Wired.com: Uncle Sam’s Iron Grip on the .Com Domain Name
In light of several high profile seizures of .com domain names within the online gambling sector as well as Web streaming and imitation merchandise, Wired.com has published a well thought out piece regarding the current climate and how Uncle Sam is expected to continue going after .com domains.
The US Government exercises control over .com, .net and .org domains along with several others that have cropped up in recent years such as .us and .tv. As a result of the recent .com and .net domain seizures, many website operators doing business in vulnerable business sectors have opted to switch to the .eu extension, which is controlled by the European Union. Other country domains are being utilized.
David Kravets of Wired.com writes:
EasyDNS, an internet infrastructure company, protested that the “ramifications of this are no less than chilling and every single organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc. needs to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of U.S. federal and state lawmakers.”
But despite EasyDNS and others’ outrage, the U.S. government says it’s gone that route hundreds of times. Furthermore, it says it has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.
The controversy highlights the unique control the U.S. continues to hold over key components of the global domain name system, and rips a Band-Aid off a historic sore point for other nations. A complicated web of bureaucracy and Commerce Department dictated contracts signed in 1999 established that key domains would be contracted out to Network Solutions, which was acquired by VeriSign in 2000. That cemented control of all-important .com and .net domains with a U.S. company – VeriSign – putting every website using one of those addresses firmly within reach of American courts regardless of where the owners are located – possibly forever.
Last week, the US Government claimed its latest victim when they seized the domain name Bodog.com, whose founder Calvin Ayre was profiled by Wired Magazine in 2007. Ayre and three others from the company were indicted and charged with money laundering the day after the seizure.
Bodog had already begun redirecting to a .EU extension last spring while it rebranded to Bovada.lv in the US this past October.
Kravets noted that the United States would have won even more control over the Internet with the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.
The biggest Web protest ever resulted in both acts being put to rest in Congress.
Still, it was just one day later that the US Justice Department seized a domain name belonging to one of the largest live streaming websites, Megaupload.com.
The US Justice Department still has powerful weapons to use, despite the deaths of SOPA and PIPA, Kravets points out.
- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com
