Slashdot Mirror
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)."
What gives the US the right is simply this: the registry for said TLD is located in the US.
Just like China can apply their local laws to the TLD registry they control ,.cn, and North Korea can apply its laws to .nk, so can the US do the same for the registries which are based there: .com, .net, .org, .us.
The same applies to webservers: no matter under what TLD a webserver serves, if it's physically located inside the US, US laws apply to this server. In that case the US can't control the DNS name of the sites which are served but the pages/sites themselves.
If you don't like that, you can only try to convince your preferred registry to relocate to a country which has laws and procedures which are better suited to your goals. Or you could simply register a domain under that country's TLD.
I don't know if you realize this, but we have a 2 party system. Every four years, we're faced with a decision between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. The government is not accountable to us, so long as they're getting the terrorists.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
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.
I don't know where you vote, but my ballots frequently have more than two candidates on them, in addition to a write in option. You are perfectly free to choose as you please. The government is as accountable as we make it, and not one iota more. All this whining is just an attempt to shed personal responsibility.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Those rules are quite reasonable when talking about country TLDs (such as .us). The problem is that .com/.net/.org are semantically global, not US-specific. If you're a global company, you're supposed to have a .com. And that shouldn't automatically mean that US laws apply to you all of a sudden.
What a crock of shit. Let me know how third party voting and making the government responsible to you goes.
And this is why third-party voting in the US fails so miserably. "I don't wanna waste my vote by voting for a guy who actually represents what I want in government. I wanna vote for someone who might win."
Independents and minor parties win seats all the time in other countries.
Stop using anti-virus software and you won't get those annoying alerts.
That sucking sound you hear is my bandwidth.
I posted elsewhere but feel it's worth mentioning again:
Illegal property located in the USA was seized by US officials for violating US law. They used a US registrar to point to their content that was illegal in the US. (i.e. don't host your anti-china website in china, don't host your anti-uk site in the UK. If your website violates a countries laws, don't host any part of it IN THAT COUNTRY)
IN THIS CASE, No foreign countries were involved, No over reaching of US bounds. I agree sometimes the government (while spurred by big business) do this... It is NOT the case here.
The short: When in a foreign country, do not violate their laws. They 'purchased' something in a country where it was illegal. That illegal property was seized. Their fault for violating local laws.
If you vote for a third party fruitlessly you have wasted your chance to vote for your second choice party, and as a result your last choice party may get in.
and unless you can break the cycle, as each election goes by your country will head further and further away from what you want it to be.