Sunday, October 23, 2005

A domain registration and censorship scandal

Thanks to Latvian-language blogger Kristaps Kaupe, I have been tipped off to a scandal over the last week concerning NIC.Lv, the Latvian domain registration service. It seems that the Latvian language IT news and discussion portal Datuve discovered that it was possible to use some kind of e-mail trick to change domain registration data and, essentially, to kidnap domains. Once this information started circulating, Datuve said the company hosting its sever was asked in a phone call by the Latvian Economic Police to remove the Datuve website. While the article may have explained how simple it was to steal domains or get them for free (NIC.lv is a fee-based registration service), the action by the police was a blatant attempt at censorship or, even in the most charitable intepretation, vastly overbroad. If one article may have contained instructions on committing a crime(that, if Datuve's story was accurate, was begging to be committed and idiot simple as well), it is hardly reason to shut down an entire internet medium. Instead, the Economic Police should be talking to NIC.Lv the way the ordinary police patrolmen would talk to someone who has left his warehouse unlocked.
This is yet another case of residual Soviet mentality – if in doubt, censor and forbid rather than understand the problem and do your best to solve it with a minimal intrusion into such vital and unassailable rights as the freedom of expression.
Now that I think about it (even it it is a week late), this is definitely a story for my daytime job. Apollo may have picked it up, but I am not sure about the print media.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You really should post it at Diena .. Perhaps it could help somehow to improve the progress of securing domain data changing or whatsoever.

Anyway, a few corrections:
* Datuve did not discover the problem. The IT specs knew this problem for about 8 (max) years.
* Datuve linked to a guys under alias petruha weblog - where he (petruha) describes the problem ..

Anonymous said...

URL: kristaps.netparks.lv

Anonymous said...

The problem is that Latnet or NIC is not interested in any progress. They are monopolists in this field and nothing is going to change their minds.

Anonymous said...

You have incorrectly posted URL of my weblog - it's kristaps.netparks.lv, not kristaps.netpark.lv.

Juris Kaža said...

Well, Kristap, as Old Vowerly said to his horse after riding over a cliff: "I guess I fucked up." I have fixed the URL now :)

Anonymous said...

SUNS is definately not a weblog ;)

Anonymous said...

This actually was amazing fact for me also. Before that I even didn't thought that this is possible, but now I understand - the problem is quite funny and serious in the same time.

Hosted Exchange said...

Domain name companies are increasing day by day and with that threats related to it are also increasing..Its really difficult to choose which company to opt and whether it will prove itself with the best service or not..Thanks for sharing the information..