Seized Torrent Domains Must Be Released Says Domain Registrar
As the fallout from this week’s seizure of file-sharing domains continues, it’s now been revealed that the registrars involved could now be exposing themselves to disciplinary action by IP address and DNS body ICANN. With the police now confirming to TorrentFreak that the action by the registrars was voluntary and based only on a “potential” breach of terms and conditions, it now appears that affected registrars must allow seized domains to be released.
Earlier this week it became apparent that City of London Police had approached certain domain registrars with demands that they should suspend the domains of various torrent and other file-sharing sites. Among them were ExtraTorrent and SumoTorrent, some of the largest indexes on the web today.
There appeared to be no legal basis for the requests, something which outraged Canada-based EasyDNS who refused to comply with a suspension request for meta-search engine TorrentPond.com
To get the lowdown on the latest developments and in order to be absolutely sure that there is no formal legal process underway, TorrentFreak spoke with City of London Police. They told us that in the summer they began a campaign to target websites “that attract visitors by providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content for criminal gain” and that the project is now in new hands.
“In September the project was taken on by the City of London Police’s new Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit [PIPCU], which has been set up to target serious and organized intellectual property crime affecting physical and digital goods, with a specific focus on offences committed online,” a spokesman confirmed.
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