20 ms·
US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction
- turbojerry 15y agoI wonder where this will end? Claiming all packets that go through the US are in its jurisdiction? All packets that go through routers supplied by American companies who provide finance for the router? All packets that go through routers owned by a company who has 1 or more American shareholders?
- dstein 15y agoThen .com's should be phased out. Migrate all .com to .co.us.
- getsat 15y agoHaha, as much as it should, this is not going to happen. The USA does what it wants and everyone else acquiesces or faces repercussions. ICANN may be "international", but remember where it's based.
- codabrink 15y ago.com is not a broken system, and .co.us is not as easy to type. Other than to strictly conform, I don't see any point in it.
- nitrogen 15y agoArticles like these demonstrate that .com is a broken system.
- ericd 15y agoWhy? A TLD doesn't have to explicitly reference the country in which it's based. The big TLDs started in the US, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they're still under the US jurisdiction. That said, fragmenting the internet into nationalistic TLD silos will probably have some negative consequences for the cross cultural nature of the internet, and it might help to give the non-obviously nation-based TLDs over to an international ruling body. It's something to be weighed by the US govt. I hope they consider both sides carefully.
- dstein 15y agoJust because the US has historically had jurisdiction doesn't mean they always should forever. ICE has taken actions recently that proves conclusively they don't deserve this authority.
- regularfry 15y agoHow would moving everyone to Colorado help?
- tnorthcutt 15y agoPerhaps I'm missing something, but why would ICE have anything to do with copyright in the first place, regardless of whether their jurisdiction claims are upheld/fair? How does copyright fall under either immigration or customs?
- GHFigs 15y agoHow does copyright fall under either immigration or customs? Think bootleg DVDs. According to the linked Guardian article, most of the domains ICE has seized were selling counterfeit physical goods.
- uxp 15y agoSelling and Free[1] are interchangeable, as well as physical and digital, in your statement. Realistically, there isn't much difference between a counterfeit luxury handbag being sold for $20 out of the back of some shady shop and an illegitimate copy of a blockbuster movie being given out for free[1], over the internet or hand to hand. [1] Key point: These domains being seized aren't actually giving away streams or download links for free, they're being reimbursed through ad revenue or affiliate programs. Side note: A popular watch brand's repair facility in the USA gets a large number of counterfeit watches in for repair every day. They would like to see these thing eradicated, but are restricted by law to not seize the fake goods, after all they have no proof that someone somewhere profited from the production of the fake watch, which be definition is infringement. Anyone can replicate a popular product, but the moment it starts to compete with the original on the marketplace, it is copyright infringement. Blindly stealing fake watches from potential customers is illegal. So, this Watch company, if it desires to do so, will ask the customer if they would like to sell the watch to the company. If the customer agrees, they inform them that selling counterfeit goods is illegal, and they then have jurisdiction to seize the fake watch.
- ynniv 15y agoSorry, this comment has entirely too many incorrect or unsupported claims... Don't quit your day job for that legal career yet.
- aw3c2 15y agoBetter link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/03/us-anti-piracy-extradition-prosecution http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/03/us-anti-pir...
- Shenglong 15y agoIs this a joke? I thought it might be serious until I read: ICE is not focusing its efforts just on web sites that stream dodgy content but those that link to them Please tell me this is a joke. I don't know whether to laugh or be sad.
- hsmyers 15y agoBe sad. Until these over reaching idiots get taken down and taken down hard, they will continue to prop up the entertainment industry even though it is the public that is both paying the freight and the penalty.
- adrianN 15y agoAFAIK here in Germany you can get in trouble for linking to illegal content. That includes linking to software like AnyDVD that cracks encryption. I think heise.de, a big German tech-news site, got in trouble over that.
- pyre 15y agoI think the point of the parent post was that ICE is only focusing on people linking to 'illegal streaming sites,' but not going after 'illegal streaming sites' themselves, which seems somewhat backwards. That would be like the "War on Drugs" focusing on arresting people that point out where you can find drug dealers, but not bothering to go after actual drug dealers.
- mattmanser 15y agoIt didn't actually say that. Where does it say streaming sites? Do you go for the seeders or do you go after the torrent search engines? One is whack a mole, one is destroy the C&C. I know which one I'd choose. It's more analogous to ignoring the street level criminals and going after the Don, who never get his hands dirty any more but is directing all those that do. Edit: I'm not arguing for or against, just want to point out that there's no point going after the individual seeders.
- imrehg 15y agoOh dear, why did I by a .net for my personal domain.... ><
- Unseelie 15y agoAre there addresses that no country can't claim as in their jurisdiction? Seems to me that you have to be in jurisdiction somewhere. Not to argue that American jurisdiction is necessarily the best..
- oniTony 15y ago.onion ? Technically not a real DNS entry, and is not present in DNS root.
- imrehg 15y agoWhy is online piracy such a big business (and hence a problem to the rights holders)? Because there are no comparable legal alternatives. So instead of technology and business innovation, let's do legal innovation and sue them people regardless of where they are.
- blhack 15y ago>Why is online piracy such a big business (and hence a problem to the rights holders)? Because there are no comparable legal alternatives. I want to agree with you, because I wish that was the case, but it isn't. The 15-25 set just doesn't care. If they can get a movie for free on bittorrent, or pay $20/mo to stream as many as they want, they'll go for bittorrent the majority of the time.
- Blarat 15y agoDo you have anything to back up that claim? My sister is in that range and she and most of her friends pay for content when they can, or so she tells me.
- Unseelie 15y agoI'm going to assume you're not in the 15-25 set, by even claiming there's wide commonality between people 15 and 25 years old. 18-25, perhaps. The first major difference is that people approaching 25 have a great deal more money than people at 15. All that aside, I for one notice a huge predilection in my peers (of the 19-22 set)to buy into services such as hulu and netxflix, and to look there first for their media. Why? Because the services are instant, cheap, and of much better than most pirated media. FYI, netflix charges $8 a month...significantly less than the 20 you site.
- novumordo 15y agoServices such as Netflix and Hulu are not available in most countries, and if they are, selection is terrible.
- 15y ago
- daimyoyo 15y agoIf these sites are in the jurisdiction of the US, aren't they also entitled to the same right of due process? Have any of these seizures been challenged in court? And if so, what's the status of the cases?
- bbatsell 15y agoOne, to my knowledge, and ICE and DoJ engaged in some... rather dubious behavior in response to the target attempting to discuss the actions in good faith. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110613/12021514673/rojadirecta-sues-us-government-homeland-security-ice-over-domain-seizure.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110613/12021514673/rojadi...
- buro9 15y agoOnly US citizens have the right of due process.
- _delirium 15y agoThat's not the case; non-citizens under U.S. jurisdiction also have due-process rights. For example, despite him being a French citizen, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is entitled to the standard Constitutional rights in his criminal trial, including things like being read Miranda rights, not being forced to testify against himself, and receiving a trial that accords with due process. If any of that were violated, he could appeal his case and the appeal would be heard in the same manner as if he were a U.S. citizen being tried in the same New York courts. Even foreign corporations have due-process rights; for example, Texas cannot simply seize a refinery owned by BP without some kind of legal process. The only cases I'm aware of where it's more murky are: 1) non-citizens held by the U.S. armed forces outside the territory of the U.S., alleged to be "enemy combatants"; and 2) illegal aliens awaiting deportation, who do still have some limited right to due process in challenging their deportation proceedings, but there's more controversy around it.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoYou're absolutely correct here. The 4th Amendment (giving protection from unreasonable search and seizure) starts off, "the right of the people...", not "the right of the citizens". Together with the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause, non-citizens get the same protections. That said, the doctrine used in asset seizure cases (generally connected to the failed war on drugs) is that it's the seized property itself that is suspected to be guilty, and property doesn't have any of these rights. One can easily imagine them trying the same crap here.
- nhangen 15y agoI get that they can take the domain away, but to seek extradition and US charges in court seems absurd.
- nodata 15y agoEveryone else claims .us is in the US jurisdiction. How will this stop anything? Wasn't .com handed to the UN to manage?
- wmf 15y ago.com is managed by US company VeriSign with oversight from ICANN. Some people want to turn ICANN over to the UN or ITU, but the US Dept. of Commerce has held onto it with the argument that the UN allows evil countries to vote and we wouldn't want to give them any level of control over ICANN, however small.
- GHFigs 15y agowith the argument that the UN allows evil countries to vote I won't vouch for their exact argument, but this was around the time Sudan was elected to the Commission on Human Rights.
- BasDirks 15y agoI do not condone any lulz that may result from this, but this is the equivalent of dropping your soap in prison.
- tomp 15y agoBarnett, assistant deputy director of ICE: "The idea is to try to prosecute." If I remember correctly, in the few cases that the domains were confiscated, there was no prosecution, no courts involved. The owners of the domains had practically no means to question or challenge the seizure. At least that's what the media reported at the time.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Uchikoma 15y ago+1 for having more than one domain for your (user content generated) startup.
- jbronn 15y agoVerisign is operator of the authoritative domain name registry for the .com and .net top-level domains. Verisign is headquartered in Virginia, and as such, the "property" of the domain is located in the United States and is subject to the jurisdiction of our courts. This isn't new, and it's why anti-cybersquatting legislation (15 U.S.C. §1125) can be enforced.
- ebaysucks 15y agoSuddenly I am happy only the .org was available for my new project. I am wondering though: Couldn't the US make similar claims on .org and .us (and .edu, .biz?) domains?
- siphr 15y agoYes I agree. I think this typical U.S. spoilt brat mentality. We need a new internet :).
- siphr 15y agoMarked down?! For what?
- dsl 15y agoYes. .org is ran within the US too. So are .info, .biz, .edu, .me, .ws, and a bunch more. The problem is most of the ccTLDs are actually operated by one of three companies, all of which are based in the US.
- Sigi 15y agoI was checking to see if my .asia domain was safe, and found out that .info, .org, and my beloved .asia tld are operated by Afilias which, according to wikipedia, "is headquartered in Dublin". I'm prepared to believe that wikipedia is wrong, but you'll have to prove it. with references, citations, and what not :)
- dsl 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_Arrangement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_Arrangement The companies you are really looking for are Afilias USA, Inc and Afilias LLC. If they were really based out of Ireland, their IP space would be allocated by RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens) instead of ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers).
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- chrisjsmith 15y agoCentralised DNS = bad. That's the issue.
- billswift 15y agoIt isn't just the domain names system, the whole way IP addresses are handled isn't much better.
- woodrow 15y agoCare to elaborate? I think the RIRs are doing a reasonable job, though if you don't like the needs-based approach to allocating addresses I could see the RIRs as disappointing.
- dsl 15y agoIt is a billion times better than decentralized DNS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file#History
- dstein 15y agoI imagine a decentralized DNS service based on the bitcoin network would be kinda cool.
- pizza 15y agoCheck out namecoin.
- chrisjsmith 15y agoInteresting - thanks for the link.
- baltcode 15y agoI had difficulty understanding namecoin. Do you simply pay for DNS registration with namecoins or is the DNS itself hosted in a decentralized and anonymous fashion?
- generators 15y agoif they even remotely try it, I bet each country will have their own dns server and broken internet. this clearly show that How gradually, USOFA do not have any intention to keep internet open. so it would be wise to move away from them while we can. ( only sometimes, once in a while, why it seems that china is better ? )
- JeremyBanks 15y agoif they even remotely try it They've been acting as though they had jurisdiction for a while; there have been tons of .com domains seized for non-US sites. This is just a confirmation of their position.
- jxcole 15y agoI think they may be shooting themselves in the foot with all this litigation against copy infringers. Once it becomes impractical to share files using bit torrent, people will probably just switch to mildly less convenient but more secure methods, like free net.
- Silhouette 15y agoEngland, February 2014: In other news, the Internet Service Providers' Association announced today that no major English ISP now relies on Verisign, the US company formerly responsible for administering major domains such as .com and .net worldwide. This follows a ruling at the European Court last year that Verisign's actions in blocking the domain of German business Musikjetzt GmbH constituted an unlawful restraint of trade, and a subsequent European decision that all primary DNS management should be run under the newly formed United Nations Internet Oversight Service. The Musikjetzt service allows music fans to stream their favourite songs on demand under the new copyright collective licensing regulations introduced Europe-wide in early 2013, and has sharply increased the consumption of music by independent artists. Shares in major US record labels have fallen over 40% in the past year, which industry insiders have repeatedly blamed on the way that Europeans "don't respect copyrights." As one CEO put it, "If they won't respect our rules voluntarily, we have to make them respect them." A spokeman for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said "Economic attacks on fundamental US industries are a bigger threat than terrorism, and we will always respond accordingly." No-one from the Recording Industry Association of America was available for comment.
- econgeeker 15y agoI worry that brussels and the UN are both just as bad as the US government, only a number of years behind them. The UN doesn't throw its weight around violating people's rights in large part because it doesn't have the power to do so. I think the entire DNS system needs to be out of the hands of government bodies of any type, preferably relying on a cooperative, distributed solution, like the internet itself (theoretically) does/can. I think it is amazing how divorced from US law the US government has become. Seizing domains without having previously gotten a conviction for a crime is against the law, and the idea that a DNS lookup is the same as "routing all traffic thru the US" is absurd as well. DNS records are cached globally. I'm afraid that the solutions will have to be technical, and not governmental.
- tobylane 15y agoOh? I kind of see it as the US gov have already been throwing their weight around, and the spare tire is hitting us all. Didn't Darpa recently not want to completely give up power over the internet, allowing something like this to happen?
- jrockway 15y agoMaybe all those .ly domain names aren't such a bad idea after all...
- jarek 15y agoWith the way things are going, I am expecting .ly to be in U.S. jurisdiction before long...
- brudgers 15y agotl; dr ICE spokesperson: All your domain are belong to U.S.
- dsl 15y agoFYI, .com/net/org have always belonged to the United States. In the same way that .ca belongs to Canada, com/net/org/us belong to the US. Think of them as the sponsoring organization that originally created them. The only thing the US government has ever given up is control over the registry and DNS management. Under a MoU[1] that facility was handed over to ICANN with the understanding that they would select US based private sector companies to take on the duties. Other TLDs that are sponsored internationally but managed in the US (like .me or .ws) is a whole different issue, but this one is pretty clean cut. 1. http://www.icann.org/en/general/icann-mou-25nov98.htm http://www.icann.org/en/general/icann-mou-25nov98.htm
- wmf 15y agoIt does seem problematic that all the generic TLDs (whose value over ccTLDs is obvious) are US-controlled. Maybe the imminent explosion of new gTLDs will help.
- dsl 15y agoYou can make a million brands of beverage, but everyone will still grab a Coke or a Pepsi from the shelf. The new gTLD program is just a money land-grab. It's been well known within the domain industry that firing up a new TLD is one of the most profitable things you can do. Between speculators and brand protection agencies you are guaranteed a minimum of 100k+ registrations. Multiply that by $20-$30 bucks a pop.
- marshray 15y agoOr in the case of gTLDs make that $185,000 per name applied-for. In other news, ICANN is starting an "international development initiative". http://blog.cira.ca/2011/06/new-gtlds-icann-international-development-and-venture-capital/ http://blog.cira.ca/2011/06/new-gtlds-icann-international-de...
- ThaddeusQuay 15y ago"The only thing the US government has ever given up is control over the registry and DNS management. Under a MoU[1] that facility was handed over to ICANN ..." That's just a bureaucratic illusion. As we can see from recent domain seizures, the feds can take over any of these domains, unilaterally, and without any notice or due process.
- clistctrl 15y agoI ask this completely seriously. What would it take to declare the domain of the internet as its own sovereign entity? The internet to me has become greater than just a communications network. It is a place where people connect/work/play. DNS is a natural resource, and should be regulated by all that is affected by it.
- bendmorris 15y agoIt's certainly interesting, but I don't think the internet could be considered its own sovereign entity. One major problem is that the "internet" is just an emergent property of lots of connected machines, and all of those machines have to physically exist somewhere within another sovereign entity.
- clistctrl 15y agoWhat if the entity was a p2p program that was miraculously internationally recognized? The hard part to me convincing governments to give up power.
- Locke1689 15y agoOk it seems that more than a few people have had similar misconceptions, so I'm going to try to clear this up. The idea that the internet is a p2p network is a pernicious falsehood. The only real way that the Internet is a p2p network is in inter-AS routing. You are not part of the p2p Internet, your neighbor is not part of the p2p Internet, and your company is probably not part of the p2p Internet--you're just leasing use of the p2p Internet. By this I mean that the Internet is fundamentally not as distributed as it seems. This is the flaw that most people who argue for wireless mesh networks have. The don't actually understand the technical complexity in how the Internet is run. But anyway, let's admit for the moment that the edge network is not decentralized (it is completely dependent on its ISP). Well, then the Internet is kind of decentralized, right? No. In order to cover the vast areas of land and ocean that connect the Internet we require massive fiber infrastructure development. But if that were somehow provided it would be distributed, right? No. As two Northwestern phd students and I measured in a paper in submission, more than 60% of p2p traffic passes through one of a handful of Tier 1 ISPs. No matter how you swing it, the Internet is not really decentralized, it is balanced between a few powerful companies and governments (which thus have to operate under the law of their hosting countries). A distributed or unregulated Internet is a pipe dream.
- canadiancreed 15y agoSounds like a good time to start selling those .com/.net domains I've got stashed away.
- bad_user 15y agoWell, PirateBay is a .org
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- spindritf 15y agoPirateBay will be whatever it needs to be, so will other, similar websites. Domain seizures don't even sound like a viable method of actually thwarting piracy.
- arihant 15y agoI'll get downvoted for this. Argument (I don't completely agree, but someone will make it sometime)- I think it is not good for humanity to trust the jurisdiction of a country which has demonstrated tainted judgement by getting involved in nuclear weapons and given their recent involvements in the middle east. The United States is not the country whose jurisdiction should control any form of worldwide open platform. Just a thought. This stuff needs some sort of international law. No jurisdiction in the world is good enough to rule the web, in any damned way. We cannot take our narrow minds into the future for our race.
- younata 15y ago> getting involved in nuclear weapons Pretty much every western country has nuclear weapons. If you're referencing the fact that the US is the only country to have dropped nuclear weapons on another country, keep in mind that it wasn't until 30 or so years later that we realized how bad nuclear weapons are. Hell, in the 80s, at my uni, there was an experiment to see if you could use nuclear radiation to clean toilet water. Don't get me wrong though, I agree with your other points.
- tobylane 15y agoPretty much every? No http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_with_nuclear_weapons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_with_nuclear_weapons Nuclear radiation is very different to weapons, your local major hospital has a dozen different uses for radiation (more powerful than cleaning water).
- crististm 15y agoThat's why I want to see alternative DNS services (TLD) take off...
- mmphosis 15y agohttp://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2826 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2826 (informational), IAB Technical Comment on the Unique DNS Root, Internet Architecture Board, The Internet Society (May 2000), Quote: "There is no getting away from the unique root of the public DNS." (page 5)
- ao12 15y agoAll your base are belong to us
- romland 15y agoHmm. Personally this is how I always thought of the original generic TLDs (com/net/org). In my head I think I even applied the idea to .xxx, .aero and what-not as well. Pretty much how I expect Libya to do whatever they want with the .ly domain. This seizing of domains has been kind of the de-facto behavior for at least some five years by now. In my head this new policy does not change anything (don't run gambling sites on a .com domain etc?). Hell, I might even go as far as to say that it might be a positive thing if there was no such thing as a generic TLD. Most corporations registers all their domains globally anyway (whether that is good or bad is another story). Not the most relevant Google query, but it takes the idea home, I guess: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us+seizes+domain+2005 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us+seizes+domain+20... -- I didn't bother looking for older entries than that.
- noarchy 15y agoAre there currently any TLDs that are not under the control of a country?
- vacri 15y ago"By definition, almost all copyright infringement and trademark violation is transnational." By definition? By definition!? If that's the case, then as long as the bulk of pirates are in the same country as the copyright owner, then by definition, no violation has occurred.
- suprgeek 15y agoIntentionally or not this is an excellent way to force the "distributed control" issues of the Internet. It is only a matter of time before other countries (non-US) demand greater say in the control of the policies. This should be an interesting issue and relevant to all users of the Net in the long run.