At internet scale, this would roughly be equivalent to not doing any warning or detection at all.

Scalable systems need to use heuristics to catch threats. Needing concrete evidence in every case means that an enormously higher amount of malicious resources will not be flagged.

There is a policy argument as to the right balance of concerns here. But there is a clear trade-off to make.

I'm curious as to how you would prove that it would be impossible for any resource accessible under a given DNS domain to ever cause harm to anyone else.

Isn't "oops we made a mistake" actually a valid defense to libel in most US states? I thought you had to prove it was intentional to some extent? Or reckless/negligent IANAL

Whether that's true or not is irrelevant if it's defined by law differently. Even without case law and precedent you'd still have to test it in court, which for libel can be prohibitively expensive.

For clarity I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but what means sense to the layperson (including experts in a particular field) is sometimes at odds with what the law says.

Not to mention that the whole point of the list is for blocking in e.g. web browsers. Claiming it is just an opinion would be like a mobster claiming they didn't actually order a hit.

> If the opinion is meant to be just another opinion, then it shouldn't cause any blacklisting of any sorts anywhere.

I agree with this! The registrar should not have triggered a suspension because of this. They're not obligated to, and the two processes should be decoupled.

“contains CSAM” is likely an unarguable fact.

“unsafe” is a term that is both broader and more vague, so I would consider it opinion unless backed up by appropriate facts (like “contains CSAM”, “contains malware”, and so forth).

One is disprovable, the other is not.

Only if it’s intentional (or maybe grossly negligent).

There’s nothing wrong with your dislike of Google. No matter how much you dislike them, though, the word “libel” has a meaning that should be respected. To opine that a site is unsafe is simply not libelous.

Nope, not in the US. It is perfectly legal to say, for example, "Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderer" despite him being acquitted. You're entirely free to disagree with the result, that is an opinion. Any opinion based on public knowledge is ok. It doesn't even have to be reasonable or rational.

What you can't do is imply non-public knowledge, aka "I heard from my cousin who works in law enforcement that Kyle murdered a hobo when he was 12 but the records were sealed", or state specific facts that can be proven true or false: "Kyle murdered a hobo on September 11, 2018 out back of the 7-11 in Gainesville, FL"

The standard for libel/slander is much, much higher than people think. It's extremely difficult to meet them, and for public figures, it's almost impossible.

thanks for the laugh. Even if you only meant people from the US this is likely not true. What about government websites at .gov? 99% never visit them?

In other countries local TLDs are of course normal (e.g. .it for Italy, .za for South Africa, .cn for China...) and not only used for scam links.

What? I find myself on .net-s and .org-s all the time. For example... Wikipedia is .org. Do 99% of people not visit Wikipedia?

The words in your link do not support the words in your comment. Don't be snarky unless you are certain you're correct.

> a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.

They falsely marked the site unsafe[1] on a published list[2], the results weren't checked and couldn't be appealed[3] and OPs site was taken down[4].