The never-ending odyssey of the London Police shakedown requests against numerous file sharing and bittorrent domains worldwide, it looks like we’ll have to push this all the way up to a TDRP panel to decide the fate of 3 domains locked-down at Public Domain Registry without valid grounds.
To review, the London Police sent out takedown requests to multiple domain registrars worldwide demanding that they shut down various bittorrent websites and hijack their traffic to more palatable file sharing websites (mostly commercial entities blessed by the IP lobby based in the U.K.). easyDNS refused in the absence of a valid court order (as per our Takedown Policy).
Public Domain Registry, on the other hand, complied, taking down numerous bittorrent domains including extratorrent.com (who has since moved their domain here for some strange reason).
Three other domains were taken offline by PDR, then re-instated, however still locked down and not allowed to leave (why extratorrent.com and others were allowed to transfer out, while these three were not remains a mystery).
After our requests to release the names were ignored we filed a Request For Enforcement under the Transfers Dispute Resolution Policy (TDRP) from the registry operator, Verisign. A few days ago Verisign rendered its decision:
Subject: TDRS Case 45337 – Decision Rendered/ No Decision [ ref:_00DA0Zmyt._500A0GS9Pe:ref ]
Please be advised that Verisign has completed its review of Request for Enforcement Case # 45337 and has rendered a decision of No Decision.
REASON FOR DECISION: Pursuant to Section 3.3.4 of the Registrar Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy, the data provided by the Respondent is inconclusive as to the issues presented.
We find both the mechanics and the logic puzzling. By issuing a “decision” of “no decision” the domains remain in their current state – locked down and unable to transfer-out in clear violation of Section 3 of the Registrars Transfers Policy further, the rationale for the “decision” of No Decision was that the respondent provided inconclusive documentation – in other words, PDR pretty much ignored Verisign and didn’t supply any supporting documentation on why they were violating the policy.
What this means
We feel we have an obligation to push this to an appeal now, because otherwise it means that Registrars can arbitrarily slam the doors on outbound transfers, ignore any enforcement requests from the registry and then be granted decisions of “no decisions”, thus allowing them to simply keep the domains hostage.
Now there’s an easy way to reduce customer churn – to zero.
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