Strong Protest From Digital Right Group To Nominet’s Proposal

Nominet’s proposal that permits closing down of illegal websites has met with strict opposition from various groups. Drawing full support from the UK’s Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) and the London Internet Exchange (LINX), the digital-rights campaigner Open Rights Group (ORG), has issued a statement criticizing Nominet’s proposal of suspending illegal websites from the World Wide Web, without the requirement of court order.

Nominet is responsible for registering .uk domain names. The protests came in the wake of the shutting down of approximately 2000 websites by the Metropolitan Police’s E-crime cell. These sites were accused of selling counterfeit goods. The E-crime cellhad received a go-ahead from Nominet after having placed a request for such suspensions.

According to ORG, ISPA and LINX, simply suspending the websites accused of dealing in bogus goods without a court order is not going to serve any purpose. The authentic online businesses do not receive any better protection by this measure.

Jim Killock, executive director of ORG, stated that ISPA, ORG and LINX have taken their decisions independently about this issue. They have informed Nominet on their individual capacity that such domain suspensions can be allowedonly after a court order has been issued. He lamented that nobody knew when their fundamental convention rights of freedom of expression, assembly, property and private communications might be hindered by Nominet. Therefore, ORG, LINX, ISPA want Nominet to clarify its stand on how it is going to handle requests of law enforcement in future and if it shall wait for court orders before taking any action on those requests.

Requesting transparency in its operation, these bodies want Nominet to bring out complete list of suspensions it has done so far, the suspensions in pipeline, the domains that were impacted and also the reasons cited for suspension requests.