International Law

Digital Economy Bill 2009 seeks to crush UK Internet Domain Registry industry with bureaucratic red tape and unfair legal costs

How much more damage can unelected Labour politicians like Mandelson do before the forthcoming General Election ?

Quite a bit it seems, if you read the appalling Digital Economy Bill, published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which Mandelson is in charge of, but which he obviously does not even pretend to devote his attention to full time.

The Digital Economy Bill manages to ignore most of the recommendations for faster, better broadband infrastructure in the Government's own Digital Britain: The Final Report - 16 June 2009 produced by Lord Carter.

It is being heavily and criticised by digital rights and liberties campaign groups like the Open Rights Group and by law professors like Liilian Edwards on her panGloss blog etc. for the horrendous threat to grab unlimited "Henry VIII" powers to amend existing Copyright legislation simply by Order, without any public consultation or parliamentary scrutiny.

The stupid and counterproductive plan to disconnect internet users simply based on hearsay of unreliable, often shared public IP addresses, by greedy and inept foreign and UK corporations and their all too willing shyster lawyers, will lead to lots of innocent people being affected, without any effect on serious organised criminals. These vested commercial interests are attempting, yet again, to get pliant Labour politicians to circumvent normal civil court cases requiring proper standards of evidence, and an independent judgement of proportionality, in favour of some inherently unfair, nebulous regulation based, probably "lawyer- bot" automated legal threat system.

As with most Labour Government Bills, even after you have found two or three controversial sections, around which most media and Parliamentary opposition will focus, there are usually further inept or deliberately evil sections which have been sneaked in

However, one section of this wretched Bill which has not had much publicity, yet, is the section which attempts to throttle the Internet Domain Name Registration system with the cold dead hand of Government bureaucracy.

The Digital Economy Bill 2009 Clauses 18 to 20 try will damage or destroy the UK domain name registration system, and perhaps that of some other countries as well:

Powers in relation to internet domain registries

18 Powers in relation to internet domain registries

19 Appointment of manager of internet domain registry

20 Application to court to alter constitution of internet domain registry

Some possible areas of UK Government regualtion for the .UK domain name space

Some legal powers which might make sense, if the Government is really trying to protect the UK's critical national internet infrastructure, something which comes under the mantra of "the economic well being of the United Kingdom", which is one of the vague legal definitions of "national security".

1. Where are the UK Government standards for Domain Name System security against hacking and denial of service attacks ?

2. Where is the mandatory requirement for Disaster Recovery plans and procedures and backup data centre for UK based domain name registrars ?

3. Why is there no provision for regular security audits by GCHQ / CESG accredited information security assurance experts, of the core Domain Name Server systems and also of the associated online credit card payment , and name and address data processing systems ?

4. This Digital Economy Bill misses the opportunity of enhancing public confidence in the UK internet domain name space, by legally guaranteeing the chain of trust inherent in the Domain Name System, and especially in the move towards cryptographically digitally signed DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) technology, which is currently rolling out around the world's top level internet domain name registries.

5. Why can't this Bill mandate the auditing of DNSSEC security and the digital counter-signature of the top level server Digital Signing Certificates, by an independent non-commercial UK Government public bodythe Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport itself, or even by GCHQ / CESG or even OFCOM ?

6. Where is the legal protection against United Kingdom or foreign attempts by shyster lawyers to censor or deny service to UK based businesses or individuals, by attempting to seize or shut down a web site etc. not by serving a legal notice on the publishers or the actual operators of the web server, but on the Domain Name Registrar of its internet Domain Name e.g. like the unsuccessful attempt in the USA, to disproportionately censor the whole of the wikileaks.org website, because of a few documents, out of several million, on web servers in Sweden, alleging illegal tax evasion schemes operated by the Swiss Bank Julius Baer . This Digital Economy Bill should be providing legal protection from such disproportionate, malicious attack, which can involve disputes between two entirely foreign based parties.

7. The BIll should should also provide legal protection for the current Nominet .UK domain name WHOIS opt out policy. Nobody should be coerced or forced into revealing the name and postal address or email details or financial payment details, of a private individual or non-trading organisation who have simply registered a domain name, without the registrant's informed prior consent, or without a Court Order.

8. When a Domain Name Registrar is bought, sold or goes bankrupt etc., there must be enforceable legal protections on the privacy of this customer registration data - the Data Protection Act 1998 and the under resourced Information Commissioner's Office has been so weakened by later legislation (from a weak starting point), that it offers no real protection or assurance to the public.

This Digital Economy Bill does none of these things at all !

Instead,it attempts to regulate not just the .UK domain name space, but all other registries based in the United Kingdom.

There are no actual detailed Regulations published in this Bill.

Past experience teaches us that we cannot trust this Government to produce simple, practical or reasonable regulations on anything to do with computer or telecommunications or internet technology.

The Digital Economy Bill also forces Domain Registries to pay for the remuneration of appointed Government appointed "managers",and to bear the legal costs of any Court actions by the Government against them, regardless of whether they are found innocent of any wrongdoing or not, after false, malicious or petty accusations of wrongdoing.

If this Bill passes, then there is no technical reason why the UK Domain Name Registration industry will not simply pack up and move abroad, out of the clutches of Mandelson and his cronies, or else be destroyed by competition from foreign domain name registries - precisely the opposite of what the Digital Economy Bill should be trying to achieve.

Full post as published by Spy Blog on December 01, 2009 (boomark / email).