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This is an interesting idea executed terribly. Obviously there are huge liabilities associated with this kind of proxying, but for people which want or need hig

This is an interesting idea executed terribly. Obviously there are huge liabilities associated with this kind of proxying, but for people which want or need highly anonymous domain registration it could be a worthwhile idea if backed up by an adequately robust contract. The issues: firstly, they don't support freedom of speech: >As long as you keep within the boundaries of reasonable law and you're not a right-wing extremist, we’re for promoting your freedom of speech Secondly, they don't make it clear in what jurisdiction they operate. Thirdly, they don't specify anywhere what registrar(s) they use to register domains. This prevents customers from performing due diligence on the registrar and its history (for example, does the registrar have a history of arbitrary domain suspensions?) Fourthly, as mentioned in another comment, their terms of service is absurdly loose with regards to their responsibilites; they can terminate service arbitrarily, and have no obligation to transfer ownership to you in this case. This is completely unacceptable. Fifthly, their website doesn't work properly without JavaScript. This is completely unacceptable in any case, but is particularly egregious for an anonymity-focused service which provides a Tor hidden service, where many customers may wish to keep JavaScript disabled (as is Tor Browser's default) to reduce attack surface. Apparently people don't know how to make websites anymore. Sixthly, their website copy is amateurish and has basic typographical errors. Seventh, and perhaps most gravely of all, their entire website betrays a fundamental misconception of the roles and demarcation of a registrar (or pretend registrar, as is the case here.) Above I mention that they are anti-free speech, but the very fact that they think it is the place of a (pretend) registrar to have a policy on this matter betrays a fundamental misconception about the liabilities of a domain registrar. The very idea that a domain registrar (or pretend domain registrar) should be in some way responsible for content hosted "on" a domain is faulty, and at the same time sets a hazardous precedent; this is exactly the kind of thinking which absolutely should not be encouraged or perpetuated in the domain name industry, as it is only going to lead to more and more political intervention at the domain name level. A domain name registrar nominates domain names (meaning essentially the name itself, plus the specified nameservers) to a domain name registry. The only legitimate involvement a registrar has in the use of the domain name is any issue involving the legality of the literal domain name string itself, or the nameserver names, or maybe WHOIS data. Notice that for all its faults, this actually moreorless matches the ICANN model: There are dispute processes for trademark issues regarding the domain name string itself, and dispute processes for WHOIS data. There are emphatically not ICANN dispute processes for content served by nameservers, or content served by hosts referenced by zone data served by nameservers! (I suppose theoretically someone could find a way to break a law with the nameserver names themselves; setting a nameserver for example.com to <illegal-string>.example.com, say, but it seems like that's sufficiently obscure a possibility that it has not yet arisen.) A domain name registrar is not responsible for the content served by name servers referenced by a domain name, let alone the content served by services provided by hosts referenced by the content of a zone file served by a name server referenced by a domain name. That this pretend registrar fundamentally fails to comprehend this demarcation of responsibility is extremely problematic, and betrays a troubling lack of understanding of the system. Of course, it certainly may be the case that domain name registries and registrars (and pretend registrars) in the future get more and more dragged into disputes regarding services provided by hosts referenced by zone files served by nameservers referenced by a domain name, but this is extremely undesirable. It would represent the politicization of the domain name system, which would itself seriously undermine its stability and reliability. We have already seem some attempts to politicize the system and they do not bode well; it's certainly not helpful if registrars start overestimating the degree of their responsibility, as it only increases the feasibility of future politicization of the domain name system. In particular, it should be noted that there is basically no case where the seizure of a domain name for the content it "hosts" (in reality, references, not even directly but via a set of referenced nameservers) can be proportionate; or at least, no case where it can be reliably ascertained that the seizure of a domain would not be grossly disproportionate. For example, if google.com accidentally hosts a small amount of illegal material, should google.com be suspended? Of course not; so unless one is suggesting that 'important' domains should be subject to different, more preferential rules than 'unimportant' domains (an affront to the idea of an internet open for all), where is one supposed to draw the line? Moreover, most nameservers do not allow zone transfers. This means that the extent of a zone served by nameservers referenced by a domain name cannot be reliably ascertained, which again means that there is no way to reliably ascertain that the seizure of a domain name is not grossly disproportionate. If a domain hosts illegal.example.com, but also hosts a million legal subdomains, how can the seizure of example.com for hosting illegal.example.com be proportionate? There is no way to reliably ascertain the existence of subdomains, so illegal.example.com could be known to search engines but the million legal subdomains could be unpublished, internal names yet unknown (by obscurity) to the world. Even if the full contents of a zone could be reliably ascertained, most records reference IPs (A/AAAA), not services (SRV, MX), so unless you portscanned every IP referenced, that doesn't tell you what type of service is hosted on those subdomains (and even if you did portscan those IP addresses, there's the possibility that some services are firewalled to certain source IPs, for example services for internal use only, etc. etc.; the possibilities are endless, and thus so are the opportunities for unforeseeable collateral damage). There is an extremely relevant real-world example of this: the no-ip.org debacle (no-ip.org is a domain which provides free subdomains to arbitrary parties), in which a court, truly extraordinarily, allowed a private corporation, Microsoft, to assume control of the entire no-ip.org domain, simply because of a single bad user, and a very tenuous claim that the abusive subdomain involved infringement of a Microsoft trademark. This resulted in massive disruption to all other no-ip.org users. Again, there is no way of reliably ascertaining an upper bound for the operational impact caused by a domain seizure.

dijhrykl 9y ago
Another example is the case of US ICE seizing domains quite dubiously. This brings me to another example of how the seizure of domains for law enforcement purposes related only to services provided by hosts referenced by the zone files served by nameservers referenced by those domains is almost necessarily disproportionate: when one seizes a domain one assumes control of all records served by it, including MX records. As such, when one seizes a domain, one takes control not just of any websites served via it, but any email service for it as well. (For this reason in particular, thinking of domain names as fundamentally website-centric is hazardous to the future political integrity of the domain name system. Domain names are not websites.) As such when ICE seizes a domain, they also are implicitly assuming the right to redirect all incoming email to that domain to them (not even intercept but forward, e.g. with a warrant, but redirect outright). In fact, I'm not sure if this would even be illegal; if you've obtained a domain legally, you can configure it as you wish. If someone claims a domain of mine, example.com, has a website facilitating illegal activity, and has it seized by some jurisdiction's law, what if my principal email address is @example.com? Now I am deprived of the ability to engage in correspondance so as to ascertain the grounds for such seizure and contest it. The intention was to disable the website, yet email service and potentially an arbitrary number of other services are also disrupted. Again, I reiterate that there is no way of reliably ascertaining an upper bound to the operational impact of a domain seizure, and as such it is hard to see that domain seizures can ever be reliably ascertained to be proportionate as a law enforcement measure in advance. The idea of domain seizures as a law enforcement method is a really, really bad idea. It makes about as much sense, and is as about as proportionate, as the postal service revoking the address of someone who commits mail fraud; their house number is literally erased from databases, and mailmen return mail sent to that house number as undeliverable. Nobody would claim this is a sane way of dealing with abuse of the postal service. And of course, nothing in this should seem like it makes law enforcement impractical. If a service is illegal, go after the people, the company, the servers; going after the domain always has the potential to cause extreme collateral damage, and the degree of damage which may be caused cannot be ascertained in advance. Even more worryingly, to the extent that we've seen seizures so far, it seems like something mostly done because it is easy, not because it is right; a cheap, usually due-process-free way of smiting websites deemed improper when persuing the persons or machines involved would be more effort. This reduces the trustworthiness and reliability of the domain name system, and its ability to serve an apolitical role for entities of all countries worldwide. This is a disaster for the law abiding just as much as it is for the lawless. If this company is serious about the robustness of domain names, it needs to stop perpetuating an idea of the registrar (or pretend registrar) as a publisher, as a legally responsible entity for the services dereferencable via domain names, particularly since such a model of liability is, mercifully, not yet one that has appears to have become reality. To do so simply accelerates the undesirable.

dijhrykl 9y ago

Another example is the case of US ICE seizing domains quite dubiously. This brings me to another example of how the seizure of domains for law enforcement purposes related only to services provided by hosts referenced by the zone files served by nameservers referenced by those domains is almost necessarily disproportionate: when one seizes a domain one assumes control of all records served by it, including MX records. As such, when one seizes a domain, one takes control not just of any websites served via it, but any email service for it as well. (For this reason in particular, thinking of domain names as fundamentally website-centric is hazardous to the future political integrity of the domain name system. Domain names are not websites.) As such when ICE seizes a domain, they also are implicitly assuming the right to redirect all incoming email to that domain to them (not even intercept but forward, e.g. with a warrant, but redirect outright). In fact, I'm not sure if this would even be illegal; if you've obtained a domain legally, you can configure it as you wish. If someone claims a domain of mine, example.com, has a website facilitating illegal activity, and has it seized by some jurisdiction's law, what if my principal email address is @example.com? Now I am deprived of the ability to engage in correspondance so as to ascertain the grounds for such seizure and contest it. The intention was to disable the website, yet email service and potentially an arbitrary number of other services are also disrupted. Again, I reiterate that there is no way of reliably ascertaining an upper bound to the operational impact of a domain seizure, and as such it is hard to see that domain seizures can ever be reliably ascertained to be proportionate as a law enforcement measure in advance. The idea of domain seizures as a law enforcement method is a really, really bad idea. It makes about as much sense, and is as about as proportionate, as the postal service revoking the address of someone who commits mail fraud; their house number is literally erased from databases, and mailmen return mail sent to that house number as undeliverable. Nobody would claim this is a sane way of dealing with abuse of the postal service. And of course, nothing in this should seem like it makes law enforcement impractical. If a service is illegal, go after the people, the company, the servers; going after the domain always has the potential to cause extreme collateral damage, and the degree of damage which may be caused cannot be ascertained in advance. Even more worryingly, to the extent that we've seen seizures so far, it seems like something mostly done because it is easy, not because it is right; a cheap, usually due-process-free way of smiting websites deemed improper when persuing the persons or machines involved would be more effort. This reduces the trustworthiness and reliability of the domain name system, and its ability to serve an apolitical role for entities of all countries worldwide. This is a disaster for the law abiding just as much as it is for the lawless. If this company is serious about the robustness of domain names, it needs to stop perpetuating an idea of the registrar (or pretend registrar) as a publisher, as a legally responsible entity for the services dereferencable via domain names, particularly since such a model of liability is, mercifully, not yet one that has appears to have become reality. To do so simply accelerates the undesirable.