US Asserts Super-Jurisdiction Over Dot-Com, Dot-Net, and Dot-Org Domains

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist reports that last week State of Maryland prosecutors were able to obtain a warrant ordering Verisign, the company that manages the dot-com domain name registry, to redirect the website to a warning page advising that it has been seized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The message from the case is clear: all dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org domain names are subject to U.S. jurisdiction regardless of where they operate or where they were registered. This grants the U.S. a form of 'super-jurisdiction' over Internet activities, since most other countries are limited to jurisdiction with a real and substantial connection."

Comments

Of course

[Sarten-X]

Last I knew, .com, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu, .org, and .us were all United States TLDs. For websites outside the US that want to keep all of their systems out of US jurisdiction, don't use a US-based domain name. Does this company also act surprised that the US government could access any US-based bank accounts it has?

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

> IMHO, ".us" is the US TLD, while .com, .org, etc are the "International ones".

You'd think, but that's not actually the case. .com, .org, .mil etc all were developed as US domains (the internet was almost entirely a US phenomenon at the time), and they were never "given away" to the international community. They've always been fully controlled by the US. The country domains were created for each country to control their own: the .ca, .jp, and so on that you see around.

The entire DNS system originated in the US, so it's the US which controls the original top level domains it created, like .com.

Re:Of course

[shogarth]

Not so much. Those were created while this whole Internet thing was a DoD/DoE/NSF (and other TLA) plaything. Anyone expecting that there would be a neutral, internationally managed jurisdiction was being idealistic and/or naive.

The problem is that governments have an established interest in and right to set the ground rules within their respective jurisdictions. For most of the internet, that comes down to boxes in their physical territory and the relevant CcTLD. The US has a first-mover advantage (or headache) in that they also created the .ORG, .NET, .COM, .MIL, and .EDU zones and can make a reasonable jurisdictional claim to them.

This is also why I think the open registration for TLDs is a bad idea. These jurisdictional issues are complicated enough (and will likely require a treaty or two to work out) without corporations in one country registering a TLD from a registrar in another to use for business worldwide. It's similar to the problem that had to be worked out internationally as corporate legal fictions became the norm in international commerce.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

but I don't recall a time where someone in power (ICANN) said "these TLDs belong to everybody".

Actually, while ".gov", ".mil", and ".edu" are specifically defined as "US Government", "US Military", and "US Educational Institutions", ".com", ".org", and ".net" are specifically defined as "any commercial entity", "and organization", and "any network infrastructure".

Re:Well shit

[joaeri]

Just dont get it though GoDaddy or any other US based company or they can probably close down your site anyway.

Re:Switch away from .com?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for sake of accuracy, this was a court ruling - and a state court at that, not legislation that passed.

Re:Time to remove control from the US

[houstonbofh]

Actually, lots are outside the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dns_root_servers#Root_server_addresses

While only 13 names are used for the root nameservers, there are many more physical servers; A, C, F, G, I, J, K, L and M servers now exist in multiple locations on different continents, using anycast address announcements to provide decentralized service. As a result most of the physical root servers are now outside the United States, allowing for high performance worldwide.

The question is if the company running them us US based? RIPE (Amsterdam) is not. Nor is WIDE (Japan), or Autonomica (Sweden). Once they stop accepting updates from US DNS, things will get ugly fast.

Re:Switch away from .com?

[compro01]

If there were a tld .bm I expect IBM would grab i.bm

There is. .bm is Bermuda.

However, you need to live in or be an organization or corporation registered in Bermuda to get a domain.

Re:Switch away from .com?

[dyingtolive]

Can you please cite some sites which do not participate in illegal activity who have suffered? AFAIK, the list is exactly zero. And in either case, can you please show where due process was denied?

dajaz1.com
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mistakenly-Seized-Hip-Hop-Blog-Returned-to-Owner-After-One-Year-239685.shtml

Re:Switch away from .com?

[Anthony Mouse]

This affects only some "gray businesses"

You're making the assumption that the people handling this are responsible and well-informed.

They're not.

They took down the dynamic DNS domain mooo.com and replaced all 84,000 of its subdomains with a message insinuating that they had each been used for child pornography. They seized a totally innocent music blog called dajaz1.com for more than a year while filing sealed continuances in court and refusing to provide any information to the owners before giving it back without so much as an apology. They seized the domain for jotform.com, a site for making web forms, for no apparent reason with no notice.

They're unaccountable bureaucrats playing games with nuclear weapons.

Re:Switch away from .com?

[elbonia]

No the .com domain belongs to the US. .com, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu, .and org are ALL US domains. Since the US invented the internet through ARPNET those extensions do not need the .us at the end. This was specifically designed to follow the stamp model. The UK came up with the idea of standard postage and it's the only country not needed to identify itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamp_design#Country_name

Jurisdiction is clearly under the control of the US. .com was originally made and administered by the US Department of Defense. Anyone can register and get a .com domain name but it's clearly under US jurisdiction.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/ntiahome/domainname/agreements/summary-factsheet.htm

Re:Switch away from .com?

[gmack]

Except it made no difference whatsoever, from what I hear from what I'm hearing Bodog's credit card processor hasn't seen much change in their processing rates. Bodog was well prepared for this.

Re:Switch away from .com?

[Aaron B Lingwood]

No the .com domain belongs to the US. .com, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu, .and org are ALL US domains.

I refute this claim.

[.com .org .net .edu .int ] were classified as 'World Wide Generic Domains' while [ .gov .mil .us ] were US-only according to RFC 1591 [^1]

I highly recommend that you read the paper titled "WRONG TURN IN CYBERSPACE: USING ICANN TO ROUTE AROUND THE APA AND THE CONSTITUTION" by A Michael Froomkin. [^2]

In 1998, ICAAN was formed and given management rights of the [ .com .net .org ] TLD's by the USC. In 2000, ICAAN's rights were formally recognized by the DoC and separate (and conflicting) agreements were signed. U.S government retained control of [ .int .edu ] domains and set restrictive polices on both (against the RFC). Please note that ICAAN is required to comply to RFC 1034, 1035 and 1591 [^3][^4]

Today, we no longer have the 'World Wide Generic Domains'. These have been replaced with a different TLD system which specifies Generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) as domains that operate directly under policies established by ICANN processes for the global Internet community. [^5] [ .com .org .net ] are classified as gTLD's and thus are for the global Internet community. [^6]

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/ntiahome/domainname/agreements/summary-factsheet.htm

Nowhere in this factsheet does it say that [ .com ] etc belong to the US. This is simply regarding an agreement transferring management from the U.S government to ICAAN.

I'll see you're source and raise you 6

[^1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1591

[^2] http://personal.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/icann.pdf

[^3] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1034

[^4] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035

[^5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain

[^6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain

Re:Switch away from .com?

[elbonia]

This law article explains the situation in detail.

http://www.law.umn.edu/uploads/x9/zx/x9zxd7nnmzDMMwHVC-aRHw/Sonbuchner-Final-Online-PDF-04.07.09.pdf