Very similar moves are happening in the UK, with Nominet (UK non-profit with the .uk (and .gb) country-code delegation) engaging with the UK's SOCA (Serious and Organised Crime Agency *) to remove 1200 "sites engaged in selling counterfeit goods" recently and now doing a more explicit deal with the police to take down the DNS registration for sites "alleged to be involved in criminal activity". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/25/nominet_crime/ (*) The SOCA is a rather dodgy organisation, IMHO. When it was set up the then home secrewtary made a big thing of it not being actually police and therefore not bound by the requirements that the police have to respect the human rights of citizens. THat's a recipe for a secret police operating extra-judicially and here we see exactly that kind of approach. I am very worried by these kinds of moves. Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet" and Mueller's "Networks and States" concerns about censorship becoming the norm not the exception online seem to be coming true. While I'm not in favour of criminals having free reign, the trouble is that all the hard won freedoms such as due process, balance of rights, etc. seem to be being thrown out in the digital domain. -- Professor Andrew A Adams [log in to unmask] Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/