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Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign registrar
We've just posted this on the easydns blog, we think this is a very troubling development. State of Maryland went straight to Verisign to seize a .com domain operated outside the US via non-US registrar.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 15y agoI'm getting a database error so I can't see the actual article, but I disagree. One case is enough to prove that it can be done, and it may possibly happen again. Even if this gets successfully challenged, in the interim all .COM registrations are potentially at risk.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoI regret using .com for my personal domain now. I'd like to change it, but I haven't decided which TLD to use yet. thepiratebay changed to "se", to I'm guessing Sweden has a trustworthy TLD. It's going to be a pain as well, there are thousands of links, so I'll need to keep the .com domain if only for redirects.
- neilkelty 15y agoAre you going to start hosting torrents on your personal domain? Just don't break the law. It's really that simple. I understand the "censorship/free speech" deal. But I can't really defend these guys, they were blatantly breaking the law. Like, there wasn't a gray area - they just jumped right over the line. To make this a "true argument" we'd need the US to take down a domain that interferes with free speech.
- gergles 15y agoHypothetically, I'm gay. If I have sex with a man, I'm "breaking the law" in tens of Islamist countries. Are you proposing that they should be allowed to extradite me for breaking their law? Because, that's really what's happening here. Bodog is a non-American company, operating outside of America, with assets that aren't in America. Please elucidate on how exactly you think they are subject to American law before you give a smug "well, don't break the law then" response.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- joering2 15y agoIf you had sex in one of those Islamist countries, then yes of course. Look what Polanski did in 80s -- he ran away to Europe where laws are different not to face persecution. But he did have sex with underage on the American soil, hence it was in US interest to persecute. Had she gone to Europe and had underage sex with Polanski and came back to States and filed rape charges, that would be entire different story. In Bodog case one could only wonder how much traffic they were getting from US. At some point, perhaps if they knew whats coming, they could ban US traffic or put notices all around their web that "there may be some laws in your country banning you from purchasing out products" etc.
- motoford 15y agoI really hope you meant to type "prosecute" instead of what you actually put, "persecute".
- joering2 15y agothanks for pointing, cant fixed now..
- mariuolo 15y agoSuppose he had been camming with some guy living there. Should he be liable to extradition (and possibly beheading) to such country?
- ThaddeusQuay2 15y agoDotSE is not at all trustworthy. Use DotTEL. Host nothing at MC.com, but rather have it redirect to MC.tel, and populate MC.tel with a link to the main page of your content, as well as links to mirrors of that content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tel
- mike-cardwell 15y agoWhat you can do with .tel domains seems to be extremely limited. I am interested to know why you think .se is not trustworthy?
- ThaddeusQuay2 15y agoDotTEL is nice because all of your information is stored in DNS, and so the webpage itself is created dynamically from DNS. Also, it can't go down due to a DOS attack. Well, actually, it can, but then all DotTELs would be down, and so the burden of rectifying it would be on the registrar, rather than on you. Given that such a problem would be treated as an emergency, by them, the response will likely be swift. However, their response might include deleting your domain, but that could happen with any registrar, for other reasons. Anyway, there are other nice things about DotTEL, and I strongly suggest that it warrants investigation, for practical use, by anyone who is already using DotCOM. I understand why TPB moved away from DotCOM, but I don't understand why they moved to DotSE. However, I do know that they were put on trial for breaking Swedish copyright law. The trial resulted in fines and jail time, with their Supreme Court refusing to hear the appeal just this month. While the trial was happening, I read reports of many strange legal things going on in court, and I read opinions about this being due to inordinate influence of the industry on the Swedish government. Regardless of the veracity of those reports and opinions, it seems obvious that you wouldn't want to use the domain of a country where you have already been in serious legal trouble, and lost. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay#Legal_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay#Legal_issues EDIT: DotTEL is not at all limited, as long as you can transition to the mindset of decoupling your content from its address. EDIT: DotTEL answers pretty much all of the concerns regarding speed, in this other HN thread, from today. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3648956 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3648956
- onemoreact 15y agoIt's called precedent, look it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent
- monochromatic 15y agoSo where's the appeals court opinion sanctioning this type of thing? Without something like that, I don't see much precedential value.
- Karunamon 15y agoPrecedent doesn't work that way. All it means is that in a previous incident, a similar case was ruled on in a particular fashion, and typical jurisprudence is to stand by previous decisions unless there's a compelling reason not to.
- monochromatic 15y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_precedent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_precedent
- mike-cardwell 15y agoSeems to be down. Here's a clickable Google Cache link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us-authorities/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...
- peterwwillis 15y agoBad redirect. Here's the URL: http://blog2.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us-authorities/ http://blog2.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-doma...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- AshleysBrain 15y agoCould this set a precedent in the SOPA vein of things?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mbowcock 15y agoThis seems to be the same issue as megaupload. A company outside the US, marketing a service that's illegal in the US to US citizens. Money paid for the service is then moved overseas. (I understand there may have been users in other countries, like megaupload) While not something I necessarily agree with - I don't think this particular move indicates all .COMs are now threatened.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoIt indicates that anyone using a .COM domain must either: 1) Not do business with American customers. or 2) Be aware of every U.S. law to avoid allowing their American customers from breaking one of them.
- mbowcock 15y agoBut that is already an issue - whether or not you have a .com domain name. The domain name is just an asset and the government routinely seizes assets when filing criminal charges.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoThey can only seize assets that they have dominion over. Which now, apparently, includes .COM domains.
- mbowcock 15y agoThe US government has always had dominion over .coms (and .nets). Verisign manages .com's through a contract with the US Department of Commerce. That's where they get there authority.
- regularfry 15y agoYes, but they've only recently bothered or got the gumption to enforce it.
- 15y ago
- lhnn 15y ago“Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country," DHS said. LOL what? "You can't flout the law just because you're outside the jurisdiciton of the law". --- Also, the crux of the article is that a .COM domain registered an operated by Canadian entities was "taken over" by Verisign at the behest of DHS. Verisign added NS records at the root to redirect the affected domain to a takedown page.
- raganwald 15y agoAre they saying that an English company (where sports betting is legal) taking bets from English punters is running afoul of Maryland law? I doubt it. What they are saying is that doing business with American citizens is subject to American laws. EDIT: An interesting read... http://www.vegassportsmasters.com/?q=article/feds-arrest-english-shore-bookmaker-del-mar-begins-67th-season http://www.vegassportsmasters.com/?q=article/feds-arrest-eng...
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoWhich is also ridiculous. American citizens are subject to American laws; the person making the bet.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago>Are they saying that an English company (where sports betting is legal) taking bets from English punters is running afoul of Maryland law? // Didn't Britain just extradite (or at least accede to an extradition 'request') a young man to the US for operating a service providing media links (but apparently no copyright material) - where it's likely that his actions were wholly legal under English law and he never set foot outside of the country ... Seems like USA has their way regardless of other peoples democracy. -- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9013408/Student-who-created-illegal-TV-shack-website-to-be-extradited-to-US.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9013408/Student...
- raganwald 15y ago
- gbaygon 15y agoI have a doubt, if megaupload would have been megaupload.hk instead of .com, could the fbi have acted the same way?
- nextparadigms 15y agoI think so, because they also claimed Megaupload had some servers in US. But their case would've probably been weaker then. I think this power to take down .com, .net .org domains comes mostly from the Pro IP Act from 2008 that passed right before our noses, just like SOPA almost did. If we want DHS to stop doing this, we'll need to get the Pro IP Act repealed.
- guan 15y agoHow long before they pull something from the root zone using the same reasoning?
- astrodust 15y agoYou would have to pull a whole TLD if you're removing something from the root zone.
- olefoo 15y agoGiven that the floodgates on new TLDs are opening, it seems quite possible that a TLD operator could run afoul of the law and put thousands if not millions of domains at risk.
- regularfry 15y agoYou just know someone's going to get .torrent, and then all hell will break loose...
- wmf 15y agoNo, if you look at the byzantine gTLD application process and the history of .xxx it would be hard for anyone to get .torrent.
- regularfry 15y agoIf only that were true. http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/ http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/
- snowwrestler 15y agoAren't there two elements to the question of jurisdiction here? The fact that .com is managed by Verisign is one (on which this article focuses), but the other is that Bodog was executing financial transactions with residents of Maryland. Thus, by doing business in the state, they expose themselves to that state's jurisdiction. The big question is whether U.S. jurisdiction can extend beyond U.S. based border based solely upon the fact that Verisign is located in the U.S. For instance, if a Canadian set up a .com gambling site, but only did business with other Canadians, could MD prosecute the site owner based on MD state laws against online gambling? I would guess no. But I'm not a lawyer.
- calloc 15y agoSo if I have a European company that sells widgets online, and I ship to the United States I now have to comply with US laws at my expense?
- aidenn0 15y agoYes, with at least these consequences: 1) Any warehouse you have in the US that is part of your widget operation can be seized (this is the equivalent of the .com being taken over) 2) The US can request extradition of you and it is up to your countries courts to decide if they will comply
- calloc 15y agoExcept I don't have a warehouse in the United States. All I have is widgets located in Europe, I put them in a box and I ship them using parcel post to anyone anywhere in the world. Yet you are saying that I am now beholden to US law because I interacted with a customer located in the United States ...
- marshray 15y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer
- joejohnson 15y agoWhat is the safest ccTLD be for businesses to register under? .se?
- ihsw 15y agoProbably .info, it's not managed by any national government.
- barredo 15y agoBut is seen as a lesser domain by Google if SEO tales are true.
- wmf 15y agoGenerally gTLDs are managed by private companies, not governments; the issue is that every company is under some government's jurisdiction. In this case, .info is managed by Afilias, which appears to be an Irish company and thus .info domains can probably be seized by the Irish government. http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/info.html http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/info.html http://www.afilias.info/about-us http://www.afilias.info/about-us
- kamjam 15y agoI missed the whole thing where .com was managed by the US, i thought that's why the .us domain was invented... i don't think anyone outside the US associates a .com meaning US based. Regardless, stupid law, Team America strikes again!
- drostie 15y agoThe company which manages .com is headquartered in the US. This is also true for .org and .net and .us and .gov. Under US law it is now possible for the US to seize any of these domain names -- and it will continue until the international organization in charge of this system (ICANN) says "oh, that's retarded, we're changing the system so that the US doesn't host .com and .org domains." We had to fight against two acts proposed in the US which would have made it possible for the US to build a sort of DNS firewall to deny access to other domains from users working within the US -- our own rough draft of the Chinese firewall, if you like. (That was SOPA and PIPA.) But this other right was granted earlier than that, and is now being used to chilling effect.
- veyron 15y agoTitle of the article is Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign Registrar on behalf of US Authorities.
- heyitsnick 15y agoThe domain seizure is nothing out of the ordinary. At least a dozen have been seized over the last 12 months, including those during the indictments of Black Friday (nb pokerstars.com, fulltiltpoker.com have been handed black) and Blue Monday (at least 10 domains still under seizure including truepoker.com). The domain itself (bodog.com) was unused. The operation continues under bovada.lv (for US) and bodog.eu/co.uk for European custom. Nearly all US-facing gambling operations have been moved to non-dotcom domains (dot.eu, dot.co.uk and dot.ag - for Antigua and Bermuda - the most common) for this very reason. To read more from an industry perspective [full disclosure, i am co-editor of this site]: http://pokerfuse.com/news/law-and-regulation/undercover-investigation-spanning-six-years-leads-bodog-indictments-domain-name-seizure/ http://pokerfuse.com/news/law-and-regulation/undercover-inve... The domain seizure itself was of interest only as it showed the DOJ/DHS have a continued interest in trying to take down what it sees as illegal online gambling operators; that they can order a dot-com domain name seizure is par-for-the-course these days.
- heyitsnick 15y agoMore specifically, ten domain names were seized in May [1] including doylesroom.com and truepoker.com, and i think it was 4 or 5 in April's "Black Friday" (domains of pokerstars, full tilt, ultimate bet and absolute poker). The former 2 have been returned. 1: http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-depth/a-whos-who-of-blue-monday/#domains http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-depth/a-whos-who-of-blue-mo...
- cmatthias 15y agoIf you read the article, you will discover that the author asserts that this situation is different, because it's the first time that a .com domain registered through a foreign registrar has been subject to seizure by US authorities. I don't know enough about the history of domain seizures to know whether this is true or not, but if so, it definitely represents an increased level of enforcement by US authorities -- if I owned a company operated and registered outside the US, I'd now think twice about using a .com name as my primary address.
- larrys 15y ago
- dpearce 15y agoIt looks like all Bodog did is relaunch as Bovada.lv
- heyitsnick 15y agoBovada.lv has been active since November; but even before then it was operating all US activities from Bodog.eu. The dot-com domain name has been 'dormant' (i believe it redirected to one of the two). The dot-com domain name seizure is symbolic and will hurt their SEO; it will have little effect on their business. [but indicting 4 top-level execs and aggressively pursuing their payment processors, however, will certainly have an effect]
- rayiner 15y agoThe gambling charges are pre-internet jurisdictional law. By doing business with citizens of Maryland, you bring yourself within Maryland's jurisdiction, at least to the scope of that business. Domains have nothing to do with why Maryland can enforce its gambling laws against a Canadian company. The internet-age wrinkle is that by virtue of ".com" domains being property located in the US, they can be seized pursuant to these charges. Jurisdiction over property is very specific to the locality where the property is located. Maryland couldn't, for example, seize the company's real estate assets in Canada pursuant to its criminal charges for violation of Maryland law. Since all ".com" domains are logically located in the United States, that becomes a pretty substantial piece of leverage the U.S. has over other countries.
- schwit 15y agoNot just .com. US law applies to any TLD managed by a US registrar. An example is .tv which is managed by Verisign.
- runevault 15y agoConsidering .tv is the domain for another country I find this more than a little stupid. Not necessarily surprising, but stupid all the same.
- tonfa 15y agoDo you have any examples of that? As far as I know while .com/.net/.org are under US jurisdiction, it isn't the case of other TLDs managed by Verisign.
- schwit 15y agohttp://www.firstrowsports.tv/ http://www.firstrowsports.tv/ They moved to http://www.firstrowsports.eu/ http://www.firstrowsports.eu/
- desaiguddu 15y agoisn't it ridiculous??????
- overshard 15y agoGood to see that the .com tld will finally start to become a non-priority thanks to this. People/startups/companies in other countries will hopefully start to think twice before they purchase a .com domain name and consider using their own countries tld or a tld more appropriate to their website.
- greedoshotlast 15y agoAt least a warrant was filled. In the recent JotForms takedown no warrant was filled. It just disappeared off the face of the planet. That is mainly my argument: the US Secret Service or any government organization has no right to make sites, it JotForms's case a legitimate business, just disappear from the face of the planet without due process.
- vlnul 15y agoHypothetically, how difficult should be for civilians build root servers? After that what we need is to update the bind package right?
- wmf 15y agoYes, it's trivial to run your own root server. Convincing other people is the hard part.
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoThere is a difference between a Canadian company doing business with Canadians on a .com domain and a Canadian company doing business with Canadians and Americans in the United States. The analogy for finance, my industry, would be a hedge fund registered in the Caymans either trading US securities or trading with Americans in the United States (it gets sketchy if an American citizen comes to Switzerland to do a transaction) not getting to ignore SEC rules just because they're "not based in the US". I'd get concerned about jurisdictional over-reach if a Spanish company doing business primarily in Spain (where American customers aren't specifically marketed to but may be picked up indirectly) got DMCA'd :). Though at this point I'm starting to think any content-based company should have a non-US domain and server at the very least ready as a fall-back in case of regulatory lunacy on the order of SOPA/PIPA.
- mcantelon 15y ago>The analogy for finance, my industry, would be a hedge fund registered in the Caymans either trading US securities or trading with Americans in the United States (it gets sketchy if an American citizen comes to Switzerland to do a transaction) not getting to ignore SEC rules just because they're "not based in the US". That comparison doesn't seem to quite fit. If a company violated SEC rules it would have to be trading through a US exchange and would therefore have agreed to abide by US rules. In this case we have US users who are breaking the law by doing something illegal in their own country. They should be punished, not the foreign website.
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoIf a company violated SEC rules it would have to be trading through a US exchange Not necessarily. If ABN AMRO markets Turkish bonds to US investors it will have placed itself under SEC jurisdiction just as much as Lehman Brothers marketing mini-bonds in Indonesia placed itself under Indonesian jurisdiction. The US government has gone further with financial institutions. Take, for example, the Swiss banks helping Americans with tax evasion. Let's exclude those with US branches, e.g. UBS. Here you have American citizens travelling to Switzerland and opening accounts and the Swiss company is held responsible merely for doing business with an American. I'm not making specific arguments on whether this is jurisdictional over-reach, but characterising the .com seizure in the OP an un-precedented move by Luddite judges isn't fair.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 15y agoI'm a bit confused by this thread. Can someone check this? i) Doing trade with someone who is located in America means you have to obey those American laws? This seems reasonable, unless you've taken measure to exclude Americans ("Click here to agree that you're not in US" and using filters etc) and you're still getting done. ii) It doesn't matter what domain name you use. But if you use a .com (and some others) the US can seize the domain names. iii) Depending what country you are in the US may ask for an extradition because you broke an American law; even if what you did was legal in your country. Depending what country you're in (UK) that extradition request may be granted.
- unavoidable 15y agoi) and iii) are pretty well established in American jurisprudence. ii) is less so and is the reason for the uproar. The article is making the proposition that ii) is true, but I don't think that's actually correct. On the facts of this case i) and iii) are sufficient to lay charges here, but the indictment is written to look like ii) is true. EDIT: I want to add that there is not very clear case law on the .com issue - that was what SOPA was in part designed to do, make a statutory provision to allow assertion of jurisdiction. I think it's important to keep in mind that the filing of the indictment is not a judicial ruling and is not necessarily "the law of the land". The quotes the article used were true, but taken out of context. They are referring to funds being transferred outside of US but related to business done cross-border.
- elb0w 15y agoNext, U.S. Government declares anyone buying a non us domain (.com, .net, org, .biz and maybe .info) will be considered a terrorist.
- redthrowaway 15y ago>Of course, the replacement of ICANN will never happen What's the reasoning behind this? I agree that we will likely not see a new body in charge of that which ICANN currently does, but there's no reason why a parallel system couldn't arise should DC go overboard with its malfeasant retardation. ICANN has inertia, but if it continues to fail to protect the Internet, something else will pop up.
- marshray 15y agoThe funny thing here is that all of this big-money big-government international strategic arm twisting is over DNS settings, something users can change as easily as changing two numbers. If things get bad enough, users will simply point their resolvers to some alternate root. Trying to block DNS requests to alternate resolvers is a laughable proposition from a technical perspective.
- nitrogen 15y agoIf things get bad enough, users will simply point their resolvers to some alternate root. Trying to block DNS requests to alternate resolvers is a laughable proposition from a technical perspective. ISPs can block outbound port 53 like they block port 25, or use DPI to detect DNS packets headed out of the ISP network. The only way around that is universal encryption, which the ISPs can slow down but not stop by blocking any high-entropy packets.
- AJ007 15y agoEveryone everywhere is subject to US law. On the extreme end of the spectrum, the US will send their military and remove your government if you are non-cooperative.
- jacquesm 15y agoHigh time to relieve verisign of their .com registry freeride and move it to an international body.
- wmf 15y agoITU would be happy to take it over, but they'd double prices and allow every country to censor domains instead of just the US.
- jenncom 15y agoplaynow.com is a gambling website operating in Canada but registered in the US through Verisign/Netsol. The only difference in this case is the BC gov't owns and operates playnow.com. I wonder if the US will seize this domain name too because gambling is illegal in the US?
- charlieok 15y agoOne of the building blocks of developing an internet more resistant to abuses of power, alongside efforts such as Tor, is a distributed directory service as an alternative to the centralized DNS service. I hope to be able to contribute toward some real progress in this area.
- ghshephard 15y agoAt least it should now be clear to anyone purchasing a .com domain that they have to comply with all US laws and regulations or risk suffering forfeiture of their property. If you want to work under the laws of the UK, acquire a co.uk site.
- jrockway 15y agoI can live with this. DNS is an insecure and non-robust system, and the modern Internet has broken it. The good news is, we know the weaknesses and how to defend against them, so at some time in the future, DNS buggery will no longer be possible.
- mariuolo 15y agoI was waiting for this to happen.