The FBI is allowed to seize domains which are US based (e.g. dot com). If you setup your site with a domain from another country (e.g. dot co dot uk) the FBI can do nothing.
From what I have head they want SOPA to fix that by allowing them to block the domains they can't seize from being viewed within the US via a system like the one China uses.
So if you set up your site right the US government cannot stop anyone outside the US from viewing it.
Yet another example of why generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are a bad idea. Country code domains align domain ownership with legal jurisdictions while gTLDs create jurisdictional conflicts.
Well that's one way to look at it, the other way, and the one I favor, is that the internet is a global thing and thus shouldn't be ruled by multiple incompatible jurisdictions.
The internet as a concept may be, but your site isn't. It's located in a physical server somewhere, in a country with laws that regard the internet.
I like his suggestion, and he is right. Nobody would dispute who gets to set the rules for .us or .ca, but the rules for .com and any TLD regarded as international are much muddier. Only having country TLDs would remove that ambiguity. Doesn't matter where the servers are hosted, you are under the jurisdiction of the TLD you choose to use.
> The internet as a concept may be, but your site isn't. It's located in a physical server somewhere, in a country with laws that regard the internet.
And if anyone can figure out what server corresponds to what site, we haven't done enough work to protect anonymity on the Internet.
> I like his suggestion, and he is right. Nobody would dispute who gets to set the rules for .us or .ca, but the rules for .com and any TLD regarded as international are much muddier. Only having country TLDs would remove that ambiguity. Doesn't matter where the servers are hosted, you are under the jurisdiction of the TLD you choose to use.
"Regarded as international" or not, .com .net and .org get administered by US entities. TLDs "regarded as international" has about as much meaning as Internet sites "regarded as independent from country-specific regulation": namely, none unless we take steps to make it that way.
> "Regarded as international" or not, .com .net and .org get administered by US entities.
And people argue about that constantly, insist it's unfair, or shouldn't be the case. And there is some truth to that. In reality we can't truly genericize TLDs, someone will have to be the admin. This at least makes it somewhat clearer who has rights over what.
Does it solve every problem with IP ever? No. However, it would stop countries trying to apply laws to TLDs that they have no jurisdiction over and then insisting the US is playing police when they can't do so.
Two pieces of "random information" (a one time pad and some encrypted data) are located in two or more different countries and are combined together in a third country.
How does jurisdiction apply in this scenario?
This is a real question that has already been partly tested with the DeCSS incident. There are many creative ways to distribute "infringing material" that upset the traditional notion of legal jurisdictions.
No system is perfect, and having no generic TLDs doesn't solve every problem with IP ever. It just removes much of the ambiguity on who's jurisdiction each individual incident is.
Then the US stops getting to play copyright police with the .coms. It doesn't solve this frankly convoluted scenario when you are deliberately trying to be covert and avoid detection.
