C&AB rules on appeal against SIDN’s decision regarding professor.nl
Complaints and Appeals Board makes first ruling about Notice-and-Take-Down Procedure
If you’re unhappy with a particular decision taken by SIDN, you can appeal against it to the Complaints and Appeals Board (C&AB). You can also appeal to the C&AB if, for example, SIDN ‘takes down’ a .nl domain name in line with the Notice-and-Take-Down Procedure for .nl Domain Names.
The C&AB recently made its first ruling on a case where a registrant appealed against a notice-and-take-down intervention by SIDN. The C&AB dismissed the appeal, confirming that our intervention was within the law and our own rules, and that our decision was reasonable.
For general information about the C&AB, the NTD Procedure and our General Terms and Conditions, and for details of the C&AB’s ruling, follow the links below.
C&AB ruling on professor.nl (only in Dutch at this moment)
General points highlighted by C&AB
Generally speaking, the C&AB’s ruling confirms that the procedure set up by SIDN for people to make notice-and-take-down requests and for the requests to be dealt with does satisfy the C&AB’s criteria. The ruling also includes a number of points regarding the way the procedure is applied.
For example, the C&AB emphasises that SIDN should intervene only as a last resort. As operator of the .nl domain, we have a very particular and unique position, and we must therefore act cautiously and with great care. After all, if we decide to intervene in response to an NTD request, our decision can have major implications.
The C&AB also stressed the importance of SIDN always going through every step of the procedure very carefully, documenting what we have done. That implies, for example, approaching everyone referred to in the procedure.
It’s also advisable, especially before taking any action that isn’t the obvious thing to do, to make a thorough proportionality assessment and to very explicitly weigh up the interests served by enforcement against the registrant’s interests.
A notable aspect of the case that the C&AB has recently ruled on was that the NTD request came from a regulatory government agency, and that SIDN was unable to independently determine whether the registrant involved had done anything against the law. The ruling confirmed that, even under such circumstances, we can intervene if the request is adequately substantiated. We cannot reasonably be expected to question the government agency’s judgement.
Conclusion
The points made by the C&AB are completely consistent with the way we always deal with NTD requests. Although we get very few NTD requests, as is appropriate for a last-resort mechanism, we act on less than half of them. Details are given in our Transparency Report. We’re pleased that the C&AB has reviewed our NTD activities for the first time. It’s now up to us to ensure that we continue to exercise great care and to handle all NTD requests in full accordance with the procedure.
