Howdy Perry,
Alexis Rosen of Panix was on the phone earlier today with the company attorney for melbourneit -- reputedly he was informed that even if the police called, they would not do anything about the problem until Monday their time.
(a) I don't know MIT's attorney, and (b) I wouldn't ever call him or her when I could reach someone I know, and (c) what would you expect an attorney to say?
Alexis is a bit on the upset side, naturally -- his company is in serious trouble because of very obvious fraud, and waiting a few days isn't really something he can afford to do. (If you look at the whois records now in place for panix.com they're pretty clearly the result of fraudulent activity. There is a pretty clear attempt there to maximally obscure who has stolen the domain name -- this is clearly not an innocent mistake.)
Yeah, but, home truths. There are registrars who will get out of bed at night for a customer, and registrars who could give a shit if hell froze. Just like ISPs and LEOs, neh? Picking a registrar with a market share in the top 10 means that you get 1/share's worth of attention, which means 1/1488700 of Dotster's attention (using 1/15 daily market share graph). Now, was that at the NetSol $35/yr price point for customer care, or the GoDaddy $6.95/yr price point for customer care. I suppose everyone thinks that it (for some value of "it") can't happen to them, and that if it does, a wicked small amount of money will still do more than the oil that lights the lamps at Hanukkah, because bad acts are rare and all the dimes pile up into a shared fate insurance fund. Well, now I'm really going to bed. Eric