The Federal Drug Administration  (FDA) send out a “warning letter” this week to 22 companies that operate 136 sit”that appeared to be illegally selling drugs to American consumers.”

However even through its was labeled as “warning letter”, the FDA also went to the service providers of the sites  and registrars of the domain names subject to the warning letter and told them “that the site illegal activities may give them grounds to terminate service to their customers.”

And according to one report the “warning letter” seems to have worked as about 90 of the sites named in the warning letter that were US based, have already been taken down.

Now I’m no great fan of these sites and actually they drive me crazy, as I get well over 5,000 spam e-mail’s everyday advertising drugs for sale.

Still I have a problem with any governmental agency unilaterally determining that your activity is illegal, without giving the site owner the opportunity of a hearing or trial and an opportunity to present a defense to the claim of illegality, going directly to the ISP and registrars asking that the site’s services be terminated.

No due process.

No hearing, no trial.

Nothing.

The fact that ISP and registrars as so willing to terminate services based on a letter from a governmental body is troubling.

As we discussed this last year in relation to the Kentucky domain seizures and the Cuba domain seizures, we believe this is further evidence that you might be safer hosting your domains and sites outside of the US and registering them with a Non-US based registrar before you wake up one day to find out some governmental agency determines your domain is “illegal”

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