Hello Matthew,
What sort of support would you give a not-for-profit Org such as SORBS.net or an Org such as Spamhaus.org if our domains were hijacked maliciously (or not)....?
As others have pointed out, any procedures will need to ensure that they can be applied to all domain name records.
I note that Spamhaus.org is set 'CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED' and 'CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED' so in theory this shouldn't be a problem, but the various earlier comments indicating that panix.com was thought to be 'LOCKED' before the issues of the last few days provide more food for thought.
I doubt that panix.com was "LOCKED" at the registry, as the transfer could not have been initiated. Some registrars use the term "lock" to refer to an internal security procedure that is unrelated to a lock that can be placed on the name in the registry. Note that different registries have different locking mechanisms. Regards, Bruce Tonkin