Nominet and domain tasting

[BREWSTERS]

Interesting last few lines...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12429808

 

[grantw]

Full brief is here:

http://www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/47841_Expireddomaintasting.pdf

Grant

 

[BREWSTERS]

Thanks - seems it's been an issue for a while now.

 

[liam]

domcollect wont be happy

 

[retired_member12]

domcollect wont be happy

Lol.......

 

[Retired_member41]

Or sleasyspace. Or are they all the same?

 

[rob]

Any chance we can have a sensible and intelligent discussion of this topic, within this thread, without the immaturity and name calling?

 

[afx]

More police state tactics, you couldn’t even say there is a hidden agenda in this, blatantly it is about increasing the gagging capability of the government.. Err I mean police, using the excuse of a few people being scammed on websites.

I must have missed an episode where the courts and evidence are no longer needed and the police become judge, jury and executioner. It is totally unnecessary; there is already provision within existing law for a court order to force Nominet to shut down names.

Plain and simple what this is really about, the timing says it all (straight off the back of wiki leaks hysteria).

 

[afx]

I'm fully aware of the 1200 domains taken down. However I absolutely don't agree with you that the police acting alone should have these rights as already stated. I'd prefer a society where the rule of law is enforced by the police, not decided by the police.

Look at the fiasco that is the digital economy act, rushed through by mandy and his cronies at the behest of lobbyists acting on behalf rights holders. Unquestionably in the eyes of a lawyer with a brain parts of this bill do not pass the legal test. The act itself is under judicial review and for sure will end up in ECHR if left unchanged in the UK courts and I know where my money would be on the outcome of such a decision. Scumbags like ACS law can only attempt to abuse the rights of the public when ill conceived laws are rushed through parliament.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/08/filesharing-prosecutions-digital-economy

As for the 1200 offending domains, even if every one of those was proven to be a scam site it is nothing to the number of people scammed via Ebay. Do you think the police will be calling Nominet to have ebay taken down? Never going to happen.

As you point out the police do not have powers to ask Nominet to take down sites and I hope it stays that way. In exceptional circumstances, eg. an open and shut case of paedo sites, few people would argue against this. However a carte blanche law that simply states "the police have the right to ask Nominet to shut down websites" I believe to be plain wrong.

If all it was about was shutting down fraudulent websites they could work with / tweak existing law, eg. fast track court orders after panel of police, Nominet and a lawyer have deemed the sites as most likely illegal.

It is always the sledgehammer approach taken and invariably opens the door to abuse. Curtailing free speech on .uk domains would be entirely possible if the police were to have the powers to shut down any website.

The joke of it all is the scammers will just move to another extension. While they'd prefer a .uk they can still scam UK consumers with other tld's and all that will have been achieved is a new law that allows the police to decide what website can be up or down.

This isn't straight off the back of wiki leaks. There was a takedown of 1200 domain names in December 2009. You can read about it here. Nominet did this after receiving communications from the police only. The reasoning behind it was to allow illicit web sites to be taken down effectively and fast. Requiring a court order might take too much time. The 1200 domain names that were actually taken down were, in the opinion of the police, and most likely Nominet, found to actually be engaged in illegal activities. There was potential for more than a few people to get scammed. I wonder how many of the Registrants of those 1200 domain names went and obtained a court order to have their domain name(s) reactivated? Surely if any of them were legitimate, we'd have heard from some of the Registrants via a news outlet or even on here.

The consultation is to publicly debate a way for this process to potentially be formalised (or not), given Nominet currently do not have to shut down websites on the say-so of the police.

 

[Aaron Clifford]

If for instanse a shop was selling anabolic steroids (class C drug) the police would have the power to shut the shop, so if a website on a .uk domain was doing the same, wouldn't the police have the same power? Or is this just about scam sites?

 

[retired_member12]

Nominet have already taken sites down in the past, this (take down) process is about Nominet being able to take sites down on the back of a general consensus that they can, rather than their own arbitrary actions. If the general concensus is in favour of Nominet having that power, then you need to focus on the extent of it, that is to say whether only a SOCA request will lead to a take down, or whether any organisation can make the request. Ultimately, I suspect Nominet will want to be able to decide for itself whether the requestor has merit in asking.

That is the area you should keep your eye on, otherwise you'll get all sorts of organisations being able to make a request, and you'll be powerless to stop it because you'll have agreed to it in your T&Cs.

 

[namealot]

Most scammers are hit and run merchants, By the time anyone is aware they have already gone… The banking community could make it much harder the technology is there to stop most of it but they are not really interested….

Its just a chance for the police/government to have more power ad the odd statistic, Nominet to justify its doing something... You can see all the Spin and Pr Thats going to make “Joe Public” feel safe when the reality is like empting the sea with a paper bag…

 

[aZooZa]

Some genres of illegal sites are already fronted by SB. Nothing new to have the law in the background. Be careful what you click on

 

[afx]

Its just a chance for the police/government to have more power ad the odd statistic, Nominet to justify its doing something... You can see all the Spin and Pr Thats going to make “Joe Public” feel safe when the reality is like empting the sea with a paper bag…

Nail on head.

 

[retired_member12]

This right will be brought in completely under the radar of the British public without 99.99% of them even knowing about it, or understanding its implications. For most of them, owning a domain is likely to be a one off event for a singular purpose, they won't even be aware of any engagement process.

Perhaps Nominet should 'engage' with the registrants even more, they have the means to do it, but it seems to me that the only reasons they retain a contact email address is to remind them it's 'pay up' time for re-reg, or to let them know a DRS is on the way!

 

[retired_member12]

The 1200 'en bloc' take downs were easy enough to do because Nominet said they all had false contact details, and were therefore a breach of contract.

However, I'm not convinced that the level of urgency to take down sites is so important that it merits such powers. Why? It must have taken the Police, or Nominet for that matter, months to first collate then verify that this massive list of domain names were incorrectly registered. Courts can act very fast indeed, I worked for a company that needed to put an Anton Piller in place, I seem to recall it was done in one day, and bear in mind that that's an extreme action to take! So saving the Police from having to trot along to the Court for permission to take down a site they're investigating is hardly a convincing argument for cutting due process out of the loop! For God's sake, you give Nominet that right of determination, and you also lose you ticket to free speech!

 

[namealot]

Do Joe public actually know tld or cctld is of the site there visiting, the extension could be anything if you put a big banner with welcome to whatever.co.uk on the site they will believe its that….
Taking down the site does not stop the crooks from processing the payments (banks wouldn’t without a court order…) Why should nominet..? It doesn’t help co.uk as the crooks could open a new one up within minutes…

“criminal” sites do it for financial gain very few people are sending cash through the post, It comes through the banks… Stopping the ability to take money would stop a much higher % of people being conned or other illegal activities..? It’s locking the door when the horse has bolted mentality

The police are there to enforce the laws of the land and nominet are self appointed neither are qualified or should be judge and jury executioner … We have a judicial system already if there’s evidence apply for a court order within an hour or less have one… Is nom going to have someone there 24 hrs a day?

It does nothing to address issues for being conned by a com, org, net, eu, de etc or even a co.uk (Surely they can’t do it before someone’s been conned ..?) it should be important to stop all? what about people fooled by dodgy emails to send out there bank, ebay details etc.
I can’t see its stopping people losing £ or new .co.uk con site opening in minutes what exactly other than spin Pr would it do…

 

[monaghan]

Personally, I have no objection to a site being shut down and where time is considered to be an issue, would also agree that they shouldn't have to go through large legal hoops, however, I would suggest that there has to be sufficient evidence before the site is taken down.

Is hitting the domain the right way to go though? Surely anyone with sufficient capabilities to setup a fraudulent site going to use a non-UK route to register a domain and host it off-shore?

Perhaps the police should be approaching the ISP in the first instance to suspend the site, take a backup of it and then to release the backup once the police have the other evidence in place?

 

[Edwin]

What would it take (legally) to get a real-world store or office shut down, even temporarily? Surely the burden of proof should be no less strict for an online store or website? After all, it could well be someone's livelihood just as much as a shop would be, so why should it be any easier to take that away from them just because technologically it probably involves not much more than a few clicks of a mouse?

 

[afx]

Okay. Good. I should actually correct my original statement because I think it was 1800, and not 1200! However given that you are aware of the take down of all of those domain names, back in 2009, would you agree that this isn't simply "straight off the back of the wiki leaks hysteria"?

Also, have you heard or read anything from anyone that claimed to be connected with any of the domain names that were taken down in 2009? Have you read any complaints from their Registrants or read about any domain names being reinstated if, perhaps, mistakes were made?



Surely, though, if the police had to make an application to the court before doing anything to counter suspected illegal activities, many such activities would outpace the police's abilities to stop them quickly?

At the moment the police don't have to apply to a court to seize counterfeit DVDs or other goods from traders at a car boot sale. However, in the case of the Internet, if they want to shut down web sites selling counterfeit goods they need to apply to a court. What makes selling counterfeit goods on the Internet more illicit, is that those doing so have much more of an ability to purport to be legitimate outlets rather than obvious counterfeit outlets. If someone is standing at a car boot sale selling Addidas trainers at knock down prices, there's more likely to be an assumption by all that they're either stolen or counterfeit. Spend a few hours making a decent web site, with a legitimate sounding .co.uk, and many more people might not realise.

Do you appreciate my points here?



The Digital Economy Bill doesn't really relate to this consultation. I agree that there are flaws in that bill. However I don't believe it is correct to muddy the waters by linking the two. Nominet is not the former Labour Government.



Ebay already has very reasonable take down procedures. Example: I wanted to buy an iPhone 4 a few days before going abroad to travel, last year. Apple.com said 3 weeks so my only option was eBay UK. I monitored several sales for SIM free, sealed iPhone 4's and I set AuctionSniper to bid on one. Just before the auction ended, eBay pulled it. They suspected fraud for some reason. I ended up bidding on another auction, or maybe it was a BIN (I forget), and got the iPhone 4 as advertised the next day. Also, several years ago, for some unknown reason, eBay locked my account because they thought I was somehow linked to someone they suspected was doing something naughty (I've forgotten as it was 5 years ago). They'd only unlock my account after I communicated with them and faxed a copy of my passport to prove I actually existed/was real. I did that and the account was unlocked very quickly. I've still no idea what the original issue was but they obviously jumped on something they didn't like.

Given eBay has take down procedures, and actively polices their site, there is no need for the police to consider taking the site down as a whole. Those domain names related to obvious scammer run sites which had no such self policing procedures because, by the very nature of them being scammer run sites, they had no interest in policing themselves!



I believe the point of the consultation is to debate this so it isn't so open and shut. There have to be rules and procedures before the police can act. Reasonable evidence of criminal activity?



I don't doubt that the list of domain names wasn't looked at by Nominet's legal department before a decision was made. Given they deal with domain names every day of the week, who else involved in the legal profession would you suggest is more qualified to make decisions about this?



It seems, to me, that you're perhaps the one who is jumping to quite large conclusions over what this consultation means. The point of the consultation is to consult over the issue and try to define a structure whereby certain sites can be quickly pulled based on yet to be defined appropriate criteria. Do you really think it has to be an all or nothing situation (i.e. any power given is too much, so therefore give none)?



Sure they can. But I'd rather they did it from anything other than .uk. I don't want my interests in that devalued.

Below response to your questions / points. Probably easier to read than more quoting.

I wouldn't agree with you re: the timing. IMO acting now is absolutely pertinent to the wiki leaks debate. Harking back to 2009 dredging up the pulled domains is just fuelling the argument to create a new law granting more power to the police. I see a much bigger agenda here and scam sites is not it. SOCA is not part of the police as we know it, they are a government department independent of the home office and the freedom of information act does not apply to them. I think you need to look a little deeper into the motivations of this law. If any government body should be asking for new laws to protect consumers because internet scams and fraud are rife, it should be the serious fraud office (which is a separate entity altogether and independent of SOCA).

Re: counterfeit goods. Because a miniscule number (relatively speaking) of websites are selling these goods we should apply a law that is applicable to 9 million .uk domains? I don't agree with you.

The digital economy act although not relating to this consultation is absolutely relevant to the debate. I do not want a government and parliament incapable of learning from its mistakes and continues to pass egregious laws that pave the way for gross misuse (ACS Law) which turns out were neither legal nor enforceable. I wonder where the sensible judge was or anyone with a counter opinion at the time of the passing the digital economy act, my guess is not even in the debate. Autocratic government of old and new does not tolerate counter opinion to decisions already made (confirmation bias).

Regards the debate / consultation, I think it is an open and shut case in as much as the law will be passed, the debate is fluff to a decision already taken. You mention reasonable evidence being used to determine whether the site should be pulled down. Reasonable evidence should be put to CPS like every other alledged criminal activity. It is the CPS who decides what is evidence, not the police. The police simply put forward what they believe to be evidence. Breaking this process and leaving it all to the police should not happen IMO. As already mentioned there is the odd exception that doesn't need repeating.

I would say Nominet should be the last people to decide on what is pulled, they are too close to the issue, much like the DRS IMO. It should be an outside body made up of different sectors of the internet community.

You're entitled to your view that I'm jumping to conclusions, but I'm not as keen as you are to believe 100% of what is being put forward as the debate is what this is really about. Furthermore the example I mentioned is entirely possible if the law is passed as requested by SOCA.

Re: all or nothing law. Nothing would be infinitely preferable to all IMO. I don't see the world of .uk falling around our ears because we do not have this law. My contention is there are already remedies in place to deal with this and the urgency or need for this simply doesn't exist. Would you describe the digital economy act somewhere in the middle? Would you consider the government green lighting the two tier internet somewhere in the middle ? Please provide me some examples of balanced laws affecting the internet and UK citizens.

The scams will still persist, it will be a total waste of time and money and we'll end up with a government body having greater control of information in the .uk namespace. As for your assets being devalued by scammers, I have no idea how you quantify this.