DirectNics legal rights in relation to its recent actions

[softball]

Originally Posted by sarettah

Ok, I will try to do this in a non denigrating manner. Please reread what I wrote. I wrote that I care if they are allowed to. If they are allowed to take action, they should.

I will reciprocate the courtesy. Please re read what I said. I agree they should be allowed to take action. Indeed they should be compelled to take action like the Good Samaritan law. What I disagree with is the action taken. I thought I had made that perfectly clear.

[softball]

I posted this in another thread, but I think it is actually more appropriate here....

OK, here is a Free Speech Coalition opinion....excerpts....

"First Amendment attorney and Free Speech Coalition Chairman Jeffrey Douglas said the ID request is unprecedented, and more importantly, a violation of privacy laws. According to Douglas, the request is illegal, and also could have a chilling effect on the free speech of webmasters that deal in legal teen content.

“This is a blatant and absolute violation of privacy laws,” Douglas told XBIZ. “There’s absolutely no legal liability for the registrar if underage models appear on a website. DirectNIC is an officious intermeddler.”

Upon receiving a complaint of child pornography, there are legal courses of action for directNIC to take, Douglas said. Since it has no legal right to obtain personally identifiable information from the website’s models, the company should have alerted the proper legal authorities, but instead it decided to take the law into its own hands. "


"“The bottom line is that if [directNIC] received a complaint about child porn, there are a numerous avenues for them to report it to the proper legal authorities,” Douglas said. “DirectNIC has no remote prayer to legally justify their request. They are licensed to provide a service — not to police content. I would think that upon hearing this, most adult companies would transfer their domains [away from directNIC] immediately.”

"Douglas continued, “Again, under federal law they have no right to these documents, so now they have no protection from civil liability. They are immune from policing content under the law, but now by doing so they have created liability. DirectNIC is lawlessly intruding into their business.”

And the DirectNic Response:

"According to directNIC General Counsel David W. Nance, upon receiving a warranted complaint of child porn, the company takes action by either immediately shutting down the domain or conducting an investigation.

“In most cases when there is a confirmed report of child porn, directNIC takes immediate action and shuts down the domain names because it is blatantly obvious that the customer is offering child porn,” Nance told XBIZ. “However, not every case is clear cut. The letter was intended to notify the customer of the potential issue that was reported to directNIC. This does not mean that the domains contain child porn; it only means that an investigation was commenced — i.e., we want to make sure that we do not facilitate the trading of child porn online.”

[sarettah]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

I will reciprocate the courtesy. Please re read what I said. I agree they should be allowed to take action. Indeed they should be compelled to take action like the Good Samaritan law. What I disagree with is the action taken. I thought I had made that perfectly clear.

The second paragraph of what you wrote was what I was talking about.

[softball]

Originally Posted by sarettah

The second paragraph of what you wrote was what I was talking about.

Please just quote what you mean. I am getting lost in the quagmire. I will respond.