Police Demand Summary Domain Takedown, Traffic Redirection

Stunt Pope writes "This morning, Toronto-based domain registrar easyDNS received a request from the City of London (UK) police demanding that they summarily take down a BitTorrent search site based out of Singapore — or else they would 'refer the matter to ICANN' — suggesting easyDNS could lose its accreditation. The police further directed easyDNS to point all traffic for the domain to an IP address that promoted competing commercial online music services based out of London, UK." easyDNS raises some important questions in the blog post they put up after receiving the request. Quoting: "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."

Douche-o-matic

[elloz]

I summarily summarize this as an exercise in douchedom by dumb policemen.

too many assholes around here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know Jack Thompson was licensed to practise law in the UK.

IPCU: London

[harvestsun]

Intellectual Property Crime Unit: London would be the worst crime drama ever. It would consist entirely of people sitting at desks, sending strongly worded emails.

Re:IPCU: London

[Samantha Wright]

Yes, but what would distinguish it from other potential shows featuring strongly-worded email-at-desk action is that the people doing it would be completely fucking unbearably obnoxious self-entitled arsebuckets. Or, at least employed, by them. So it'd really be more like a reality show.

Re:IPCU: London

[mwvdlee]

It'd make a great buddy cop show:
A straight-laced deskjockey forced to team up with a maverick with blatent disregard for the law in the City of London.
Together they write stern letters with no legal merit whatsoever.

Re:Douche-o-matic

[amicusNYCL]

The UK demanding a Canadian based firm use UK law while in Canadian, while domain in question is for a company in a Singapore?

Perhaps the UK should have their head of state take up the matter with Canada's head of state.

Re:Douche-o-matic

[elloz]

I tried complaining to ICANN once. They told me ICANN fuck off.

Re:Douche-o-matic

[oodaloop]

Did they mention if you could has a cheeseburger?