police.uk > | Address: City of London Police Economic Crime Directorate, 21 New Street, London, EC2M 4TP | ? www.cityoflondon.police.ukhttp://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/

As Jeftovic notes, the implication here is pretty clear. The City of London Police wants to “build a case” that EasyDNS is somehow responsible for aiding and abetting criminal activity.

Once again, we are being asked to do (something, we’re actually not sure what this time) based entirely on an allegation which has never been tested in a court of law and has been afforded absolutely zero “due process”. (The domain in question is a search engine that hosts no content).

[….]

We think this time the intent is not to actually get the domain name taken down, but rather to build some sort of “case” (I won’t call it legal, perhaps the better word would be “kafka-esque”) that we, easyDNS by mere “Receipt of this email” are now knowingly allowing domains under management to be “used to facilitate criminal activity”.

Thus, if we don’t takedown the domains PIPCU want us to, when they want us to, then we may face accusations in the future (in their own words) “of knowingly facilitating the movement of criminal funds.”

Which of course, we don’t know at all because there has never even been a court case anywhere to test the PIPCU allegations. I know I never went to law school or anything, but in my mind, until that happens, that is all they are ? allegations.

And, of course, it’s tough to see how the City of London Police have any jurisdiction at all over EasyDNS, a Canadian company. Jeftovic goes on to wonder if the City of London Police are actually defaming the websites they accuse in these notices. Of course, the problem is that these sites tend to be small and powerless. As we’ve seen with sites like Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta, even after they were taken down and businesses were destroyed for over a year before the Justice Department in the US simply dropped the cases and handed back the domain names, there was little those sites could do in response. Sure, they could have filed a lawsuit, but lawsuits are expensive, and a lawsuit for a tiny struggling website against the US government? That’s just not likely to get anywhere productive.

What’s extra troubling is how this tactic of targeting registrars for non-judicial censorship like this is becoming increasingly common — and it’s happening in countries like the US and the UK which claim to support basic principles of due process and are (supposedly) against prior restraint. When it comes to the City of London Police, they seem to be operating without any sort of controls or oversight, just making it up as they go along. Unfortunately, because they’re “the police,” it doesn’t seem likely that anyone will get them to cut out this censorious and harassing activity.

Filed Under: adrian leppard, city of london police, copyright, facilitation, jurisdiction, notice of criminality, pipcu, registrars
Companies: easydns

Pharmacy Group Lies To Registrars: If We Complain About A Site, It Must Be Taken Down No Questions Asked

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

This is incredible. Just yesterday we wrote about how EasyDNS won its arbitration case, saying that a registrar cannot takedown and block the transfer of a domain name just on the say so of law enforcement or anyone else not carrying a court order. And, the very next day, EasyDNS is reporting on an absurd letter it has received from the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, which argues exactly the opposite of what the arbitration panel told EasyDNS.

Incredibly, it says that if it complains about a domain, the registrar must take it down:

“Upon receipt of an abuse notification, some Registrars claim that a court order is required or that they are not violating the laws of the Registrar’s country. Both assertions are wrong.”

Except, as EasyDNS points out, the arbitration ruling says that it’s the NABP that’s wrong, and that a court order is required. Similarly, the NABP claims that registrars must freeze the domains, even without a court order.

You should not allow domain names engaged in the illegal sale or distribution to transfer to another Registrar: the question of legality does not relate to where the Registrar is located, but rather to the activity of the Web site.

But, again, the arbitration ruling, which merely read from ICANN’s own rules, says the exact opposite — noting that you clearly need a court order

The NABP also tries the same direct misreading of ICANN’s rules that Public Domain Registry used, to pretend that “fraud” is a reason to deny transfer, but as the arbitration ruling found, that claim is simply incorrect. The “fraud” referenced in the rules is only fraud concerning transfers not fraud in terms of what the website was used for.

There’s much more in the letter as well. There is some history here. The NABP is basically an organization designed to artificially inflate the price of drugs in the US, cynically using highly questionable claims to pretend that they’re focused on “public safety.” For years, the NABP has worked hard to keep legitimate but cheaper versions of drugs outside the US, so that US pharmacies (and the drug companies they work with) can charge increasingly insane prices for drugs. Because they can use the specter of “fake drugs killing people!” they’re able to do all sorts of nasty attacks on foreign pharmacies that are selling perfectly legitimate drugs to willing buyers, by claiming that they put people’s lives at risk.

And, now, it appears they’re going even further in trying to basically create a “SOPA-like” setup, whereby registrars are required to pull down any domain based solely on NABP’s say so without any judicial review at all. The fact that this is happening at the same time that City of London Police are doing the same exact thing (at the urging of the legacy music/movie industries) isn’t an accident. While the supporters of SOPA insist that there’s no new legislation coming, they’re all trying to do an end run around all of it, creating something that’s even more extreme than SOPA by getting registrars to simply kill sites they don’t like based on nothing but a complaint.

EasyDNS’s Mark Jeftovic says it all in his blog post about it, noting that this is why they fought back against COICA/SOPA/PIPA:

It really is getting creepy out there.

We now know that we live in a total surveillance society, governments are printing money, going broke, manufacturing consent and lying about nearly everything; while quasi-governmental agencies all over the world are now asserting they have the authority to overturn legal process and basically dictate everybody else’s business.

This script is playing out almost verbatim what we wrote only three years ago in “First They Came For The File Sharing Domains”.

Who will be the next batch of clowns who tell us they can use liberally interpreted language in a couple of agreements that they aren’t even party to to compel us to takedown your website? Let’s start a betting pool.

This is why pushing back and standing up for internet freedom is so important. The attempts to control, to censor, to block and to silence are only increasing. The legacy players who can’t stand competition or innovation are looking for any way to hold back the future, and that means attacking the public’s ability to make use of the internet and to speak freely.

Filed Under: censorship, domains, mark jeftovic, registrars, takedowns
Companies: easydns, icann, nabp

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

Even Without COICA, White House Asking Registrars To Voluntarily Censor 'Infringing' Sites

from the censorship-through-political-pressure? dept

While there’s been increasing attention paid to the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA), the proposed law that would allow the government to require ISPs and registrars to block access to websites deemed to be “dedicated to infringing activities,” it looks like the White House (which we had thought was against censoring the internet) appears to be working on a backup plan in case COICA doesn’t pass.

That is, while most folks have been focused on COICA, the White House’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IP Czar) Victoria Espinel has apparently been holding meetings with ISPs, registrars, payment processors and others to get them to agree to voluntarily do what COICA would mandate. While the meeting is carefully focused on stopping websites that sell gray market pharmaceuticals, if registrars start agreeing to censoring websites at the behest of the government, it’s as if we’re halfway to a COICA-style censorship regime already. ICANN, who manages the internet domain name system was asked to attend the meeting, but felt that it “was not appropriate to attend” such a meeting.

While Espinel has certainly been a lot more open to talking with those of us concerned about the state of intellectual property laws (and has actually seemed quite willing to pay attention to what we’re saying — which I appreciate), these kinds of meetings appear quite troubling. I understand why the meetings are focused on so-called “illegal pharmacies,” because then everyone supporting these actions can hide behind the claim of “protecting Americans from dangerous fake drugs.” But the truth is that while some online pharmacies are quite questionable, many are simply “gray market” attempts to import drugs to the US from elsewhere where the identical drugs are sold for much less. In a global economy, that should be allowed. In fact, one could argue that keeping drugs artificially expensive in the US does a lot more harm to Americans than the chance of them getting a fake pill.

On top of that, it seems out of line for the US government to be involved in pressuring these companies, whether they’re ISPs, domain registrars, payment processors or ICANN itself, to “voluntarily” block websites without a trial or due process. Yes, I can recognize that there can be legitimate health concerns with some of these websites, but those are better dealt with elsewhere. If a company is selling fake or harmful drugs, then laws within that country should be able to deal with it. If there are concerns about such drugs getting across the border, then it seems like a matter for border control. Asking internet companies to act as de facto “voluntary” censors seems like a big step too far.

And, of course, if it starts with such gray market pharmacies, you can only imagine how long it will take until the RIAA/MPAA/etc. come calling for the same sort of “voluntary cooperation” from the same companies for sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” potentially killing off all sorts of innovation, before the market has a chance to adapt. When world wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and tons of other internet luminaries have come out against COICA, shouldn’t the White House be a bit more careful before trying to get various internet players to voluntarily do the same thing with even less due process?

Filed Under: censorship, coica, pharmacies, registrars, victoria espinel

Should ISPs And Registrars Be Responsible For Bogus Online Pharmaceutical Sites?

from the a-thousand-times-no dept

Michael Scott points us to an article at CircleID that appears to be little more than a disguised press release for a company pitching “brand protection service,” suggesting that registrars and ISPs need to crack down on illegal online pharmacies and drug trafficking or face legal consequences. While the analysis is correct that trademark violations are a loophole not protected by CDA section 230 safe harbors, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a registrar or ISP is automatically liable for hosting such a site. The whole point of section 230 is to make sure that liability is properly placed on the user, rather than the service/tool provider. That should stand even without section 230 protections. You can’t just blame a third party because they’re easier to find. The article seems to imply that if anyone complains about a trademark in a domain name, registrars and ISPs should automatically shut down that site — but that would create serious problems. The real issue here is a serious loophole in safe harbor protections when it comes to trademarks. The answer shouldn’t be a moral panic for registrars and ISPs, but to close the loophole and harmonize the various safe harbor provisions.

Filed Under: domain names, isps, liability, pharmaceuticals, registrars, trademarks

De Beers About To Learn That The Streisand Effect Is Forever

from the let's-explain-how-this-works dept

It would appear that the lawyers at diamond conglomerate De Beers are unaware of the Streisand Effect. As you might have heard, a week after the US Presidential election, some prankster put out a spoofed version of a future New York Times. It got plenty of attention for a few days and then people moved on. Well, apparently not everyone. De Beers is upset that the online version of the spoof contained a fake De Beers ad. Rather than recognize that this was a spoof (ha ha) that everyone had pretty much forgotten about, the company had its lawyers send off a threat letter. However, rather than target the creators of the spoof, or even the hosting firm, De Beers threatened the registrar who handled the domain registration for the site, demanding that it take down the site or face a trademark infringement lawsuit.

Of course, as the EFF notes at the above link, intermediaries (third party service providers) are clearly well protected against liability for the actions of their users in the US. And, of course, there’s the whole issue of parodies being protected from infringement suits. However, even more ridiculous is the fact that De Beers is now calling more attention to the ad. The spoof of the entire newspaper did get some attention, but that attention quickly waned, and it’s unlikely that too many people paid attention to the spoof banner ad on a spoof website for the NY Times. I hadn’t even heard about the ads. Almost all of the attention was on the spoof stories. Yet, now that De Beers is threatening to sue, a lot more folks are going to know about and see the ad. How is that possibly a smart move on the part of De Beers?

Filed Under: intermediary, registrars, spoof, streisand effect
Companies: de beers