News - Microsoft given legal help to take-down botnets

[HEXUS]

Company gains ownership of domains, cutting spammers off at the source

Read more.

[jimbouk]

Anyone else surprised (or not surprised) that the headline wasn't "Law enforcement agencies get off their bums and do something about the large botnets spamming the interweb". I know Microsoft's poor OS security was partially to blame, but seriously it would be a lot easier if it was just "there's a crime being committed, lets stop it".

[MaddAussie]

I have to say that Nominet and the other DNS registries have been doing this for ages, its nothing new, We work with the police, trading standards and other agencies to take action on lots of issues not just botnets.

[BullDogg]

I have to say that Nominet and the other DNS registries have been doing this for ages, its nothing new, We work with the police, trading standards and other agencies to take action on lots of issues not just botnets.

I think the point was (sorry if it wasn't clear) that this is the first time that it's been done through the court like this.

The really unique thing (entering law geek mode) was that the hearings were - obviously - ex parte, meaning that the herders weren't present. Getting an interim remedy (injunction, freezing order, restraining order, etc) ex parte is pretty common, especially for freezing orders, but a judgement - especially for something that isn't a really straight forward case, like simple breach of contract - is quite rare. As far as my understanding goes, that's even more true in the US, where they're very big on supporting the rights of the individual to be heard in court.