Verisign asking for "Web Takedown" powers. This could clean up .com real nice maybe.
 

Good news for content owners? People who don't want shit done to their computers with malware? etc.

I wouldn't want to be a .com right now with all kinds of stolen content on my domains, that's for sure.

Today, US agencies can get court orders instructing VeriSign to hand over domains. While imposing US law on .com owners from other countries is controversial, at least overseas registrants know where they stand.

Now VeriSign is talking about cooperating with European law enforcement agencies too.



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10...kedown_powers/


Could mean something, could mean nothing. It looks like a start though.

Discuss.

:2 cents:

Could potentially give Verisign the power to pull .coms that are harboring stolen content farms and don't remove at the request of the owner by DMCA. There are tons of them.

As long as they can stick to the correct purpose it would be good.

It can't work like youtube's initial form of DMCA which was abused by bullshit
claims so much that they had to change it.

That would suck.

Yes, could be potential for abuse for sure. People screwing with each other like the Hatfields and the McCoys. LOL.

This is not a good thing at all. It basically gives the US court system control over the internet. The internet is international, and it's not right that it's controlled by the US. Foreign webmasters and domain owners have little chance of getting a fair chance to defend themselves in a US court, considering the costs involved in having legal representation in a foreign country.

I'm all for ways to prevent content theft and piracy, but giving the US government control over the rest of the world when it comes to the internet, is not the right way to do it. They basically want to make US laws apply to everyone all over the world in regards to the internet.

That bolded part is the problem. If they are shutting domains down based on court order, clear legislative rules and requirements... that's one thing. When it becomes broad enough to allow them, at their own discretion without any oversight, to shut down domains based on quasi-governmental dispute resolution there is way too much gray area for them to go after sites based on subjective obscenity beliefs, bogus claims, patent trolls with very little justification etc... and that 'cure' would be worse than the disease.

Only, if they limit it to very clear specific reasons for shutdowns would I be all for it. :2 cents:

Well, with all due respect, .com is a USA based registry, so no matter what they are bound by USA laws. Verisign is out of the Commonwealth of the State of Virginia, USA. If I broke laws in France, and I had to represent myself there, then so be it. I wouldn't break laws in or on the countries jurisdiction that I didn't want to defend myself on. Criminals don't really think things through.

Don't break the law and you won't have to represent yourself is the way I look at it.

Actually, they want to be able to do it even without a court order. That is even more ridiculous and makes for some scary scenarios.

Agreed. I think that is what he was saying in essence. Which I agree with.

I can certainly see both sides of this one. There will undoubtedly be a comment period. Does anyone have a better solution? I don't think you can just leave a fake bank site at chãse.com up, defrauding people just because it's registered in China.

What this can lead to though, is that some random government agency finds something questionable on a website, that might have been user uploaded, or even user posted slander of some sorts, then proceed to seize the domain, without the domain owner having a chance to represent himself.

:2 cents:

.

But the only reason this is being discussed is that the international community isn't
doing jack shit to stop the theft of mostly US copyrighted works.

If Russia, China etc... would actually shut something down besides political websites
then we wouldn't be at this point.

They can stop any website that says "The Government Sucks" but they can never shut
down a site with $10 billion worth of stolen US content.

interesting stuff, if you are legit should be no problem

however, i suspect this will be used for more bad then good

Ahhhhhh yes, the good old "User Uploaded" innocent victim. We know that none of the stolen content sites employ third world uploaders. How could any innocent tube/fileshare owner dare be caught up in the snare of a bad, bad surfer uploading content.

:1orglaugh

I see nothing mentioned about changes to DMCA so I don't know why people are mentioning that.

Interesting....

Why is this controversial? American company, American law.

I sent a 19 page DMCA to them today about a site they host and registered.

ICANN is an international organization that gave Verisign the rights to maintain the .com registry.

.com is not a US tld, it's an international TLD

You clearly don't understand how registry works.

BTW, you don't maintain much credibility with FacePorn as a sig. That is a pretty clear case of mark infringement in my opinion.

The internet is so full of trash, someone's going to have to clean it up eventually.

Again, Verisign is a US company. If they have take down rights, borders will not matter. An American company will be able to shut down any website no matter what country it's in.

What seems to be missed here is that the SAME people who are skirting the law now by publishing sites with stolen content will be the ones who abuse this new tool and use it to shut down competition with little proof....

What stops someone from publishing content stolen from a members area and then filing a 'claim' that the true originator of the content 'stole' it from them and needs to be shut down. What stops people from filing bogus complaints by the thousands just to clog up the system or create the perception that a truly honest site is somehow dishonest...

The possibility of abusing this new tool makes it worse than the reality of not having it available. They must list VERY specific rules for it and have a streamlined FREE appeals process or it will backfire and do harm to honest sites instead.

this will never happen

That might be your opinion, I happen to disagree.

But tell me this, if it's a pretty clear case of infringment. Following that logic. How is faceporn vs facebook different than youporn vs youtube or redtube vs youtube? Or the million other tube sites?

First they came for the torrent downloaders,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a torrent downloader.

Then they came for the tube video uploaders,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a tube video uploader.

Then they came for the file locker users,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a file locker user.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If they're going to shut down filesonic and thepiratebay, I'm all for it.

Well that means Youtube, Facebook and Google are all fucked Yeah lol

Edit: well google is fucked anyway so that wont make much of a difference

I see people say that all the time. Especially when they aren't the ones having their work stolen and monetized by other people.

With all respect...if you had skin in the game and put your ass on the line like we do...you would really understand what being against piracy really is.

A disaster waiting to happen. The potential for abuse is enormous.

so what are the going to do with filesonic.ph? the piratebay.ph?

stupid law that wont stop anything but will just be abused.

As I said in my last post...if you had skin in the game you would see it differently.

This business has been hit by piracy with full guns blazing.

We have almost ZERO legal recourse thanks to the outdated DMCA laws.

So if the govt. "abuses" it...it won't be any worse for the people who are already being "abused" and losing millions of dollars already.
And face facts...if the U.S. govt decides to take over the internet and censor it to the ground they will. No matter what. And if it's found unconstitutional? Well, they'll just ammend the constitution and make it legal. Just like they did with federal income tax.

Fucking govt. runs every damn thing. And if they are going to put piracy on their radar? GOOD. About fucking time.

so if a single packet of traffic is routed thru a country that outlaws porn you should be prosecuted for that too.

not one single piece of content is routed thru the dns name resolution request

the entire "infringing" transaction happens after the verisign transaction happens because tcp/ip is routed to an IP ADDRESS, not a domain.

I always wondered how long it would take politicians to realize that .com is technically a US extension.

It would end up just being a censorship tool and really wouldn't affect piracy as the thieves would just use other domain extensions if it became a issue and surfers would adapt.

Bad news...

I was under the impression that us law always controlled the .com