We took all our domains away from them when they locked our account claiming a domain in 1000 of alexa is front for a mail spam operation and threatening to delete it. They didn't even provide a sample spam or anything. When we were contacting them on the phone they were giving us a hard time talking about Katrina and basically they don't a shit about our property.

Wow, I'm with BoyAlley on this one.

You could, perhaps, avoid all this drama by allowing them to view the said ID documents, with all details but date of birth and photo blacked out. Could you not? Just keep in mind that despite existing laws, the courts are rarely on the side of the pornographer, particularly if some bastards have slipped in some cries of 'cp'.

Cover your bases, ask them to sign a document stating that they are intend to force you to break privacy laws. Then they're liable, and not you.

Just remember the golden rule - be polite. Keep your head and I'm sure things will work out for themselves.

ok I'm with you boyalley. However when you become a client of any firm you agree with their terms (if you don't like them you should go somewhere else).
http://www.directnic.com/legal/#CP
http://www.adslpromo.be/dn.jpg
Basically there they are saying that they just can do anything they want to investigate if you are in violation or not. It suck but it's all right there in their TOS

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collecting money from illegal activities? To do them what? Is that even legal?

BoyAlley, you miss my point entirely. I know this isn't DCMA, but I have a feeling that there may be legal liabilities for Directnic if someone says "I know that this image is CP", and they fail to take action. I suspect that thier TOS (as quoted above) is written specifically to give them very agressive means by which they may take action to remedy a situation or remove themselves from a position of liability.

No, they are not in the positon to check 2257 documents, they are not the AG... but if someone reports a CP image to Directnic and they do nothing... where would they be legally? I suspect that the hosting company may be looking at a similar piece of paper if it was sent that way.

The question I have are:

Where did the complaint come from, if any, or is this just a random check by Directnic itself?

Is the source of the complaint credible, or is it an anonymous tip?

Is Directnic's TOS in these matters in line with the overall rights of a registrar as granted by ICANN or whoever it is that grants those things these days?

=-=-=-=-=-=

As a side note, I looked at some of Slick's TGPs, and I could see where some members of the public might be lead to think that some of the models might not be of age. Baiting pedos with legal images is a trick that has been around for a very long time indeed.

was thinking about doing the same thing soul, who did you migrate your domains too?

We moved to Moniker.com after doing some research on this.

I understand some employee can overeact or make a mistake, but the whole procedure we went through for five whole days was a nightmare and non-excused. For example we got accussed of fake whois info which wasn't true and no surprise they didn't bother to call the phone number listed even when we told them so. We had to send various documents via fax and when we do that we were getting told they don't have physical access to the office the fax was etc etc.

I would be breaking the laws of the country I lived in if I handed over that information to a company like that.

This should be interesting...

Seems like instead of turning them directly over to the authorities, they are giving them a chance to clear things up with DirectNic first, whereas Godaddy turned WEG off immediately.

Though to be honest, Intercosmos was listed as one of the top up and coming companies in a national mag (can't remember which one). I'm pretty sure they'd do OK if your "teh boycott" went through :thumbsup

No but do we want to get in a situation where hosts forward every single comlaint they recieve straight to the fbi?
If the client is legit and can show the documents needed they would save themselves and the client a whole lot of trouble by just doing a small investigation themselves first.

What should hosts do? Just let the illegal content online untill some fbi officer has time to investigate it? Just shut down the suspected site untill it was investif-gated by the authoroties? I believe doing a small investigation first is the easiest and most honest thing to do. Who says they will not accept a picture with the model holding the id and/or a model release where all personal information but the date of birth is blanked?

They're giving them the chance to turn over scores of private identification documents of models and conduct a private 2257 investigation is what they're doing.

Does NO ONE in this industry give a rats ass about the privacy of models? Or privacy laws? Once you become a model that's it, it's totally acceptable for your driver's license, passport, social security number, or whatever damn else catches someone's fancy to be passed out like candy, even without legal reason or foundation to do so?

I think not.

As for how big they are and what effect a boycott can have. Let me remind you that through-out history enormous impacts have been made against much larger companies than them.

I, for one, don't take a defeatist roll over "oh there's nothing that can be done" attitude about things.

Or they may even just accept an explanation of the situation.

People are putting the cart SO far before the horse on this, lol.

Yeah, I remember when all the adult webmasters were going to boycott AMEX and Paypal for not accepting adult billing. :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

No one's rolling over. Michael, one of the actual owners, has said he's looking into this.

Actually, what you're doing is reacting to a situation that hasn't even come close to being investigated, let alone a conclusion being met.

Oh comon... I expected more from you... Everyone who doesn't agree with you is a relative or friend or whatever from whoever you are fighting? Get real, some people just look at things differenty than you do.

i'd never provide docs to anyone BUT the authorities required under the statute.

Thanks for the support BoyAlley, I greatly appreciate it :thumbsup

I do want to make something clear here, and I mean this as NO insult toward you whatsoever, so please please please don't take it that way:

I'm not doing this to support you. Honestly, I can't speak for the content that's on your sites (especially since I'm not familiar with hetero content), or what you link to, or how you get your traffic, or anything else.

What I CAN speak to, and what I DO feel strongly about, is the POLICY that you've uncovered of DirectNic wanting to become 2257 records inspectors.

That is wrong, in my opinion, in any situation, no matter what the content might look like.

Again, there are people in this country whose job it is to investigate such things, and those people are not called registrars.

a little investigation does not equal a "legal lock" whatever the fuck that means.
the most directnic can do about something like this, legal that is, is
tell the customer to switch registrars because he's breaking their TOS or whatever.
They have no right to lock something they don't own, much less shutting it down.

now lets go back to the original email:
So no personal information but the date of birth is asked. Is that so bad? Who will die from that? Who's privacy will be invaded? Just ask for the document from whoever provided you with the gallery and forward it as requested. (this is assuming that its for one or 2 pictures they are reffering to and not every model on a tgp)

Yeah, I agree with you 100% on that. It definately is wrong how they're going about the situation. I do see what you mean.

I think the point of this has gotten confused.

What DirectNic did that was wrong is that they locked the account and then demanded documentation in order to unlock the account.

If they had simply contacted him and said "We believe the content of your site is potentially illegal" and "we intend to turn the evidence over to the feds and will not allow you to renew the domain with us if you do not provide us with assurance that the content is legal" then nobody would be in an uproar about it.

This guy OWNS this domain name, it is his property, directnic is acting as though it is their property and he is just being permitted to use it.

He has every right to transfer the domain name to another registrar and has no obligation to provide any documentation to directnic. It *is* there right to say "we dont want to be your registrar anymore, please transfer your domains within 30 days as we are closing your account".

At that point they also have an obligation to refund him some of the money that he paid them to register the domain on his behalf.

It's not their right to ask, plain and simple. If they suspect something illegal, they should report it to the authorities. They are not the authorities, they are not the justice system, they sell fucking domain names and should stick to that.

I can agree with your point that locking the account was one step to far.

uhm. Lets assume we would be talking about a site using cp content.
Can you explain how the date of birth proves that the pictures weren't
taken before the model was 18 ?

The funny part about this is that if you swapped DirectNic with GoDaddy, this board would be ready to burn down the GoDaddy headquarters. But because the owner of this company has probably bought a few drinks in his life for people here, they get a free pass.

dramaqueen! Your blowing the whole thing so far out of proportion it is starting to look as if you are making a joke out of it. If you have the unredacted id it takes about 11 seconds to blank out unneeded information. BOOHOOHOO!

What has that to do with it? If you don't provide the docs they will forward it to the fbi (like everyone seems to find is what they needed to do in the first place). How are you going to proof to the FBI that the pictures weren't taken when the model was -18 at the time the pictures were taken?

This thread gets more entertaining by the hour.

Im off to search for threads of MikeAI being called a "top notch" guy.

Uhm, if he doesn't provides the docs his domains are shitcanned
I saw nothing about FBI in this story.

Besides the fact that they have no right to ask for the docs, they're asking
something that proves shit.

That's actually the Canucks coach hiding in your pants :P

I jusrt agreed that locking the domains was a step to far but I really don't see anything wrong with asking for some documentation.