US Pirate Movie Site DNS Seizure Fail

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, the US government in a highly publicized copyright protection frenzy took the extraordinary step of seizing domain names from foreign movie sites like NinjaVideo.net and TVshack.net. While the seizure raises confusing Internet legal / jurisdiction questions (the US and perhaps the state of Kentucky can seize domain names for foreign companies?), this study shows the legal issues may be moot — the raids mostly failed. Within hours of domain name seizure, tvshack.cc was back up and running (but this time using a Chinese registrar and a Cocos Islands ccTLD)."

Comments

Striesand Effect

[snarfies]

NinjaVideo.net and TVshack.net? Never heard of either one - UNTIL NOW. I hope one of them has Blake's 7, haven't seen that since I was a kid.

Somewhat reasonable

[iYk6]

What gives US the right to seize domains of companies based in other countries and force their laws, views and things like ACTA and banning of internet casinos to citizens of other countries?

It's simple really. .net is a TLD owned by the USA. I don't agree with their views, but their methods are somewhat reasonable. If you get a .net domain, you play by USA rules, if you get a .cn domain, you play by China's rules, and if you get a .ru domain, you play by Russia's rules. TVShack didn't play well with the USA, the USA kicked them out, and now TVShack has shacked up with Cocos Island.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if all domain names had less strict rules, but that just isn't how it is.

Obligatory Star Wars quote

[mcrbids]

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
- Princess Leia to Grand Moff Tarkin

The United States would do well to understand what this means. We can benefit immensely by being the "central hub" of the Internet but we are pissing this historical advantage away at a frightening pace by not living up to our ideals with respect to "freedom of speech". The Patriot Act did wonders to ensure that we couldn't host data for other countries; and now this retarded "kill switch" idea will do the same for our ability to broker connections.

There really should be an actual litmus test so that people in charge of sectors of our economy have some clue how that sector works. Unfortunately for us, the world doesn't work that way.

Don't register or host your domain in the U.S.

[efalk]

Don't register or host your domain in the U.S. if it's the least bit controversial. It's just too easy for a plaintiff or government agency to seize it. One of the worst examples was a Spanish travel agency that handled trips to Cuba and which was foolish enough to register their domain name in the U.S. See NYTimes article A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears

See http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/2010/02/dont-register-or-host-your-domain-in-us.html for more on this topic.

Re:Other countries should start policing Internet

[halltk1983]

It's for this reason I think everyone should get two votes. One positive, and one negative. Since all the Republicans would vote *against* the Democrats, and vice versa, you'd get a real chance at having a third party in power.

Of course, that would never fly past the current congress to get to a point of Amendment...