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Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable
- hef19898 15y agoInteressting. If I put it in the context with megaupload, it basically means that .com is under the iron grip of us law (or any other copyright-y what ever law in the world) and if that doesn't work out you can arrest german citizens living in NZ operating a website owned by a company in Hong Kong for aleagly breaking us law. Wow, that explains why the web is speaking english. How do I miss the time of the treestructred websites back the day when the internet was still 56k fast but free. Great news for content owners, on the other hand.
- talmand 15y agoIn the long run this is actually really bad for content owners. Content owners, in their effort to protect their business model, has actually given the government the tools to shut them down if their content is found to be "undesirable". Just because the government likes you today doesn't mean it will tomorrow.
- raganwald 15y agoJust because the government likes you today doesn't mean it will tomorrow. Of all people, I would expect Hollyood executives to be particularly sensitive to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist
- hef19898 15y agoSounds like co-domination. If the content lobby controls government that controls the content lobby... No matter who decides what is undesireable it is a dangerous road to take. Where do you draw the line? Streaming sports events? Sharing 50 Cent songs? Protests against legislations? Child pronography? Law makers in democratic countries should be really carefull about the direction they take in these post-SOPA days. The tools they are thinking about to control online piracy are really dangerous weapons in the wrong hands. "Undesireable" was a welcome excuse already to often. Let's hope artist, and managers, remember the past when possibilities of censorship where actually used.
- rmc 15y agoTechnically they were arrested by NZ police for breaking NZ law.
- hef19898 15y agoSo Thailand would have been a better choice, at least for copyright issues (IMHO they don't have one over there).
- iwwr 15y agoCredit card transactions are also by design bound to the US. A transaction going from France to Germany, legal in both places, may still need to be routed through the US and hence controllable. And when all that fails, the US can pull on their extradition treaties to get governments to hand over anyone else.
- ghurlman 15y agoIs this just a result of Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, etc. being American companies? Are there no non-American credit card conglomerates out there?
- timbre 15y agoIf it is just a result of the credit card companies being American, JCB is a fairly widespread non-American (Japanese) alternative.
- sek 15y agoThis is really dangerous for the .com brand! What are generic non country specific domains and is the new domain you have to own? This is the reason why they are so popular, nobody uses .us exactly for that reason. Is .co a replacement, it's similar to .com, short and non US based. Maybe this will make the domain indifferent, TPB has .se now as the primary domain.
- Roboprog 15y agoIt's hard to tell from the article if this was jack-booted thuggery, or if some kind of due process was followed to shut down an organization causing actual harm. Anybody?
- talmand 15y agoI have never seen a report about the US government seizing a domain that also happen to include what most US citizens would consider due process. It's literally you wake up one day and your website is gone. In some cases people found out from a third party, such as the media asking for comment.
- tomp 15y agoDoes it matter? What the company was doing is legal in Canada, where the company was based (if I understand the article correctly). Unless if by "causing harm" you mean "not paying enough tax to the US", then I fail to see how this website was causing any harm...
- ubernostrum 15y agoAs I've said again and again and again and again and again: If you are engaging in what is undeniably a business relationship (money/goods/services/written agreements/etc.) with people who are in a country, then it doesn't matter where you are; you can quite easily end up subject to the laws of that country. This is not a new idea. This is not a scary idea. bodog got their domain seized because they thought they could engage in that sort of relationship with US customers despite offering services which were illegal in the US. This is downright mundane, and the amount of ignorant hyperbolic OMG FASCIST IMPERIALIST JACKBOOTED THUGS TRAMPLING ALL OVER ME hysteria it's generated frankly disgusts me.
- raganwald 15y agoDown, tiger! I don’t think anyone is arguing that you ought to be able to break US laws when dealing with US customers. The question here is what sort of process is used to seize these domains. Notice how you alleged something about Bodog? Are these allegations proven in court? Was some kind of open hearing made? Did Bodog have a chance to respond to the allegations before their domain was seized? I don’t speak for anyone except me, but I think it’s quite reasonable to (a) Agree with you that when dealing with US customers you ought to comply with US laws, while simultaneously (b) Asking tough questions about how the US government chooses to “enforce” its laws.
- raganwald 15y agoI recently registered a new domain name for a side project, http://recursiveuniver.se http://recursiveuniver.se. Catchy domain names like this are a little passé, but I’m steering clear of .com indefinitely.
- itmag 15y agoSo you trust the Swedish government?
- raganwald 15y agoIf you have a thought to share, do so with my blessing. A one-liner rhetorical question like this works fairly well in conversation but not as well in a threaded forum where people are looking for a more compact expression of ideas.
- huggyface 15y agoThere is nothing rhetorical about their question. You are solving the possible US domain confiscation problem by substituting a possible Swedish domain confiscation problem.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Shivetya 15y agoor having the Swedes cave into US demands. While we have this issue with the US declaring it can seize .com domains I prefer the setup rather than turning it over to the UN where it make it near impossible to not have a domain subject to anyone's whim.
- nsns 15y agoDo keep in mind that the U.S. isn't just "another country", it is the center of most big entertainment businesses, and its government is highly, perhaps uniquely, influenced by corporate agendas.
- shareme 15y agoWhat people fail to realize is that US DOJ paved the way for other countries who do not want free internet to do what the DOJ does..ie India can demand that any *.in domain has to follow Indian law and take down any posts that disparage its leaders, etc.. Its really a very bad long term move on DOJ's part and especially undercuts the US State department efforts
- anamax 15y ago> ie India can demand that any .in domain has to follow Indian law and take down any posts that disparage its leaders, etc.. Why is it unreasonable for a .in domain to follow Indian law? Isn't that the whole point of country-specific domains?
- YooLi 15y agoWho decided that .com is for everyone? (serious question)
- jgarmon 15y agoThere's a legal principle call Forum Non Conveniens that is supposed to remedy this, though I don't know if anyone has challenged these seizures on those grounds. Basically, a legal matter is supposed to be tried in the most relevant and appropriate jurisdiction. For example, you sue a corporation in the state where it violated civil law, rather than state where it's headquartered. I shouldn't have to fly to Dallas to sue Pizza Hut if my local franchise poisoned me. That said, the Internet breaks down a lot of established jurisdictional law because a website can operate effectively anywhere the Internet exists, and as such can theoretically be subject to the laws of any web-connected jurisdiction. These seizures are just another example of how the law has not caught up to the basic operating procedures of the web. There is a certain legal philosophy that says the Internet is operating under its own version of Maritime Law, which is to say its a non-national zone where the law is defined by consensus practice and then ratified by bordering or participating jurisdictions. International salvage rights emerged from common maritime practice, and are now generally recognized as legally binding. That's in theory a good model for the web, but I'm very certain the US Government doesn't see it that way.
- scottdw2 15y agoThe US constitution also grants a right to a jury trial in "all suits at common law where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars". All US judicial authority derives from the constitution. Given a controversy under the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, a trial cannot be denied the agreeved party unless: 1. There is no controversy 2. There is a stipulation in the constitution, or the jurisdictional laws passed by congress, that says federal jurisdiction doesn't exist. 3. There is a valid treaty which specifies a different process 4. The case was already tried. 5. Neither party is subject to the laws of the US. Absent those conditions the US courts would have to take the case. Forum selection conventions must still conform to the constitution. If you wanted to change this you would need to convince Congress to pass a law changing enforcement of copyright.
- rmc 15y agoThe US Constitution does not apply outside the USA. Other countries have their own constitutions or legal systems.
- bcantoni 15y agoI'm beginning to think registering a non-US domain will be a good strategy for internet businesses - either as a backup or primary business move. Also, I didn't remember wired.com comments being such a cesspool...
- mmaunder 15y agoI see a distributed hosting model with encrypted peer-routed traffic in our future. It would include peer to peer DNS and country neutral hosting. By that I mean redundant servers in multiple jurisdictions. Without the ability to take servers offline and to firewall traffic based on source/destination, what is an overreaching government to do? This reminds me of the Laffer curve of taxation vs tax revenue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve As government interference with the free Internet reaches a critical level, their enforcement and intelligence gathering ability will begin to decrease.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoIsn't that pretty close to Tor (ironically developed by the US government)?
- pavelkaroukin 15y agoif we are talking about P2P DNS only, it is more like "namecoin". Tor do not have anything like DNS. You can have local directory, but it is more like /etc/hosts
- rmc 15y agoYes it does. It's called "Hidden Service" and you get a *.onion address ( https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en ) Although you cannot control what DNS name is given, so it's not a full DNS drop in.
- pavelkaroukin 15y agothis is not really a name, it is generated key/address/whatever. namecoin allow you to choose name, where in hidden service subsystem you can generate one (although, you probably can setup key generator to get desired name... like vanity bitcoin addresses..)
- rmc 15y ago
- mtrimpe 15y agoBy the way, the bodog.com domain performs quite well. A quick performance scan show it can comfortably handle 50 concurrent requests with a 5.5MB throughput. I'm very curious what kind of numbers longer tests on higher bandwidth connections would generate. http://pastebin.com/FPfjTiJS http://pastebin.com/FPfjTiJS
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y agoWell, looks like Verisign should move to another country for the sake of their client's clients... Sweden perhaps?
- tomp 15y agoThink again. As seen in the ThePirateBay debacle, Sweden is practically in the US jurisdiction, as far as online crimes are concerned...
- dangrossman 15y agoVerisign only controls the .COM registry because the US Department of Commerce gives them the contract. It's not their property otherwise. If the DoC doesn't like how Verisign is handling it, they won't renew the contract and will have a different company manage it.
- pavelkaroukin 15y agoseizing .com is like a censor. while I do not believe in efficiency of censoring, I agree every society have right to do it. But it should not affect other societies. So correct measure would be direct all US-based ISP block access to bodog.com, not steal IP from canadian company.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoBut the US population won't stand for that kind of "great firewall", and the Federal police forces must be showns to be doing something, so you end up with this.
- pavelkaroukin 15y agoBut why US population stands censoring in form of seizing domain then? I think you overestimate "US population". It is not a walmart censored, it is some gambling website.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoIf the UN were an organization with meaning, the US should be getting slapped for stuff like this. As an American citizen, I am revolted at what my government has become (I still think it is a pretty good country, but that is changing, too). The constant rhetoric of groups like the Tea Party around "what the founding fathers wanted" is a response to things like the Fourth Amendment being completely ignored. It is unfortunate so much of that anger gets focused in ultimately useless directions with the Democratic witch hunting. The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force was started by the Reagan administration.
- TDL 15y agoUnfortunately the U.S.G. has operated in this manner for a number of decades. It is merely expanding it's power into a new realm.
- rmc 15y agoThe US, along with a few other countries have a permanent vetoes on the UN Security Council. If you are a US citizen and would like to see the UN get more teeth, campaign for your government to give up it's permanent seat.
- paulhauggis 15y agoYou are angry at the republicans in the US, yet in general, the left wants more government control over our lives.
- ThaddeusQuay2 15y ago"You are angry at the republicans in the US, yet in general, the left wants more government control over our lives." Democrats and Republicans are merely different sides of the same rusty coin.
- onemoreact 15y agoBoth sides of the Left-Right debate want more control. Gay marriage is only an issue because some Republicans feel they have every right to control your personal relationships. A few Republicans also want to ban abortion, which is again a ridiculousness intrusive government control. Let alone tapping every form of communication, tightening immigration restrictions, increasing law enforcement funding etc. Even the idea we can dictate what other country's do inside their brooders suggests a level of control that's unreasonable. PS: I would love to vote for Ron Paul, but everyone else just seems to pay lip service to the idea of smaller government without intending to do so.
- rmc 15y agoThe USA should be careful about throwing it's weight around like this too much. Do it too much and the rest of the world will either (a) start using a different .com root server or (b) force the USA to give up power over .com
- YooLi 15y agoIf the rest of the world sees it as such a problem, whey don't they do either a) or b) already? (serious question)
- rmc 15y agoCause it hasn't become a big problem yet. The main sites that have been taken down are minority or suspicious sites. Most of the countries that would care enough to do something about this (e.g. Europe) are mostly ideologically similar to USA on a lot of issues. The internet is still so very young, a lot could happen in the next 50 years.
- swombat 15y agoWell, I finally caved in and purchased swomb.at. Seems like the US govt is determined to destroy the value of dot-com domains. I'm sure thousands of domain squatters are crying their eyes out right now!
- masonhensley 15y agoSo, if you moved to swomb.at, would you just redirect swombat.com to it? Is that a way people can have the best of both worlds? 1- you own the .com domain for branding, people understand it etc 2- your site isn't actually a .com Would SEO be hurt by doing something like this?
- ohgodthecat 15y agoSEO shouldn't be hurt (unless of course you are running the same site at both swomb.at and swombat.com), however with that said you won't get the seo boost that .com gives. Another thought: swomb.at could be considered worse than say swombat.at as it is using the TLD to complete the word but I may be completely wrong in that case.
- swombat 15y agoI'm a huge believer in fighting link-rot as much as possible, so unless the US govt seized my domain for some reason, I would make sure all swombat.com links would still work.
- SquareWheel 15y agoAssuming the site had the same structure, you could easily 301 redirects to their .at equivalent.
- philipmorg 15y agoSo are there any TLDs that are safe from seizure? If so, which ones? If not, which ones are less likely to be seized?
- nkvoll 15y ago.local seems to be safe for now
- ihsw 15y ago.local conflicts directly with the mDNS protocol (used by Apple Bonjour and Linux Avahi service-discovery systems). .is, however, is managed by Iceland. Iceland has been positioning itself as a haven for organizations concerned about free-speech and broad-sweeping censorship.
- count 15y ago'.', the DNS root zone, is considered the property of the US Dept. of Commerce, so, no. However, I could see a seizure of a domain in a different country's TLD (ccTLD to be specific) causing a diplomatic scuffle between the US and the foreign country. I can't imagine France would be thrilled with the FBI seizing 'foo.co.fr' or something.
- wmf 15y agoIt's generally not technically possible for the US to seize individual domains located in ccTLDs, so that's a pretty moot issue.
- ec429 15y agoI've said it before, and I'll say it again: _the US cannot be trusted with stewardship of the global Internet_. Wired suggests that some want to move this stewardship to the UN. This is not a solution. A still more decentralised approach is needed; if the Internet is to truly "treat censorship as damage, and route around it", no core Internet protocol can afford to have any kind of "root server", "switch board" or "root certification authority". There are plenty of good hackers here, perhaps more importantly there are people here who can build communities; rather than trying to invent the "next facebook", I hope you will divert some of your attention to making a pervasively distributed Internet both (a) technically feasible and (b) desired by the Man In The Street.
- andrewflnr 15y agoThis, a thousand times over. I don't know why more people aren't saying it. We've got to build a better decentralized Internet.
- sdfjkl 15y agoAlternative DNS roots[1] will get increasingly popular if this sort of thing (and the DNS-based censorship ISPs are forced into) keeps going on unchecked (read: ICANN keeps sleeping). We may yet end up with an internet where DNS resolvers check multiple roots in descending order of preference, with the ICANN root last. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root