[Chapter-delegates] Interesting comments via Robert Guerra

Thu Feb 16 09:34:30 PST 2017

Yet another example of people seeking more mission creep.  It is not the role of domain name registrars or ISP’s to police the activity of websites.  That’s like asking the telephone company to turn off phone services because someone used them to plan a crime.

If you have evidence of illegal activity, you should report it to the police.  They are the legally mandated authority to act on such matters.  They will take evidence in a manner which is suitable for court proceedings.  The defendant will be given a chance to state their case, face their accuser, see the evidence, and make a defence.  If found guilty, penalties will be set according to laws created by democratically elected representatives of the people.  None of which applies if some private citizen decides they want to play Mr Detective and start demanding ISP’s just act on their say-so and turning off domain names without proper legal proceedings.  Even worse is to then blast the ISP’s name everywhere for failing to bow to Mr Detective’s demands.

If I went into a shopping mall and demanded management close a shop because I believed they were breaking the law, no one would expect management to jump up and close the shop on the spot.  And I suspect it would be a breach of most rental contracts if they did.  The appropriate action would be for management to refer me to the police.  A website is no different.

Those companies who did act on the complaints were wrong to do so.  They should have referred the matter to the appropriate authorities.  I fail to understand why someone would waste their time locating criminal activity and then not bother to tell the police.  Surely it is obvious that the site owner will simply reappear under another domain name?  If you genuinely want to stop illegality, you need to target the criminal, not make a fuss about ISP’s.  This looks to me like nothing more than someone who wants to generate cheap publicity via the lowest forms of moral outrage.

Once we start giving ISPs and domain registrars the power to close sites because of the content, it will slowly but surely creep.  Eventually ISP’s will be shutting down sites for less obvious reasons, and we’ll be into a world of censorship.  Similarly, we don’t need to encourage vigilantes to start policing the web for themselves and screaming about it when the world doesn’t jump to their demands.  We’ve been through all this before in the past.  We know it leads to social chaos and division.  That’s why we invented formal legal processes.  

Regards,

Brandt Dainow

brandt.dainow at gmail.com

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brandt_Dainow

http://www.imediaconnection.com/profiles/brandt.dainow

From: Chapter-delegates [mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org] On Behalf Of Richard Hill
Sent: 16 February 2017 13:04
To: calderon.alfredo at gmail.com; 'Javier Rua'
Cc: 'ISOC Chapter Delegates'
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Interesting comments via Robert Guerra

Thanks for this. I found that it was well worth reading the CircleID post from Garth, referenced below.

Best,

Richard

From: Chapter-delegates [mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org] On Behalf Of Alfredo Calderon
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2017 13:53
To: Javier Rua
Cc: ISOC Chapter Delegates
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Interesting comments via Robert Guerra

Another case of compliance.

Research was done by Garth Bruen.

Published the results of a months-long study of how various U.S.-based ICANN contracted parties handle reports of domains engaged in narcotics traffic. The specific narcotics here are opioids which are synthetic versions of morphine often mixed with other chemicals or time-release mechanisms. Abuse of narcotics is a global problem, but has been particularly sharp here in the U.S. in the last few year. Cybercriminals respond to news and have become aggressively predatory in offering a variety of illicit substances on different domains.

In simple terms KnujOn collected illegal opioid selling domains and reported them in detail to registries, registrars, and ISPs. The illegal nature of these domains is particular to U.S. law so only U.S.-based companies were measured here. I may release a report later focusing on different regions and laws.

The public report is here: http://knujon.com/onlineopioidsUSfeb2017.pdf

I have blogged about the report on CircleID: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20170215_narcotics_traffic_is_not_part_of_a_healthy_domain_system/

Aside from the seriousness of the issue as an abuse of the DNS, the problem from our perspective is the response from some providers in terms of policy. The good news is that MOST of the contracted parties and ISPs simply reviewed the domains against their policies and then quickly terminated them. The bad news is that some Ry/Rg incorrectly claimed the "ICANN contract prevented them from acting", that they did not have "the technical ability to suspend domains", or that they "could not find evidence of illegal activity". One domain became "hidden" after we reported it to the registrar but continues to sell Fentanyl, a very dangerous drug.

This is ultimately about failure of policy. These parties are making a choice not to investigate or suspend.

-Garth

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Alfredo Calderon
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On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Javier Rua <javrua at gmail.com> wrote:

Interesting. Thx Glenn

Javier Rúa-Jovet

+1-787-396-6511 <tel:(787)%20396-6511> 

twitter: @javrua

skype: javier.rua1

https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua 

On Feb 15, 2017, at 8:55 PM, Glenn McKnight <mcknight.glenn at gmail.com> wrote:

A  recent post by Robert Guerra  has cross posted this post....

For those who may have missed it, ISOC's Public Interest Registry is planning to establish by the end of the quarter a new compulsory private arbitration system that would allow copyright owners to cancel .org domain names based on allegations of copyright infringement:

 <http://domainincite.com/21517-the-pirate-bay-likely-to-be-sunk-as-org-adopts-udrp-for-copyright> http://domainincite.com/21517-the-pirate-bay-likely-to-be-sunk-as-org-adopts-udrp-for-copyright

This is also being pushed as an international best practice standard for other domain registries to adopt:

 <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/healthy-domains-initiative-censorship-through-shadow-regulation> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/healthy-domains-initiative-censorship-through-shadow-regulation

This hardly seems like a measure that's in the "public interest".  What do ISOC members think about this proposal?

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
 <https://eff.org/> https://eff.org
 <mailto:jmalcolm at eff.org> jmalcolm at eff.org

Glenn McKnight
mcknight.glenn at gmail.com
skype  gmcknight
twitter gmcknight
.

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