Despite protests from online entities based abroad, “the U.S. government … says it has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.” Unease abroad about aggressive use of such powers by the American government could heighten pressure for a U.N. takeover of the domain name system, potentially a frying-pan-into-fire move from the standpoint of web freedom and due process. [David Kravets, Wired “Threat Level”]
P.S. Extradition, too.
7 Comments
Something tells me there’s about to be a boom in supplying non U.S. domain names; a whole bunch of .ca, .uk, .ru, etc.
The quote is oversimplified. Saying the government has the “right” to seize a .com domain name because the registry is in the U.S. is like saying that the government has the right to seize a car because it is present in the U.S. The “right” here means that the government has jurisdiction over that thing. Doesn’t tell you anything about what legal process is required to do it, nor what would justify such a seizure.
….the U.S. is like saying that the government has the right to seize a car because it is present in the U.S. The “right” here means that the government has jurisdiction over that thing.
As I understand it, the registry is kept as part of an international agreement which includes the mandate the government is forbidden to do what they did.
In the case of bodog.com, the government seized the wrong domain, even though the domain was registered outside of the country, the register was outside of the country and the activity was legal inside of the country in which the company was operating.
A better analogy than the car being in the US is that the US went into a foreign country, seized a car that was legal in that country, bought via a legal agreement simply because the trademark of the car had been registered in the US.
The Feds have seized over 750 domains (it doesn’t matter the extension) and despite the government saying otherwise, the person who owns the domain was never given a chance to answer the warrant to seize the domain as required by law.
This seems to be a classic overreach by the fine folks in the government.
This is mind-bogglingly short sighted.
It would be less of a problem, if US would not seize those domains at random with absolutely not process or oversite. There have been cases of domains seized with absolutely no explanation. The domain in question has been returned back after a year(!) with no explanation, excuse or even a simple ‘sorry’.
Oh, yes, yes, please have the UN take over domain name registration. I just can’t wait for such free speech giants as Cuba and Iran to take control of the UN domain name committee.
“This seems to be a classic overreach by the fine folks in the government.”
Wouldn’t this overreach be a great way to push everyone into handing it over to the U.N.? If your goal was to gather momentum for the U.N. on this, would there be a better way?
I seem to have my conspiracy hat on today(100% grade-A tin-foil, not that cheap aluminum stuff).