There kind of is. It's making the assumption that an "illegal operation" is a binary thing deserving of absolute condemnation. It isn't saying that you can't, for example, sell a counterfeiter a money press, but rather that you can't provide him (or any other "criminal") with a loaf of bread, or a tank of gas, or a room for the night in winter, or a phone, etc. It's practically a death sentence without even a trial, and on top of that it makes no allowance for the proportionality of the sanctions to the alleged offense. Sorry, you're a known litterbug, no one may sell you insulin for your diabetes.
And so it is with domain names. You turn off somebody's domain name, you're taking away their forum to inform the public of your error in wrongly accusing them of misconduct. You're turning off their email and disabling their ongoing correspondence with their attorneys and their community. It's blanket censorship. You're not turning off their infringing operation, you're turning off their existence in the communications network. And to the extent that you aren't, the sanctions will be ineffective at preventing the alleged misconduct. As a policy it makes no sense.
No, you've shut down that one domain, not made it impossible for them to own legal domain names, or otherwise be on the internet. Not that I agree with the law, but you seem to be rather overstating the repercussions.
If I was renting to you, and found out you were cooking and distributing meth in the house, I would evict you. That would not mean you could never live in a house again, just that you can't do your crime on my property.
> No, you've shut down that one domain, not made it impossible for them to own legal domain names, or otherwise be on the internet.
Haven't you? If you shut down example.com and they go out and buy example.net and point it back to their website, the registrar would be obliged to do the same thing with example.net, would they not?
Moreover, the ability to get another name is kind of the point: Evaluate the two possible alternatives. On one hand, say it's easy to disseminate the new name (or your IP address) to everyone you may want to communicate with. Then taking away the domain name is ineffective to prevent the alleged misconduct, so there is no reason to do it. On the other hand, suppose that it's difficult to let everyone know the new name. That presents the other problem: A million people come to example.com and you have a platform where you can tell them what's going on and why the accusations against you are false; replace example.com with a page of unproven allegations against you and now your audience has no way to hear your side of the story because they don't know where to find you.
> If I was renting to you, and found out you were cooking and distributing meth in the house, I would evict you. That would not mean you could never live in a house again, just that you can't do your crime on my property.
I don't think you're distinguishing between what you're allowed to do and what the law obliges you to do. If you evict someone because you don't want to rent to a meth cook then that's all well and good, they can go live somewhere else and rent from someone else. But if the law prohibits anyone from renting to someone thought to be a meth cook then where is an accused meth cook supposed to live?
That's not what the law says though. It only says that if I'm renting to you and I find out that you're cooking meth I should evict you; not that I should refuse to rent to you because I heard you've cooked meth. I'm responsible for meth being cooked on property I own, whether it's me cooking or not.
In the same way, if I find out you're doing something illegal (file sharing for example), I should stop you.
> It only says that if I'm renting to you and I find out that you're cooking meth I should evict you; not that I should refuse to rent to you because I heard you've cooked meth.
How are you distinguishing between those two things, "I find out that you're cooking meth" and "I heard you've cooked meth"? They appear to be the same thing. The tense doesn't get you anywhere because unless you only have to evict the person at the very second you catch them in the act, any such eviction has to be based on historical behavior. And under the silly instantaneous interpretation the eviction would only be necessary for so long as the criminality is ongoing -- you must evict but as soon as the criminal is finished with crime for the day (or claims to be) then he can move right back in? That would be nonsense.
Maybe your point is that "finding out" requires more evidence than "hearing" -- which really gets to the heart of it, doesn't it? Private parties aren't judges. They don't have all the evidence, they don't have a perfect (or for that matter even remotely accurate) knowledge of the law, they're biased and prejudiced and are highly likely to be heavy handed when the alternative is to have to fight somebody else's fight. It's imposing the duty to enforce the law on people with no capacity or inclination to do it properly.
There kind of is. It's making the assumption that an "illegal operation" is a binary thing deserving of absolute condemnation. It isn't saying that you can't, for example, sell a counterfeiter a money press, but rather that you can't provide him (or any other "criminal") with a loaf of bread, or a tank of gas, or a room for the night in winter, or a phone, etc. It's practically a death sentence without even a trial, and on top of that it makes no allowance for the proportionality of the sanctions to the alleged offense. Sorry, you're a known litterbug, no one may sell you insulin for your diabetes.
And so it is with domain names. You turn off somebody's domain name, you're taking away their forum to inform the public of your error in wrongly accusing them of misconduct. You're turning off their email and disabling their ongoing correspondence with their attorneys and their community. It's blanket censorship. You're not turning off their infringing operation, you're turning off their existence in the communications network. And to the extent that you aren't, the sanctions will be ineffective at preventing the alleged misconduct. As a policy it makes no sense.