Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

.health backer has cop-like takedown powers for all gTLDs in Japan

Kevin Murphy, December 8, 2014, 22:54:36 (UTC), Domain Registrars

LegitScript, a US company focused on eradicating illegal online pharmacies, which backs the .pharmacy and .health gTLDs, has been given police-like powers to have domain names taken down in Japan.
It has also emerged that when IP Mirror, a brand protection registrar, was hit with an embarrassing ICANN contract-breach notice in November, it was as a result of a LegitScript complaint.
Under section 3.18.2 of ICANN’s 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, registrars must have a 24/7 abuse hotline that can be used by “law enforcement, consumer protection, quasi-governmental or other similar authorities” to report illegal activity.
Registrars must act on complaints made to the hotline within 24 hours, but only authorities designated by national governments get to use it.
Now, it transpires that LegitScript has been formally designated a 3.18.2 authority by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
That means the US company’s complaints about domains hosting potentially illegal pharmacy sites have the same weight as complaints from the Japanese police, when made to registrars that have an office in Japan, even if they’re headquartered elsewhere.
IP Mirror, which was recently acquired by CSC Digital Brand Services, is based in Singapore but has an office in Tokyo.
As far as I can tell, most of the top 10 registrars do not have offices in Japan. KeyDrive (Moniker, Key-Systems etc) may be the exception. GMO is the largest registrar based in Japan.
LegitScript announced its relationship with the Japanese ministry in September (I missed it at the time) and company president John Horton provided some context to the IP Mirror breach notice on CircleID today.
I only report the deal today because it strikes me as noteworthy that a private enterprise has been given the same powers under the 2013 RAA as law enforcement and government consumer protection agencies — and it’s not even in its home territory.
Horton told DI today that while LegitScript is legally based in the US and has offices in the EU, only Japan has so far formally granted it 3.18.2 powers. He said in an email:

We only have formal Section 3.18.2 designation in Japan at present. We have some other endorsements or recommendations by or on behalf of government authorities, although they do not specifically reference Section 3.18.2. We work closely with the Italian Medicines Agency and the Irish Medicines Board, for example, and report rogue Internet pharmacies in consultation with them.

Horton pointed out that anybody is able to to file abuse complaints under the 2013 RAA — and registrars are obliged to “take reasonable and prompt steps to investigate and respond appropriately”.
His CircleID piece cites two instances in which such complaints from LegitScript resulted in ICANN breach notices.
The chief difference is that under 3.18.2 registrars do not have much flexibility in their response times. They have to “take necessary and appropriate actions” within a black-and-white 24-hour deadline.

Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Comments (1)

  1. Volker Greimann says:
    December 10, 2014 at 11:17 am

    It is interesting to see that many people seem to equate “respond appropriately” with “takedown”. While the first can include the latter, an appropriate response can be anything really, including telling the complainant to follow this up directly with the hosting service instead.

    Reply

Add Your Comment