Nominet as official police censors

[Roland Perry]

In article <4CF2993B.6040402 at callnetuk.com>, Peter Mitchell 
<otcbn at callnetuk.com> writes
>Notice the assumption that a police request alone is sufficient 
>evidence to take down a website. That already seems to be standard 
>Nominet practice: from the briefing document "... There are increasing 
>expectations from Law Enforcement Agencies that Nominet and its members 
>will respond quickly to reasonable requests to suspend domain names 
>being used in association with criminal activity and Nominet has been 
>working with them in response to formal requests."
>
>What an excellent way of enforcing a police officer's personal 
>interpretation of (say) the Obscene Publications Act, without having to 
>trouble the courts. I look forward to the disappearance of all DH 
>Lawrence study sites.

It's currently going to be sites which are associated with a wide range 
of scams, but if you think there should be measures to prevent it being 
used for back-door content censorship, then now's the time to join in 
with Nominet's policy process. It would be reasonably easy to have a 
policy where the "criminal activity" was defined by a particular subset 
of criminal acts. You could start with fraud, and work from there.

But maybe not this kind of fraud: "Officer! This publication isn't 
nearly as obscene as it claims to be. I've been scammed, close them down 
immediately".
-- 
Roland Perry