indeed... well stated Andre. This SWITCH / "legal process" needs still *alot* of fine-tuning.

Cheers JIm

On 12.08.2012 19:12, Andre Oppermann wrote:

On 10.08.2012 16:27, Serge Droz wrote:

...

Hello Swinogers,

you may have read our press release yesterday: http://www.switch.ch/about/news/2012/malware-080812.html

In the latest "PandaLabs Quarterly Report" Switzerland is judged as the "Least infected" country. While one always has to read such number with care, we still feel it indicates that Swiss ISPs do a good job. We've been sending out reports about infected systems since about a year, and the response was positive. Most people did put in the additional effort to support their customers fixing the problems.

Thus a big "Thank you" to all who take security serious..

Despite the results in cleaning up *websites* I still feel uneasy about this completely extra-judicial domain takedown process. A domain is at least as important as a specially assigned phone number. When BAKOM want's to deactivate such a phone number because of alleged abuse it has to issue an official order (Verfügung) which can be appealed in legal court. Then court then may, or may not, issue a stay on the order until things are further analysed or sorted out.

Here SWITCH is the accuser and executioner in union. On top of that it will only re-establish the domain when SWITCH is satisfied that its demands are fulfilled. There is no appeals process, no legal court, no 3rd party review, simply nothing. And ".ch" Domains are a Swiss federal resource in law.

It seems we haven't hit the edge cases yet where there is disagreement on whether something actually is malware or malicious enough between SWITCH and a domain holder.

I'm waiting for the day "megarapiddownload.ch" (made that up) is considered illicit for the purpose of a domain disable procedure. What then? IFPI throwing a party?

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:05:19 +0200 Serge Droz serge.droz@switch.ch wrote:

I am a bit surprised at your reply. In fact, the domain take down process is described in the law:

http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/sr/784_104/a14bist.html

Besides the rather strict legal framework we operate in, we must submitt a list ob blocked domain names OFCOM four times a year. And we must be able to explain our action for each of these. The OFCOM people monitor this process quite closely.

I hope this clarifies matters.

It's a kind of a post-democracy law, decision and execution in a private hand.

And mixing up the entities domain owner, server(s) owner, user(s) on that servers and ISPs of all or some servers is in the best case clueless.

It's like punish a city/township because a car driver killed somebody somewhere and the car is registered in that city.

It doesn't make sense to mix up responsibilities of entities. I'm very happy, that most of my domains have nothing to do with switch.ch and this clueless law.

That ISPs help to clean up their networks is very important but it has to be done carefully and without mix up responsibilities.

Regards Oli

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:55:04 +0200 Guillaume Leclanche guillaume@leclanche.net wrote:

I think the law makes a good job of delimiting the cases where the block can be done. In addition, I think Switch makes a good job applying this law. I'd be happy that switch blocks one of my domains to prevent me from being sued for damages by some infected people.

If the entities domain owner, server owner and service owner are the same - no problem.

You want that your email communication is blocked because one of your clients has a client that hosts a vulnerable PHP application? Come on.

Regards Oli

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 21:52:35 +0200 Andreas Fink afink@list.fink.org wrote:

Doesnt matter. Switch is only following the rules in the law.

I don't blame switch to follow foolish laws. But there are two interesting questions:

1) why should I use switch when they can't offer a reliable service because they has to apply the law?

2) who did acknowledge from switch, that this would be a good idea before it became a law?

In this form, it's a potential censorship infrastructure which can be used against anybody and can be used for pressure. It's very easy to create a case where any domain can be killed.

The intention of some people for a law doesn't matter, it matters what you can do with a law (but my point of view is that the intention is a censorship infrastructure as in many other countries today). The term post-democracy law fits very good for this law.

You can't protect yourself from applying it against you - that's a clear sign for a anti-democratic law.

Regards Oli