The UK government has introduced legislation that would give police the power to order registries and registrars outside the country to take down domain names being used for serious crime.
The new Crime and Policing Bill (pdf), published yesterday, is a sprawling piece of proposed legislation, covering everything from mobile phone theft to antisocial behavior.
But it includes a section that would codify the police’s ability to demand domain names and IP addresses to be suspended for the first time.
The law would allow the police to ask a judge for a “domain name suspension order”, applicable for up to a year, where they believe the domain is being used to commit “serious crime”.
That’s defined as “the use of violence” or conduct that “results in substantial financial gain” or that would reasonably be expected to carry a jail sentence of three years or more.
Today, the UK police have voluntary relationships with local companies on takedowns. Nominet suspends many thousands of domains every year, most related to intellectual property crime, on the advice of police.
But according to the explanatory notes provided by the government, the law will not replace these deals. It says:
The government strongly supports these voluntary arrangements, and they will continue to be the first port of call for any activity in this space.
However, most domain name registries and registrars are situated outside of the UK and require a court order before they will action requests. These orders (an IP address suspension order or a domain name suspension order) will therefore primarily be served internationally, to ensure that any threat originating from outside the UK can be effectively tackled.
If overseas registries/registrars declined to enforce the court order, UK police could use “police-to-police cooperation and Mutual Legal Assistance” to get it done, the notes say.
The bill has to follow the usual parliamentary process before it becomes law.
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