[dns-operations] shunning malware-hosting registrars

[Mark E. Jeftovic]

Paul Vixie wrote:

>> When private entities decide that "Registrar X" is externalizing their
>> costs and they decide not to do business with Registrar X, it isn't
>> censorship and it isn't repression, it's a market force.  (And anybody
>> who knows me knows I love me my market forces)
> 
> on the topic of due process, we may disagree. if someone is breaking the
> law "over there" by doing something that's not illegal "over here" then
> there may be no due process which can result in takedown, yet the
> internet social contract ("if you want the uniqueness of your internet
> identifiers to be respected by others, then you should behave
> responsibly") may call for takedown in spite of there being no
> applicable law.
> 

I think the circumstances you are most concerned with can be covered off
with the term "net abuse".

We try to capture what net abuse is as best we can: spam, phishing,
botnets, malware, DDOS, etc but unfortunately the reality is that net
abuse is abstract so we almost have to fall back on "we know it when we
see it". Which is almost exactly what we say in our AUP: it's at the
sole discretion of easyDNS.

And when we see it we're not afraid to take it down.

What we also see are self-serving agendas that outside clear network
abuse issues are attempts to gratuitously interpret agreements to which
entities are not even party (i.e. the ICANN RAA, or an individual
provider's own AUP) in calculated attempts to summarily takedown domains

The usual motivation of these is really to construct artificial moats,
enhance or cultivate monopolies or quasi-monopolies or to squelch
disruptive, competing business models, and (less often but more
worrying) to silence political dissent or unflattering discourse.

Of late these efforts attempt to doll themselves up with an air of
legality "do this or you're going to lose your ICANN accreditation" and
they are just pure nonsense. But a lot of participants don't understand
the sheer "made-up-ness" of these fantasies and they go along with it.

> we appear to agree that market forces exerted against registrars is a
> good application of the Invisible Hand with regard to local takedown
> policy. a registrar might decide that on complaint, suspension should
> occur, on verification, takedown should occur, and on repeat offense
> then blacklisting should occur -- all because the registrar have hard
> and real reasons to cherish and protect their own reputation.
> 

Exactly. Reputational currency will be a big factor, especially if it
gets codified into an RBL (sorry, RPZ)

- mark


> vixie

-- 
Mark E. Jeftovic <markjr at easydns.com>
Founder & CEO, easyDNS Technologies Inc.
+1-(416)-535-8672 ext 225
Read my blog: http://markable.com