
Have a .com web address? Know the legal risks - pier0
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/have-com-web-address-know-legal-risks-ck-113355
======
skrebbel
> _The bottom line: If you have a .com domain name, or other at-risk domain
> names like .net, you are subject to US domestic laws and jurisdiction._

I don't understand this. If you buy an American product and use it for
business, you're an American? Except without the benefits?

Isn't that like Taiwan (or, well, ROC) filing an extradition request when I
use my Asus laptop to pirate Taiwanese movies??

Or like Miele dragging me before the German courts because I vacuum cleaned
(loudly) on sunday?

What am I missing? Is US law really this fucked up, or is the article
exaggerating?

~~~
drusenko
The concept of jurisdiction is complicated, but often comes down to "do you
have the authority to make me care".

Any country in the world can make laws about whatever they'd like with regards
to things they have control over. In fact, they can make laws about things
they don't have control over, but in practice, you can safely ignore getting
sued in Iran unless you plan on visiting Iran.

In this case, things are pretty simple: .com, .net, .org, etc are US domain
names, administered by a US company, and the US has the authority to subject
you to their jurisdiction (because so much of it happens in the US).

If you would like to use a US domain name, you are subject to US law. If you
live outside the US and would not like to be subject to US law, then don't use
a US domain name or a US web host.

The United States isn't doing anything special here that every other country
in the world isn't also doing. If I buy and use a .fr domain name and host
servers in France, I am subject to French and EU jurisdiction.

~~~
excuse-me
This doesn't apply only to servers hosted in the US. The US is claiming that
because .com domains must ultimately be registered by a US registrar (since
they have ultimate control of the DNS) then even if you have no servers in the
US, no customers in the US and no links with the US - you are under US
jurisdiction.

It's like France having jurisdiction if you use a French word in your product.

~~~
drusenko
No, it's exactly like if I registered a .fr domain name. France has
jurisdiction over that domain name, and can shut it down if they'd like.

The US has jurisdiction over the .com domain.

If you have no US customers, no servers in the US and no other links to the US
-- you may have your domain shutdown, but that's it.

I very much doubt you would be extradited to the US in that situation as it
does not involve the US at all. But the US having extradition abilities with
other countries' foreign nationals that it finds to be criminals is a separate
issue entirely from their jurisdiction over .com, .net, .org etc.

[edited for clarity]

~~~
excuse-me
So should the US have jurisdiction over .com/.net/.info etc rather than just
over ".us" ? Isn't .com an international designation nowadays?

Isn't that like giving the country that invented the telegraph jurisdiction
over all undersea cables wherever they are installed?

~~~
drusenko
No. com/net/info have always been US domain names from the beginning. It's a
big reason why others were created. When you run a .com, you are running a US
domain name.

There are no international domains -- can you imagine how disastrously messy
that would be?

Domain names are under the jurisdiction of one country. It just so happens the
US domain names are popular, but that certainly doesn't mean you are forced to
use them.

~~~
foxylad
"com/net/info have always been US domain names from the beginning" - Citation?
And how come there is a ".us" TLD?

It may seem that way from where you sit (USA by any chance?), but I think
you'll find the rest of the world sees com/net/org as transcending countries,
hence their value.

~~~
joshAg
Here's what wikipedia has to say:

"The domain COM was installed as one of the first set of top-level domains
when the Domain Name System was first implemented for use on the Internet in
January 1985. The domain was administered by the U.S. Department of Defense
(DoD), however the department contracted the domain maintenance to SRI
International. SRI created DDN-NIC, also known as SRI-NIC, or simply the NIC
(Network Information Center),[3] then accessible online with the domain name
nic.ddn.mil. Beginning October 1, 1991, an operations contract was awarded to
Government Systems Inc. (GSI), which sub-contracted it to Network Solutions
Inc. (NSI).[4]"

> And how come there is a ".us" TLD?

Because every country gets a two letter country code TLD.

> It may seem that way from where you sit (USA by any chance?), but I think
> you'll find the rest of the world sees com/net/org as transcending
> countries, hence their value.

Just because you see certain TLDs as transcending countries doesn't mean that
they actually do.

Besides, having jursdiction over a TLD is necessary to deal with sites that
have servers in multiple countries. How else do you handle jurisdiction for a
website with multiple servers in multiple countries and that advertises to
multiple countries, some of which don't have a server inside that country's
border?

------
doubleconfess
The point of the article is very valid and concerning, but there are alot of
factual problems with how this article represents the facts in its main case
study.

> _For years the Department of Justice had maintained that online gambling was
> illegal. In a spectacular about turn just before Christmas last year, it
> said that the law (the Wire Act) only applied to sports betting. They
> finally recognised the obvious- it takes some skill to win at poker and
> blackjack. So when it took action against Bodog, it wasn’t for its main
> activity of online gambling but the relatively smaller one of sports
> betting._

From someone who has the unique combination of having been a professional
poker player for long periods, as well as having worked at Bodog as a software
developer I can tell you two things that are very wrong about this paragraph.

1\. There isn't any skill in playing blackjack online. The only skill
component of playing live is in counting cards, and that doesn't translate
online because you are getting a "new deck" with every hand.

2\. Sports betting is far and away the most profitable part of their business.
In fact, their poker room is nothing but a nuisance to them because it allows
professional poker players to swoop in and extract money from the sports
betters before Bodog is able to extract it. This is demonstrated by the recent
changes to their poker software that make the site very very unattractive to
play poker on for any thinking player (ie anonymizing the tables), not to
mention their previous rules about limiting the number of tables played at a
time.

And then the main point of taking action against the site for the minor crime
of sports betting, which is "legal" in Canada. I'm not so sure about that, I
know when I worked there that it was common knowledge that the founder of the
company hadn't stepped foot in Canada since Bodog had launched. Also, what
does it matter if sports betting is the main part of its business or not? If
it's illegal to service US customers with an activity that the US government
finds illegal, they are obviously going to take action.

Of course I believe online sports betting shouldn't be outlawed, but the US
government has always been much more clear about this being illegal when
compared to its sometimes wishy-washy stance on poker.

------
drusenko
There are 2 issues here:

(1) The US gov't is getting more active in shutting down US-based domain
names, sometimes legitimately and sometimes mistakenly. This is obviously very
bad when it's not legitimate.

(2) Don't use GoDaddy. A Secret Service "request" should not have shut down
JotForm -- they had no legal basis for doing so. GoDaddy has shown themselves
time and time again to go above and beyond their legal duties and shut domain
names down without any reasonable due diligence. (see
[http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2011/12/godaddy-a-glimpse-
of-...](http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2011/12/godaddy-a-glimpse-of-the-
internet-under-sopa.html))

~~~
read_wharf
It is surprising to me how far a company like GoDaddy will go to alienate
customers, and how a government like the US will go to alienate citizens,
visitors and business people. I understand it's about money and power, but it
still surprises me.

------
nextparadigms
It's time for Google to give equal power to all national domains if they don't
already do it in their search algorithm. Many people still make their websites
.com because they know they would be better treated in Google search.

~~~
vibrunazo
I think they value domains of the language you're searching, right? Or is that
just a consequence of the websites in that domain being in the language that
you're searching?

------
rmc
I can't wait till someone (successfully) gets an injunction in their home
country to get whatever.com resolving back to their proper IP addresses.

It would either fork the .com namespace, or international pressure would mount
for the US to no longer have full control over .com.

~~~
smsm42
Since .com registrar is on US soil, AFAIK, injunction outside of the US would
carry a very little weight fr it.

~~~
rmc
They would carry little weight in the USA. But, say, in the EU DNS servers and
ISPs would have to obey it. It would a technical nightmare and complete
headache for any sysadmin to have to "manually patch" in some values, but
would be possible.

It would be an interesting time to live in.

------
troymc
Maybe ICANN should allow multiple parties to manage the assignment of domains
that aren't country-specific.

For example, let Nominet UK, auDA, InteretNZ, and CIRA manage some .com
domains. Why not?

As far as I can tell, the current arrangement is a historical accident.

~~~
excuse-me
Hand over our God given internet to some foreigners?

In other news - Britain has announced that all letters sent with a postage
stamp come under UK jurisdiction.

------
israelpasos
Our company recently started using alternative domain handles such as .nu,
.es, .se and so on in response to one of my rants. It is the interests behind
legislation that continue to halt innovation. We could evolve much faster if
we had brighter minds leading our country. In the meantime we decided to
contribute by not using .com domains.

I believe URLs are bound to disappear.

Wired also published a related article on March 6:
[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/feds-seize-
foreign-...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-
sites/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=twitterclickthru)

We completely agree with the UN's statement: “no single government should have
a pre-eminent role in relation to international internet governance.”

------
Roritharr
How about a redirect?

If i have a .com address redirect to my main .de page, i'd expect that the
worst that could happen is the .com redirect will be changed to a takedown
page, without any extradition charges for myself, am i wrong?

~~~
bhickey
I sincerely doubt that the ICE would see it that way. I presume they would
liken it to putting up a billboard in Yuma that says "Free Crack at my store
in Mexico!"

~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
Correct. However, if you always redirect to somewhere else, and that somewhere
else has an identity which really stands out, then people will get used to
that destination. So, when the government takes away your DotCOM, your
existing audience is already prepared with the knowledge of where to go to get
your content. After some research, I believe that destination should be
DotTEL, and I wrote about some of its features recently [1]. Lastly, I notice
that I forgot to include there that DotTEL is also useful as a status page for
the services handling the content to which it points.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3649087>

~~~
literalusername
In that post, you wrote, "DotTEL is not at all limited, as long as you can
transition to the mindset of decoupling your content from its address."

Care to elaborate? I thought tel stores no more than phonebook data. How could
you use it to serve a web app?

~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
It's not only for phonebook data. Telnic, the company which manages DotTEL,
uses [1] as their main example. For more examples, see "DotTEL of the Week"
[2].

By "decoupling", I mean to get away from the mindset that your domain goes
directly to your content, which is what we've all come to expect when we type
in the URL and press ENTER. I envision my DotCOM redirecting to my DotTEL,
which has: 1) a very short description of what it's all about, 2) a link to a
long description, 3) a link to a chatroom, 4) a link to a forum, whose content
might be mirrored, in realtime, to one or two other forum providers, which
would also be linked on the DotTEL, thus providing continuity for important
material, and 5) links to any other webapp or content that I could possibly
want to include. Also, I can quickly modify the DotTEL with status info about
myself or about any of my links.

The bottom line is that my DotTEL becomes an anchor for all of my stuff. Of
course, I don't anticipate that everyone will simply convert, as most people
will come up with objections as to why their content or their audience can't
or won't switch or be switched to this intermediate format, but it will work
fine for me, and I assume for a good number of people who want some measure of
protection when faced with the aftermath of their DotCOM being seized.

[1] <http://justin.tel>

[2] <http://www.nic.tel/community-weeklytel.html>

~~~
literalusername
That might be acceptable for your personal information, but for a startup?
Let's see what that does to your conversion rate.

------
larrys
I think this says it all about the bias in this article. Note who the author
of it is:

"Vikram Kumar is chief executive of InternetNZ, which adminsters the .co.nz
domain, and advocates on behalf of internet users."

But forgetting for a second even that, there are millions of .com/net/org etc
domains. If you think the US Government is going to start to file cases
against even 1000's of those owners they won't. They have the resources to
prosecute only a small fraction that are "breaking laws".

In the US and other countries there are plenty of things that are illegal
(smoking pot as only one example). How much enforcement effort is put into
that? How many tax returns are audited? Of those audited how many are TCMP
(where they reverse engineer and look at everything). An extremely small
amount. Sure some people will get snagged. But to think it is you (in the case
of most .com uses) is truly paranoia.

The US Government of course will act if they see something that clears the
tipping point of a violation. But the risk is way overstated in exchange for
having the benefit (at least for a US company) of a .com address.

~~~
timClicks
Just to avoid doubt, InternetNZ is a charitable organisation that is neutral
of commercial interests. .nz domain space is managed much differently than the
rest of the world.

~~~
larrys
He still has to worry about the bottom line. He gets paid a salary and would
certainly benefit from registrations in .nz even if a non-profit. Non-profit
revenues pays his salary. No different then the head of PBS saying why pbs is
superior to non-public tv.

~~~
lancewiggs
Actually he doesn't. Vikram is CEO of Internet NZ* which outsources running of
the domain to NZ Registry Services and administering to DNC. Each of these has
a board and a CEO. It's a pretty clever system, which came about because of
some issues about 10 years ago whihc saw the whole thing almost go off the
rails. It's now seen, I'm told, as best practice.

Revenues from NZRS are more than sufficient to pay Vikram's salary, and that
of his staff, and InternetNZ has a decent warchest to keep doing so for quite
some time. Check the website - all the accounts are published.

*I'm an elected Councillor for InternetNZ. We at internetNZ worry most about ensuring we have an "open and uncapturable" internet in NZ. This takeover of .com domains is an important issue for us all.

------
Joakal
I'm working with my local Pirate Party to outlaw domain name seizures for the
reason that it's asinine since domain names act as typically an address to
content and can't violate any laws although the server hosting the content can
still be. I also have further reasoning.

Unfortunately, it's for Australian domain names (.au). I think .au domain
names are under USA jurisdiction due to AuDA's sponsorship contract with ICANN
where ICANN is hosting Australian domain names on a nameserver. The
sponsorship deal cost seems to be ~7% of domain names.

The Pirate Party is pretty great for entrepreneurs as they have many closely
aligned motives. Did you know a Pirate Party in Czech is trying to make a
constitutional amendment of an Internet Access right?

~~~
meiji
Now if only they wouldn't call it the Pirate Party, it might actually attract
more mainstream attention. Self-marginalising your political ethos because of
the name seems remarkably short sighted. Sadly too many people won't get past
the name to see the good that is trying to be done.

~~~
Joakal
It has caught some mainstream attention, look up Pirate Party Australia.

Is this mainstream attention enough:
[http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/aussie-
pira...](http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/aussie-pirate-party-
plans-election-onslaught-20090930-gbvd.html) ?

------
alan_cx
This really has nothing to do with the US government. While the US worries the
hell out of me in general, it is merely asking for these people. The real
problem is the various other governments who, like the UK government, seem to
bend to the will of the US with out a squeak.

What I don't understand is that the first job of a government has to be
protecting its people. But recently, the reverse seems to be true. Why? Why
are we the people suddenly the enemy of government? Why are our governments so
happy to sling any one they can in to the weird and unjust legal system? How
did that happen? Who the hell elects the US the world policemen and court?

~~~
davvid
_But recently, the reverse seems to be true_

I don't believe this is a recent phenomenon.

------
wavephorm
The US is going completely authoritarian, and it's becoming more and more
scary by the day. It is an extremely serious situation when the most powerful
country in the world starts acting like this. Fascism is dangerous, and the US
is walking a very thin line now.

Without question root DNS control needs to be stripped from this regime.
Imagine for a second if the Internet was controlled by Nazi Germany, or
Stalin-era Russia, or today's China... It would be completely unacceptable. If
control is not taken away from these thugs now it will only get harder in the
future.

