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Countries Don't Own Their Internet Domains, ICANN Says
angry tapir writes The Internet domain name for a country doesn't belong to that country — nor to anyone, according to ICANN. Plaintiffs who successfully sued Iran, Syria and North Korea as sponsors of terrorism want to seize the three countries' ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) as part of financial judgments against them. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the Internet, says they can't do that because ccTLDs aren't even property.
Until this nonsense about keyword TLDs, TLDs were just identifiers, not property as ICANN noted. But this custom TLD nonsense is going to throw a wrench into that.
I could see seizing the domain registrars, but as they say, how do you seize an identifier? That's like saying I "own" the variable "x", and that all graphics programmers now need to pay me to lease use of that variable name.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
ICANN is surely working hard to be replaced. I imagine plenty of nations would find it inconvenient if an organization they don't have control over could prevent their TLD from working.
This is a good way to encourage EU to start a replacement system on the side.
N/T
whenever we need to seize a domain in the realm of the DMCA, ICE (immigration, customs enforcement) can and does SEIZE the domain, so it must in fact belong to someone. Domain registrars were forced across the country to de-list wikileaks often due to local circuit court judges on behalf of private entities, but mostly due to quiet pressure from the United States government against its payment card processors. .uk and .fm sites are managed by agents of their respective governments, as are .ru and .au, so it would be strange to insist a country manage, yet never own their TLD.
Offtopic i know, but another thing that strikes me as absurd is the lawsuit. "Plaintiffs who successfully sued Iran, Syria and North Korea as sponsors of terrorism" include who exactly? and of these plaintiffs how many are willing to admit they openly ignore their own governments sponsorship of terrorism? The suit seems rather silly.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Just like my name is my property! I now decree that every time someone says "Sean", they are referring to Tom Hanks.
You're welcome.
I think the ownership of the country of Syria is in dispute, never mind the tld domain name
...but I was under the impression they all belonged to the City of London police?
is those countries series of tubes, and install valves on them and charge for the flow.
In other words, they could put a toll on the internet superhighway, so that each time a big truck enters that country, there's a price to be paid.
The UK courts generate a lot of uproar in the US (and rightly so) about them overstepping their jurisdiction with regards to libel laws. There seems to be a complete lack of self-awareness when lawsuits such as these come up. The plaintiffs in this case are trying to collect their award of $109 million (from a default judgement in Rubin et al v. Islamic Republic of Iran et al,) in retribution to injuries caused by a Hamas bombing they claim was funded by Iran. Using the American courts in this way rides roughshod over other the independence of other countries.
They also tried to sue the EU for giving aid to the "terrorist sponsoring" Palestinian Authority (they lost due to diplomatic immunity). Using the courts in this way seems to have very little to do with justice and more to do with politics.
Its a name, specifically for a country. You can't sue someone and take away their name. What if I sued the US government and then got awarded their name, and they had to change theirs to something else? That's ridiculous.
Explaining the negative effects of siezing property is a poor rationalization. It also contradicts about a gazillion state and municipality laws that specifically bestow ownership and tax you for it. Just because ICANN is the authority for adminstering those trademarks, it has no say over the actual law.
It's ok, courts deal with idiot lawmakers all the time, administrative dipshits usually don't make it off the clerks desk.
Good.
Being a "good guy" or a "bad guy" is always subjective. Whatever nonsense you pull on the "Bad guys" today will eventually be used by them against you once they convince enough people you're a "Bad guy" Best leave nonsensical BS like stripping them on their domains alone. It will only turn out badly. I mean, really, would it be that hard to convince enough people that the USA is a terrorist entity?
Sure, let's tear apart the integrity of our global network for the sake of sticking it to a government. Did anyone think through what would happen if you disrupted the network on such a scale? The national ISPs would host their own root, and anyone abroad who wanted to keep accessing those domains would likewise switch to alt roots.
End result, the domain name system gets fractured, ICANN and the US govt retain less control of the internet, and also they look like assholes.
Good thing this was dismissed as the dumb idea it was.
a TLD is sort of like a way to identify an address. For example, you'd never say "I'm going to go to 4202 E Fowler Avenue", you'd say "I'm going to go to the University of South Florida". In the same way, you rarely browse the internet by typing in an IP address, you use a domain name. So essentially all they'd be doing is confiscating a nickname while I really think they want to confiscate the actual property (the IP address, and subsequently the servers).
--Dig1tal One
It's like seizing a zip code. Moronic.
Re The national ISPs would host their own root.
Yes nations would just go for a version of the classic Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... with a nice web 2.0 feel.
Other nations would then set up their own networks understanding they could be 'next'.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
What kind of Commie Talk is that? This is the 21st Century and Capitalism and the Free Market are Triumphant.
Everything is property and Must Be Monetized.
In fact, I'm sure that any day now someone will patent each and every individual air molecule on the planet and charge us royalties for breathing them.
We're already well on the way to doing that for water.
Jebus H. Christ, Tlds are bits on an HDD. Who can 'own' those? The whole concept of 'intellectual property' is laughable and disintegrates after 3 stages of rationalisation the latest. Especially with network meta directories such as the DNService.
I can send them a HDD full of Tlds, including ones that I just made up. If they pay me a little more I might even take a used server and set up a DNS to serve them.
1000 Euros and it's theirs.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
They were planning a name change anyway, this just lets them put some spin on the decision.
Perhaps they should try to sieze their country codes instead!
The U.S government runs and wields its military like a state-sponsored terrorist organization. Does that mean we will get rid of .us, too?
ICANN's primary objective - at least for the last 10 or so years - has been profit maximization. They have done everything they can to help registrars make more money without concern for the long-term consequences of atrociously bad decisions (such as selling gTLDs).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So when are the other lawsuits for mass death and destruction, including the confiscation of their ccTLDs, due to finish. You know, the ones against the US, Russia, China, Germany, Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Niger, Columbia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Turkey, Zambia, Myanmar, Botswana, Japan, Uganda, Honduras.... You know, it might be simpler to list the countries that have never caused any mass terrorism/destruction, [None].
Attempting to seize/interfere with a ccTLD is an act of war against that country, simply as that, regardless of whether judges overstepping well above their stations think it is "property" or not. This kind of shit really should be put before an international court or the UN as a request for sanctions against a foreign state.
It won't take more than ICANN taking a _single_ loss on such matters for the root DNS system to suffer a netsplit. Each root-server operator HAS the hability to desync from IANA, and the only thing that gets in the way is DNSSEC. DLV takes care of that one nicely. In fact, I fully expect that the more paranoid/wiser countries will mandate anchored DLVs for their ccTLDs on all ISPs operating within their borders, either active all the time, or as pre-planned emergency response.
The military and homeland-security-like agencies of the world are going to pay a lot of attention to these developments.
..seizing the name "Iran," so that when a kid asks "Where's Iran?" while standing in front of a map, and X appears on Washington DC.
I will attempt to address your points objectively, for whatever it is worth.
Firstly, bashing the EU for restricting free communication on the Internet is considering only selective evidence. The most common limitation on free speed today is intellectual property, and by far the biggest champion of restricting the free distribution of IP is the United States, including using all kinds of diplomatic and political tools to push the US agenda extra-jurisdictionally. The US also imposes other restrictions and censorship on-line that are not universal elsewhere in the world, for example in relation to gambling, and again has a track record of pushing its agenda extra-territorially through sometimes dubious mechanisms. I think right now a few people in the US are just feeling aggrieved because inevitably the rest of the world has started pushing back and expecting the US to comply with the rules from other places in the same way, instead of enjoying nothing but one-way traffic as it often has until quite recently.
Secondly, even if anywhere in the world did truly protect absolutely free speech, not all of us think that would be an improvement. For example, in much of Europe concepts like privacy and protecting personal data carry far more weight than they generally do in the US. In fact, it is illegal to export personal data from Europe to the US without special measures being used, because by default the US doesn't meet even our minimal legal standards for respecting individuals' privacy and personal data. But issues like free speech, privacy, anonymity or pseudonymity, and democracy are fundamentally interdependent and sometimes conflict, even before you consider more specific related issues like national security, policing, or copyright.
Finally, just as an aside, the recent "right to be forgotten" debate was triggered by a specific court case, and the rationale behind the decision is actually quite sensible. Again, there is now a fundamental tension between, on the one hand, benefitting from the free and open communication afforded by the Internet and from the ability to search for and access information on many subjects more easily than ever before, and on the other hand, preserving legal principles around justice, the protection of the innocent, and the rehabilitation of the guilty that have evolved over a long period in every civilised country of the world. The result in this particular case may seem at odds with technological reality, but that doesn't mean the principle or the logic are flawed, just that it isn't a good final solution yet. Your characterisation is also inaccurate, by the way, but I'll invite you to read some of the ample material that has been published about why the common misunderstanding you've described is wrong rather than getting sidetracked any further here.
There are no easy answers to any of these issues, but one thing is all but certain: throwing out everything our societies have learned over centuries about defending private lives and allowing people to move on from mistakes, just because a few Internet companies who have made staggering amounts of money might lose some of it if their business models were modestly inconvenienced, is not the only possible or potentially desirable way forward.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In 1939 the United States terminated the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials." Under this authority, on July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted. Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere. Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan. The British and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in southeast Asia. On 20 November, Japan offered to withdraw their forces from southern Indochina and not to launch any attacks in southeast Asia provided that the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands ceased aiding China and lifted their sanctions against Japan. The American counterproposal of 26 November (the Hull note) required Japan to evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with Pacific powers. This series of actions, including US military support for Japan's enemies, constitute acts of war, and are typical of jew-run imperial America sticking it's noise in where it doesn't belong and hypocritically dictating terms to foreign nations. Screw America. It is now being taken over by sub intelligent hordes of beggars and thugs, and one day the white man will wake up, too late to really help himself, but at least enough to stop the uS war machine from continuing to be used as a tool of jew foreign policy. The American empire will fall. It's already descending into the sewer day-by-day.
Even if the ICANN handed to the vultures those TL domain names of Syria and Iraq and North Korea, most other nations, which have no problems with those 3 countries, would ignore such a move. That would result in a permanent split of the global Internet and see the creation separated BRICternet, EUnet, Afroet and ANZACnet for the various continents and trans-oceanic alliances. Mankind would essentially be back to the telex era for global trade.
ICANN could reasonably argue that the ccTLDs are "licensed" in some form or another - but that doesn't in itself invalidate the ownership of said *license*. I "own" the exclusive right to operate and manage my domain for as long as I renew on time and the domain registrar plays by the rules. No reason to assume that TLD's operate any differently.
But ICANN seem to want their cake and eat it. "The domains are not property and can't be owned" they cry, at the same time as asserting that only ICANN can assign (and presumably revoke) them. If they really aren't property, then please stand aside and watch the storm brew.
Worst of all, it seems like a marketing own goal and great ammunition for those who would wrest ccTLD control away from ICANN and have it run by a UN agency or similar.
I wish I were on that board - we could fix a lot of nonsense that governments come up with to believe (not think because most governments don't think they just attack and conquer even betraying their own laws in secret to become oligopolies).
ICANN reigns supreme. I vote ICANN!
Andy
See subject-line: You're paying taxes on the dirt your trees grow in - Get it?
APK
P.S.=> The "infamous they" get you coming & going (or rather, either or)... apk