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/summo...
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