
US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction - pixdamix
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2083906/claims-com-net-websites-jurisdiction
======
Silhouette
England, February 2014: In other news, the Internet Service Providers'
Association announced today that no major English ISP now relies on Verisign,
the US company formerly responsible for administering major domains such as
.com and .net worldwide.

This follows a ruling at the European Court last year that Verisign's actions
in blocking the domain of German business Musikjetzt GmbH constituted an
unlawful restraint of trade, and a subsequent European decision that all
primary DNS management should be run under the newly formed United Nations
Internet Oversight Service.

The Musikjetzt service allows music fans to stream their favourite songs on
demand under the new copyright collective licensing regulations introduced
Europe-wide in early 2013, and has sharply increased the consumption of music
by independent artists.

Shares in major US record labels have fallen over 40% in the past year, which
industry insiders have repeatedly blamed on the way that Europeans "don't
respect copyrights." As one CEO put it, "If they won't respect our rules
voluntarily, we have to make them respect them."

A spokeman for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said
"Economic attacks on fundamental US industries are a bigger threat than
terrorism, and we will always respond accordingly."

No-one from the Recording Industry Association of America was available for
comment.

~~~
econgeeker
I worry that brussels and the UN are both just as bad as the US government,
only a number of years behind them. The UN doesn't throw its weight around
violating people's rights in large part because it doesn't have the power to
do so.

I think the entire DNS system needs to be out of the hands of government
bodies of any type, preferably relying on a cooperative, distributed solution,
like the internet itself (theoretically) does/can.

I think it is amazing how divorced from US law the US government has become.
Seizing domains without having previously gotten a conviction for a crime is
against the law, and the idea that a DNS lookup is the same as "routing all
traffic thru the US" is absurd as well. DNS records are cached globally.

I'm afraid that the solutions will have to be technical, and not governmental.

~~~
slowpoke
>I think the entire DNS system needs to be out of the hands of government
bodies of any type, preferably relying on a cooperative, distributed solution,
like the internet itself (theoretically) does/can.

There was a small project a while back at the start of the domain seizures
where a few people tried to develop a .p2p domain that relied on, you guessed
it, peer to peer distribution of DNS records, effectively making it impossible
to seize domains. I don't really know where it went, but considering I've
never heard of them again I'd say the project's dead.

~~~
Zash
From <http://dot-p2p.org/>

> We currently believe the best way to create a stable environment for TLDs is
> to enact a central authority. We know this will cause much argument within
> the community, but we have made the decision that we believe will be best
> for the continued development of this project.

That, being against the whole point of it, probably killed it.

------
dsl
FYI, .com/net/org have always belonged to the United States.

In the same way that .ca belongs to Canada, com/net/org/us belong to the US.
Think of them as the sponsoring organization that originally created them.

The only thing the US government has ever given up is control over the
registry and DNS management. Under a MoU[1] that facility was handed over to
ICANN with the understanding that they would select US based private sector
companies to take on the duties.

Other TLDs that are sponsored internationally but managed in the US (like .me
or .ws) is a whole different issue, but this one is pretty clean cut.

1\. <http://www.icann.org/en/general/icann-mou-25nov98.htm>

~~~
wmf
It does seem problematic that _all_ the generic TLDs (whose value over ccTLDs
is obvious) are US-controlled. Maybe the imminent explosion of new gTLDs will
help.

~~~
dsl
You can make a million brands of beverage, but everyone will still grab a Coke
or a Pepsi from the shelf.

The new gTLD program is just a money land-grab. It's been well known within
the domain industry that firing up a new TLD is one of the most profitable
things you can do. Between speculators and brand protection agencies you are
guaranteed a minimum of 100k+ registrations. Multiply that by $20-$30 bucks a
pop.

~~~
marshray
Or in the case of gTLDs make that $185,000 per name applied-for.

In other news, ICANN is starting an "international development initiative".
[http://blog.cira.ca/2011/06/new-gtlds-icann-international-
de...](http://blog.cira.ca/2011/06/new-gtlds-icann-international-development-
and-venture-capital/)

------
Shenglong
Is this a joke? I thought it might be serious until I read: _ICE is not
focusing its efforts just on web sites that stream dodgy content but those
that link to them_

Please tell me this is a joke. I don't know whether to laugh or be sad.

~~~
adrianN
AFAIK here in Germany you can get in trouble for linking to illegal content.
That includes linking to software like AnyDVD that cracks encryption. I think
heise.de, a big German tech-news site, got in trouble over that.

~~~
pyre
I think the point of the parent post was that ICE is _only_ focusing on people
linking to 'illegal streaming sites,' but not going after 'illegal streaming
sites' themselves, which seems somewhat backwards. That would be like the "War
on Drugs" focusing on arresting people that point out where you can find drug
dealers, but not bothering to go after actual drug dealers.

~~~
mattmanser
It didn't actually say that. Where does it say streaming sites?

Do you go for the seeders or do you go after the torrent search engines? One
is whack a mole, one is destroy the C&C.

I know which one I'd choose.

It's more analogous to ignoring the street level criminals and going after the
Don, who never get his hands dirty any more but is directing all those that
do.

Edit: I'm not arguing for or against, just want to point out that there's no
point going after the individual seeders.

~~~
pyre

      > It didn't actually say that. Where does it say streaming sites?
    

See:

    
    
      > ICE is not focusing its efforts just on web sites that stream dodgy content
      > but those that link to them
    

I realize that I misread the quote to say that they were _just_ going after
sites that link to them though.

I also don't understand how you are equating this with torrent search engines.
Only some of the domains seized were torrent search engines.

------
tomp
Barnett, assistant deputy director of ICE: "The idea is to try to prosecute."

If I remember correctly, in the few cases that the domains were confiscated,
there was no prosecution, no courts involved. The owners of the domains had
practically no means to question or challenge the seizure. At least that's
what the media reported at the time.

------
arihant
I'll get downvoted for this.

Argument (I don't completely agree, but someone will make it sometime)- I
think it is not good for humanity to trust the jurisdiction of a country which
has demonstrated tainted judgement by getting involved in nuclear weapons and
given their recent involvements in the middle east. The United States is not
the country whose jurisdiction should control any form of worldwide open
platform.

Just a thought. This stuff needs some sort of international law. No
jurisdiction in the world is good enough to rule the web, in any damned way.
We cannot take our narrow minds into the future for our race.

~~~
younata
> getting involved in nuclear weapons

Pretty much every western country has nuclear weapons. If you're referencing
the fact that the US is the only country to have dropped nuclear weapons on
another country, keep in mind that it wasn't until 30 or so years later that
we realized how bad nuclear weapons are.

Hell, in the 80s, at my uni, there was an experiment to see if you could use
nuclear radiation to clean toilet water.

Don't get me wrong though, I agree with your other points.

~~~
tobylane
Pretty much every? No
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_with_nuclear_weapons>

Nuclear radiation is very different to weapons, your local major hospital has
a dozen different uses for radiation (more powerful than cleaning water).

------
daimyoyo
If these sites are in the jurisdiction of the US, aren't they also entitled to
the same right of due process? Have any of these seizures been challenged in
court? And if so, what's the status of the cases?

~~~
buro9
Only US citizens have the right of due process.

~~~
_delirium
That's not the case; non-citizens under U.S. jurisdiction also have due-
process rights. For example, despite him being a French citizen, Dominique
Strauss-Kahn is entitled to the standard Constitutional rights in his criminal
trial, including things like being read Miranda rights, not being forced to
testify against himself, and receiving a trial that accords with due process.
If any of that were violated, he could appeal his case and the appeal would be
heard in the same manner as if he were a U.S. citizen being tried in the same
New York courts. Even foreign corporations have due-process rights; for
example, Texas cannot simply seize a refinery owned by BP without some kind of
legal process.

The only cases I'm aware of where it's more murky are: 1) non-citizens held by
the U.S. armed forces outside the territory of the U.S., alleged to be "enemy
combatants"; and 2) illegal aliens awaiting deportation, who do still have
some limited right to due process in challenging their deportation
proceedings, but there's more controversy around it.

~~~
CWuestefeld
You're absolutely correct here. The 4th Amendment (giving protection from
unreasonable search and seizure) starts off, "the right of the people...",
_not_ "the right of the citizens". Together with the 14th Amendment's Equal
Protection clause, non-citizens get the same protections.

That said, the doctrine used in asset seizure cases (generally connected to
the failed war on drugs) is that it's the seized property itself that is
suspected to be guilty, and property doesn't have any of these rights. One can
easily imagine them trying the same crap here.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, on the latter point, I agree that the odds are stacked against any
claim. But they'd be stacked against a claim by a U.S. citizen, too; apart
from the added expense of litigation, I don't think a foreign company would be
at an _extra_ disadvantage in trying to get their domain name back, just the
"normal" disadvantage that comes with trying to fight administrative property
seizures.

------
vacri
"By definition, almost all copyright infringement and trademark violation is
transnational."

By definition? _By definition_!?

If that's the case, then as long as the bulk of pirates are in the same
country as the copyright owner, then _by definition_ , no violation has
occurred.

------
ebaysucks
Suddenly I am happy only the .org was available for my new project.

I am wondering though: Couldn't the US make similar claims on .org and .us
(and .edu, .biz?) domains?

~~~
dsl
Yes. .org is ran within the US too. So are .info, .biz, .edu, .me, .ws, and a
bunch more. The problem is most of the ccTLDs are actually operated by one of
three companies, all of which are based in the US.

~~~
Sigi
I was checking to see if my .asia domain was safe, and found out that .info,
.org, and my beloved .asia tld are operated by Afilias which, according to
wikipedia, "is headquartered in Dublin".

I'm prepared to believe that wikipedia is wrong, but you'll have to prove it.
with references, citations, and what not :)

~~~
dsl
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_Arrangement>

The companies you are really looking for are Afilias USA, Inc and Afilias LLC.
If they were really based out of Ireland, their IP space would be allocated by
RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens) instead of ARIN (American Registry for Internet
Numbers).

------
jbronn
Verisign is operator of the authoritative domain name registry for the .com
and .net top-level domains. Verisign is headquartered in Virginia, and as
such, the "property" of the domain is located in the United States and is
subject to the jurisdiction of our courts.

This isn't new, and it's why anti-cybersquatting legislation (15 U.S.C. §1125)
can be enforced.

------
aw3c2
Better link: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/03/us-anti-
pir...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/03/us-anti-piracy-
extradition-prosecution)

------
romland
Hmm. Personally this is how I always thought of the original generic TLDs
(com/net/org). In my head I think I even applied the idea to .xxx, .aero and
what-not as well. Pretty much how I expect Libya to do whatever they want with
the .ly domain.

This seizing of domains has been kind of the de-facto behavior for at least
some five years by now. In my head this new policy does not change anything
(don't run gambling sites on a .com domain etc?). Hell, I might even go as far
as to say that it might be a positive thing if there was no such thing as a
generic TLD. Most corporations registers all their domains globally anyway
(whether that is good or bad is another story).

Not the most relevant Google query, but it takes the idea home, I guess:
[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us+seizes+domain+20...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us+seizes+domain+2005)
\-- I didn't bother looking for older entries than that.

------
imrehg
Why is online piracy such a big business (and hence a problem to the rights
holders)? Because there are no comparable legal alternatives. So instead of
technology and business innovation, let's do legal innovation and sue them
people regardless of where they are.

~~~
blhack
>Why is online piracy such a big business (and hence a problem to the rights
holders)? Because there are no comparable legal alternatives.

I want to agree with you, because I wish that was the case, but it isn't. The
15-25 set just doesn't care. If they can get a movie for free on bittorrent,
or pay $20/mo to stream as many as they want, they'll go for bittorrent the
majority of the time.

~~~
Unseelie
I'm going to assume you're not in the 15-25 set, by even claiming there's wide
commonality between people 15 and 25 years old. 18-25, perhaps.

The first major difference is that people approaching 25 have a great deal
more money than people at 15.

All that aside, I for one notice a huge predilection in my peers (of the 19-22
set)to buy into services such as hulu and netxflix, and to look there first
for their media. Why? Because the services are instant, cheap, and of much
better than most pirated media.

FYI, netflix charges $8 a month...significantly less than the 20 you site.

~~~
blhack
I'm 24, and yes, there is a wide commonality in this group of people.

15 is usually around the age that kids start getting proficient enough with
their computer that they can figure out how to bootleg movies. 25 is about the
time that they mature out of it.

>The first major difference is that people approaching 25 have a great deal
more money than people at 15.

Do they? Most of the people that I know around that age (I'm that age) have
very little disposable income. While netflix (which doesn't have even remotely
close to the same amount of titles as TPB) is only $8/mo, that $8/mo is a 12
pack of PBR.

>All that aside, I for one notice a huge predilection in my peers (of the
19-22 set)to buy into services such as hulu and netxflix, and to look there
first for their media.

Are your peers mostly wealthy (relatively) computer programmers?

>significantly less than the 20 you [c]ite

Netflix and TPB aren't competitors. Do you think that major movie studios
would offer all of their titles for $8/mo? There is already several massive
experiments (netflix, hulu) taking place to test this, and the result is: no,
they wouldn't.

~~~
Unseelie
I can't argue on any point except your money point, given my own experiences.
(except for the fact that as netflix and TPB are sources for simmilar goods,
then yes, they are competitors)

My peers are generally not computer programmers, no, nor do they have much
disposable income. They do live in the the united states, which means realtive
certian other populations, they are insanely wealthy. We scrape by in the
lower end of cost of living in this nation with large student debts, and
housing costs in the range of $400 a month...from that, it isn't hard to split
a netflix bill two or three ways. It costs, effectively, spare change to buy a
netflix account between three people. Seriously on the margin of 80% of the
people I know have a netflix account, with far fewer understanding the
mechanics of bootlegging movies. We have netflix before we have a tv
subscription.

------
turbojerry
I wonder where this will end? Claiming all packets that go through the US are
in its jurisdiction? All packets that go through routers supplied by American
companies who provide finance for the router? All packets that go through
routers owned by a company who has 1 or more American shareholders?

------
jxcole
I think they may be shooting themselves in the foot with all this litigation
against copy infringers. Once it becomes impractical to share files using bit
torrent, people will probably just switch to mildly less convenient but more
secure methods, like free net.

------
dstein
Then .com's should be phased out. Migrate all .com to .co.us.

~~~
ericd
Why? A TLD doesn't have to explicitly reference the country in which it's
based. The big TLDs started in the US, so it shouldn't be a surprise that
they're still under the US jurisdiction.

That said, fragmenting the internet into nationalistic TLD silos will probably
have some negative consequences for the cross cultural nature of the internet,
and it might help to give the non-obviously nation-based TLDs over to an
international ruling body.

It's something to be weighed by the US govt. I hope they consider both sides
carefully.

~~~
dstein
Just because the US has historically had jurisdiction doesn't mean they always
should forever. ICE has taken actions recently that proves conclusively they
don't deserve this authority.

------
tnorthcutt
Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would ICE have anything to do with
copyright in the first place, regardless of whether their jurisdiction claims
are upheld/fair? How does copyright fall under either immigration or customs?

~~~
GHFigs
_How does copyright fall under either immigration or customs?_

Think bootleg DVDs. According to the linked Guardian article, most of the
domains ICE has seized were selling counterfeit physical goods.

~~~
uxp
Selling and Free[1] are interchangeable, as well as physical and digital, in
your statement. Realistically, there isn't much difference between a
counterfeit luxury handbag being sold for $20 out of the back of some shady
shop and an illegitimate copy of a blockbuster movie being given out for
free[1], over the internet or hand to hand.

[1] Key point: These domains being seized aren't actually giving away streams
or download links for free, they're being reimbursed through ad revenue or
affiliate programs.

Side note: A popular watch brand's repair facility in the USA gets a large
number of counterfeit watches in for repair every day. They would like to see
these thing eradicated, but are restricted by law to not seize the fake goods,
after all they have no proof that someone somewhere profited from the
production of the fake watch, which be definition is infringement. Anyone can
replicate a popular product, but the moment it starts to compete with the
original on the marketplace, it is copyright infringement. Blindly stealing
fake watches from potential customers is illegal. So, this Watch company, if
it desires to do so, will ask the customer if they would like to sell the
watch to the company. If the customer agrees, they inform them that selling
counterfeit goods is illegal, and they then have jurisdiction to seize the
fake watch.

~~~
ynniv
Sorry, this comment has entirely too many incorrect or unsupported claims...
Don't quit your day job for that legal career yet.

------
jrockway
Maybe all those .ly domain names aren't such a bad idea after all...

~~~
jarek
With the way things are going, I am expecting .ly to be in U.S. jurisdiction
before long...

------
imrehg
Oh dear, why did I by a .net for my personal domain.... ><

~~~
Unseelie
Are there addresses that no country can't claim as in their jurisdiction?

Seems to me that you have to be in jurisdiction somewhere. Not to argue that
American jurisdiction is necessarily the best..

~~~
oniTony
.onion ? Technically not a real DNS entry, and is not present in DNS root.

------
nhangen
I get that they can take the domain away, but to seek extradition and US
charges in court seems absurd.

------
suprgeek
Intentionally or not this is an excellent way to force the "distributed
control" issues of the Internet. It is only a matter of time before other
countries (non-US) demand greater say in the control of the policies. This
should be an interesting issue and relevant to all users of the Net in the
long run.

------
nodata
Everyone else claims .us is in the US jurisdiction.

How will this stop anything? Wasn't .com handed to the UN to manage?

~~~
wmf
.com is managed by US company VeriSign with oversight from ICANN. Some people
want to turn ICANN over to the UN or ITU, but the US Dept. of Commerce has
held onto it with the argument that the UN allows evil countries to vote and
we wouldn't want to give them any level of control over ICANN, however small.

~~~
GHFigs
_with the argument that the UN allows evil countries to vote_

I won't vouch for their exact argument, but this was around the time Sudan was
elected to the Commission on Human Rights.

------
canadiancreed
Sounds like a good time to start selling those .com/.net domains I've got
stashed away.

------
noarchy
Are there currently any TLDs that are not under the control of a country?

------
bad_user
Well, PirateBay is a .org

~~~
spindritf
PirateBay will be whatever it needs to be, so will other, similar websites.
Domain seizures don't even sound like a viable method of actually thwarting
piracy.

------
crististm
That's why I want to see alternative DNS services (TLD) take off...

~~~
mmphosis
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2826> (informational), IAB Technical Comment on
the Unique DNS Root, Internet Architecture Board, The Internet Society (May
2000), Quote: "There is no getting away from the unique root of the public
DNS." (page 5)

------
brudgers
tl; dr

ICE spokesperson: All your domain are belong to U.S.

------
Uchikoma
+1 for having more than one domain for your (user content generated) startup.

------
clistctrl
I ask this completely seriously. What would it take to declare the domain of
the internet as its own sovereign entity? The internet to me has become
greater than just a communications network. It is a place where people
connect/work/play. DNS is a natural resource, and should be regulated by all
that is affected by it.

~~~
bendmorris
It's certainly interesting, but I don't think the internet could be considered
its own sovereign entity. One major problem is that the "internet" is just an
emergent property of lots of connected machines, and all of those machines
have to physically exist somewhere within another sovereign entity.

~~~
nitrogen
In the US, various Native American tribes exist as "sovereign nations," able
to set many of their own laws that contradict those of the state. I'm not
familiar enough with the law to know the limits of their sovereignty, but
hypothetically a similar concept could be applied to any property hosting a
node of the sovereign Internet.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_Unite...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_United_States)

~~~
bendmorris
Reservations in the US are a special class of enclave, which means a sovereign
nation that physically exists inside another country. Other examples include
Lesotho (contained within South Africa) or Vatican City (contained within
Italy). What _doesn't_ exist, and what I have a hard time imagining, is this
sort of "distributed enclave" that's been suggested - an entity that exists in
multiple places, each of which is within a different sovereign entity. It
seems like a flimsy arrangement. Who's to stop any one country from taking
over "internet territory" within their borders?

~~~
die_sekte
Well, there's the SMOM
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Mal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta)).
Sovereign, but doesn't own any land except for a building in Rome.

------
chrisjsmith
Centralised DNS = bad. That's the issue.

~~~
dsl
It is a billion times better than decentralized DNS.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file#History>

~~~
dstein
I imagine a decentralized DNS service based on the bitcoin network would be
kinda cool.

~~~
pizza
Check out namecoin.

~~~
baltcode
I had difficulty understanding namecoin. Do you simply pay for DNS
registration with namecoins or is the DNS itself hosted in a decentralized and
anonymous fashion?

~~~
doublec
You pay for the registration and update of names with namecoins and the data
is stored in the namecoin blockchain. In this way it is decentralized. Lookups
are done directly from the blockchain.

------
generators
if they even remotely try it, I bet each country will have their own dns
server and broken internet. this clearly show that How gradually, USOFA do not
have any intention to keep internet open. so it would be wise to move away
from them while we can. ( only sometimes, once in a while, why it seems that
china is better ? )

~~~
JeremyBanks
_if they even remotely try it_

They've been acting as though they had jurisdiction for a while; there have
been tons of _.com_ domains seized for non-US sites. This is just a
confirmation of their position.

------
ao12
All your base are belong to us

------
BasDirks
I do not condone any lulz that may result from this, but this is the
equivalent of dropping your soap in prison.

