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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The MPAA will be able to quickly take down domains under a new agreement with the Radix Registry [theregister.co.uk]:

The Motion Picture Ass. of America will be given a direct line to kill domain names that it says contain pirated information. Under an agreement signed [mpaa.org] [PDF] with Radix Registry, the MPAA will be a "trusted notifier" across the whole range of Radix registries that include .website, .tech, .online, .space and .host. If the MPAA finds a domain name that it believes is being used "for the purpose of referring large-scale pirate websites" it has a direct contact with the registry operator that may then "put the infringing site on hold or suspend it." In other words, kill the website at the DNS level.

While the MPAA and Radix are keen to point out that there are "strict standards" covering any referrals, critics are concerned about the potential for it to act as a "slippery slope".

When the MPAA signed a similar agreement another registry, Donuts, in February, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a post [eff.org] in which it argued that "the companies and organizations that run the Internet's domain name system shouldn't be in the business of policing the contents of websites, or enforcing laws that can impinge on free speech." Donuts runs over 200 registries covering everything from .academy to .zone but crucially for the MPAA also .movie, .watch and .pictures.

Original Submission