DNS Changer items

Nick Hilliard nick at foobar.org
Wed Aug 15 23:59:46 UTC 2012


On 15/08/2012 22:34, Randy Bush wrote:
> at the time, ripe caved to the court order.  took some weeks before they
> woke up.  now a lot of noise, lawyers, and whitewash.

whoa, wait up there, you cocky youngster.  It wasn't a court order; it was
a police order consequent to a request for international judicial
assistance request, consequent to a court order issued by US federal
district judge who felt that the DNSchanger IP addresses ought to be locked
down (this was much the same order which ARIN was obliged to comply with).
 The judicial assistance request asked that the RIR registration objects be
locked from the time of delivery of the order until March 22, 2012 in order
to prohibit any changes from being made to them.

It turns out that both the Netherlands and the USA are parties to the Hague
Service Convention which allows requests to be made if one intends to apply
for judicial assistance in country B pursuant to a court order in country
A.  This is a well-established procedure under international law.

This request for judicial assistance was handled by the dutch police, who
invoked article 2 of the 1993 Police Act, which provides a general
framework for issuing orders in the absence of a specific laws covering the
situation that they are attempting to deal with.

In the absence of relevant case law covering this situation, the RIPE NCC
obliged and locked the objects.  A week later, they initiated a case
against the dutch public prosecutor so that the issue could come before the
dutch courts and they'd get useful case law out of the situation.  Looks
like the public prosecutor threatened to "seize" the "RIPE NCC
administration" if they didn't comply.

Approx 2 months later after taking legal advice, the NCC formed the view
that the police and the prosecutor had no legal basis for making the
request and they consequently unlocked the objects.

The reasons for this decision are summarised here:

> http://www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/news/about-ripe-ncc-and-ripe/summons-of-the-ripe-ncc-against-the-state-of-the-netherlands

So yes, lots of noise and lawyers.  Not so much whitewash, and depending on
the propaganda volume you've turned the dial up to, "caved in" could easily
be replaced by "complied under duress with the express intention of
fighting the corner", but I'll admit that sometimes it's a whole pile of
fun to fling a bit of poo around even if it's not really justified.

ianal, and this analysis may well be totally wrong,
Nick




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