According the telegraph.co.uk, Nominet, the not-for-profit company that controls the registry of “dot uk” domain names, held a meeting in London on Monday, with authorities including the Metropolitan Police and the Serious and Organized Crime Agency which both lobbied for a new system that would allow them to suspend “dot uk” domain names to tackle online crime.
At the meeting Nominet said they have already shut down more than 3,000 websites in cooperation with investigators.
While Nominet says that “most of the domain names suspended so far were accused of involvement in selling counterfeit goods”…. “authorities are lobbying against limits on the types of allegations they could make to trigger domain name suspension.”
“Law enforcement authorities indicated resistance to the creation of a fixed category of offenses since it could limit responses to newly developing e-crime.”
Of course in London like in the US civil liberty groups and other worry about law enforcement abusing such powers and as an example the Telegraph tells the story of the Fitwatch, a website offering advice to student protesters which was removed from the web by Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit.
Here back in the states 80,000 sites were temporary seized as child porn domains.
When a State in the U.S. seizes the Entire .XXX Top Level Domain – What happens to all of the Registrants ?
By the way, with the new Peer-2-Peer DNS, it is almost impossible to “Take Down” any domain or TLD.
One has to wonder why the Great ICANN and IANA have not done anything in the Peer-2-Peer DNS field…?
Why is this a bad thing? They are removing WEBSITES with CHILD PORN and COUNTERFEIT goods- not domain names. No surprise here, it’s just civil rights groups making a stink of nothing
Not just counterfeit domain might be sweep up
A lot of innocent domains might as well like when the 80,000 sites where taken as child porn.
Name a government that would not do it these days?
One has to wonder why the Great ICANN and IANA have not done anything in the Domain TAKE-DOWN arena…?
Did anyone see, ICANN is now claiming they have a very “narrow” Technical Mission.
Technical ? Seriously ?
Drop in the bucket….
http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Jones04062011.pdf
“In 2010 alone, Go Daddy suspended approximately 150,000 websites found
to be engaged in illegal or malicious activity.”
What are godaddy doing selling domains like buycounterfeitgoods.com in the first place?