Last year, we wrote about how the UK was following in the footsteps of the US's Homeland Security/ICE domain seizures. As we noted, the process there is even less rigorous than in the US - often without a court being involved at all. Law enforcement just had to ask, and Nominet would take down the domain. Still, we hadn't heard about any specific domains that were seized - and we hadn't heard of any non-Nominet (which handle .co.uk domains) being subject to UK claims.

Until now.

Dajaz1 - who, of course, had its own issues with bogus domain seizures - has a story up about how the site rnbxclusive.com appears to have been seized via UK law enforcement, who put up a splash page even more ridiculous (though with fewer eagles) than the ICE splash page.



The site, like many music blogs, did post various videos and commentary about new music. Perhaps some were infringing, but you'd think that there would be a trial first. This takedown is apparently happening via SOCA, the Serious Organized Crime Agency in the UK - who, amusingly, puts a copyright symbol on their takedown splash page. There are all sorts of issues to be raised here.

This whole thing is pretty crazy, and I'm surprised such blatant censorship by UK law enforcement of a "US" domain hasn't received more attention yet.