The National Arbitration Forum has just handed down its decision in respect to the three domain names locked down at Public Domain Registry in response to the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit takedown requests (see earlier post). The decision is in favour of easyDNS and orders the three names to be transferred to us.

The full text of the decision is available here, the notable finding is that:

No court order has been issued which would prohibit the transfer of the domain names at issue from the Registrar of Record to the Gaining Registrar. Therefore, there is nothing in the Transfer Policy which authorizes the Registrar of Record to refuse to transfer the domain names.

Yes, exactly, that’s what we’ve been saying all along. It’s unbelievable that we had to take this all the way to a second level appeal to get a decision enforced that is simply straight-forward compliance with a clear, unambiguous rule that all registrars have to play by.

More importantly, the panel went on to say:

To permit a registrar of record to withhold the transfer of a domain based on the suspicion of a law enforcement agency, without the intervention of a judicial body, opens the possibility for abuse by agencies far less reputable than the City of London Police. Presumably, the provision in the Transfer Policy requiring a court order is based on the reasonable assumption that the intervention of a court and judicial decree ensures that the restriction on the transfer of a domain name has some basis of “due process” associated with it. (emphasis added)

This is precisely the reason we felt obligated to go all the way with this. It is now official, and out there for all to see: Even if a registrar suspends service to a domain for any number of ill conceived reasons (including the flimsiest of takedown requests from overreaching law enforcement agencies) they cannot prevent those domains from seeking greener pastures in the form of more clueful registrars—unless they have a COURT ORDER to lock the domain down.

It’s been a long haul, but it’s worth it.