US claims jurisdiction over all .com/.net sites even if outside the US (2011)

https://web.archive.org/web/20111102045835/http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2083906/claims-com-net-websites-jurisdiction

by rasengan • 5 years ago

119 84 5 years ago

web.archive.org

byoung2• 5 years ago

This article is from 2011...how has ICE used this power since then?

rasengan14• 5 years ago

Since then, they've shut down atleast 1 million if not more websites.

luke2m• 5 years ago

Source?

drubio3• 5 years ago

In more recent news, this tech https://handshake.org/ is aimed at this kind of jurisdictional issue. Limiting the reach of a US court or any other central org for that matter at shutting down a domain .com, .net or other.

easrng• 5 years ago

Handshake is awful. Because they decided to allow anyone to register a TLD there's no way to determine if a name needs to be resolved with handshake other than trying to resolve it.

rasengan14• 5 years ago

There was a time when some used /etc/hosts whilst others used DNS. It was definitely a different time. Resolution issues with Handshake TLDs will easily be solved in time.

There are, however, other reasons why one might think Handshake isn't up to par just yet. Those reasons might be, for example, even though it completes the internet, making it significantly more secure and sovereign, the current implementations including DANE aren't as fast. Of course, this too [1] will be addressed with time.

There are highly technical people working on these problems with a heavy lean on making sure the experience is comparable if not better than today's expected experience. I think things will only get better from here.

[1] https://github.com/handshake-org/HIPs/discussions/44

drubio3• 5 years ago

Interesting, I had no idea they were letting anyone register data, I had initially thought the idea was for registrars to provide nodes & data to eventually phase out the current DNS architecture, ensuring no single TLD org could wipe out a domain.

The Handshake design still seems like a step in the right direction, but even with sound data, it's probably years away (if ever) for DNS resolution to "flip the switch" to use this kind of architecture.

salawat2• 5 years ago

See, this is an interesting problem.

Seems like you might be caught on the infinite abstraction escalator though, as who will manage the DNSNS (Domain Name Service NameSpaces) servers, and who'll take the onus for making the standard selector or display for the user to decide which lookup to consider canon for the request? This would actually be a pretty exciting development.

This would greatly complicate domain squatting (or maybe intensify/arms race it), and add a layer of resilience in the form of building up the interfaces required for users to maintain their own private DNS namespaces. This would conclusively shut the door in terms of centralized seizability of domains, since the user would in effect be empowered to be their own registrar.

You could even keep the traditional stuff seizable I guess. However, you'd be able to ask the fellow down the street if he still had the old DNS entry for x.y.z

Ajedi32• 5 years ago

Yeah, IMO they should have gone the Tor route and registered `.hs` or something with ICANN and then made all Handshake domains a subdomain of that. That'd have made it way easier for software to support Handshake without breaking compatibility with traditional DNS roots.

walrus012• 5 years ago

yet another alternate root DNS that has maybe 0.001% of install base on the global scale of client devices with browsers?

yeah okay

seen it for 20 years now...

jiveturkey• 5 years ago

wow, that's generous. more like 1x10-12, if that

.001% would be absolutely enormous, and the actual start of a thing.

the design and use case of it looks laughable to me. however, it does spark the imagination.

jedberg6• 5 years ago

The only way an alternate TLD registrar will ever take off is if you get the people who own the current root servers on board. And the only way that will happen is if you figure out how they can make money from owning and operating the root servers.

My guess is that if you create a blockchain for registering DNS, and only the current registrars can issue coins on said blockchain, you might have a solution they would be willing to implement. You'd still have to pay them money to register a new domain or maintain it, but once you had the coin, you could register whatever you wanted and no government could stop you.

rasengan14• 5 years ago

Those servers are only necessary for the ICANN tlds and those will continue to act as they do today, even in a Handshake future.

With Handshake, you run your own authoritative server (or use a hosted one) for your own name and that authoritative server's information will be obtainable on chain. No middle-man, no rent seeking.

drubio3• 5 years ago

And more importantly than letting you register, it avoids a .com, .net domain getting one of these on a landing page https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/styles/width_12/...

This has been the story for many sites, where domains are seized even if owned by a non-US person/company, with an order to the TLD that operates in the US. With a distributed DNS system like Handshake, 'in theory' this shouldn't be possible, since it would require multiple nodes to alter a domain's DNS records vs. a central TLD authority which has to abide by US law.

It's all interesting, but it still seems we are ways off from the DNS backbone (& my browser) operating with this kind of DNS architecture. It even appears it's becoming easier to take down a domain, not at the TLD/registrar level, but more so at the hosting level (e.g. Parler)

legutierr• 5 years ago

Is it the root servers that you need to get on board, or the publishers of the publications that most people use, or the operating system publishers?

For instance, if the browser makers all started resolving certain TLDs via an alternate network, then people could start publishing websites using domains managed by that network without needing to engage with the root DNS servers at all.

dmitryminkovsky• 5 years ago

Thank you for sharing.

even gnutella became The Pirate Bay.

Never thought about that.

democracy• 5 years ago

> github developers with over 15 followers on February 2019

...I am wondering if it must also be a javascript project...

Spivak2• 5 years ago

This seems way more sensational than “US government tells US company to remove entry from their own servers.”

rasengan14• 5 years ago

Not sure where you got that title from.

The actual title is: "US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction" which is virtually the same as the title of the HN thread.

The literal first sentence is:

"THE US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) wants to take down web sites that use the .com and .net top level domains (TLD) regardless of whether their servers are based in the US."

Spivak2• 5 years ago

I’m agreeing with you? I’m saying that the HN title “claims jurisdiction over all sites even if outside the US” is way more sensational than the US gov’t telling a US based registrar to remove entries pointing to sites hosted outside the US.

gnulinux2• 5 years ago

Can someone explain me why ICE has the power to enforce intellectual property laws on the internet? What does this have to do with immigration enforcement? Can ICE enforce other seemingly irrelevant laws? E.g. can ICE bust e.g. drug users, prostitution etc?

torstenvl• 5 years ago

Foreign entities engaging in exchanges with the U.S. market via U.S. TLDs implicate U.S. customs enforcement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has jurisdiction over customs enforcement.

jhbadger• 5 years ago

I suspect that even the majority of Americans don't know that ICE handles customs as news stories rarely expand the acronym and the stories almost always deal with the immigration side of things.

gnulinux2• 5 years ago

I guess I still have no idea how come this falls into customs (what is being imported exported here? The domain?), but I can accept it as a fact.

rasengan14• 5 years ago

One of the main reasons that ICE believes they can exert this authority is because the .com/.net TLD namespace is owned and operated by Verisign, a US company. Further, the ICANN namespace is owned and operated by ICANN, a US company who, in fact, is also under the jurisdiction of attorney generals of California state [1].

As long as the namespace remains under the control of a centralized authority like the US, this will continue to be a reality. There may be some naysayers about solutions like Handshake, but frankly speaking, there's no person who would logically want their name to be able to be taken away by someone else. Your name is your identity and it is you. To be able to assert this with cryptography is a cypherpunk's dream.

[1] https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/heels-ag-becerra-lett...

stephen_g• 5 years ago

Yeah, which seems ridiculous. As a first step, ICANN should be changed to some kind of international non-profit (I'm not even sure how you do that - do you just register it in Switzerland?).

Since they are not under a country code TLD, I think it really makes sense migrate .com, .net and .org to be 'international' TLDs (I think many people internationality basically already consider them to effectively be so) and US companies should be able to access equivalents under the ccTLD like .com.us, .net.us etc. if they wanted a US-specific one, just like every other country does. Then also, I really think all .gov, .mil and .edu and the other US-only TLDs should be phased out (they could just become redirects to .gov.us, .mil.us etc.). Having those TLDs as US-only just smacks of American exceptionalism - I understand the history and it made sense at the time, but became inappropriate as all the other ccTLDs started becoming used. They should have migrated to .us domains back then and deprecated .mil, .gov and so on.

It would be a bit messy, since .us is already delegated and there are already heaps of domains in that namespace which would have to be either retained as legacy or migrated after some time. So really the sooner the better! The US Government would probably have to buy the .us ccTLD back, create ones like com.us, net.us, org.us under it and then re-delegate them while operating .mil.us, .gov.us, .edu.us themselves.

jdavis703• 5 years ago

The “C” in ICE is for “customs.” I imagine domains fall under the purview of import/export laws.

f0xtrot2• 5 years ago

They always have, the internet originated from U.S. defense, (was that not domain name allocation)? residing physicaly with-in a country never mattered. they still consider it ownership.

wasen't this why russia/ussr didn't adhear to US ip's on their local lan?

is this not the same as FAA wanting all the control, including foreign airspace and the space whithin your ceiling?

you physically do not have control over something but still want to say it's yours. that's what this is, no?

biglost• 5 years ago

About that, I don’t know why nor how but, does starlink needs authorization for all the countries their satellites fly by or only the usa? Is it becasuse the satellites are too “up” in the sky in ot her countries?

anchpop• 5 years ago

Many states have the capability to shoot down the satellites if they violate local rules, but AFAIK whether they would actually be willing to do that is unknown.

black-tusk• 5 years ago

I imagine orbits are a thing seen not as deliberate as say, flying a U-2 plane over other airspace. Terrestial jurisdiction would be a very trying thing to enforce for space vehicles

wmf• 5 years ago

This is probably covered by the Outer Space Treaty, but in short, no. Satellites overfly many countries and if they needed permission from every country we'd have no satellites.

f0xtrot2• 5 years ago

PIRACY!!

It looks as the same as international waters.

thought it was around 40-50 miles from dry ground. but idk

edit: (hope someone vouches for you else your free game.)

acdha• 5 years ago

This article is from 2011. Notably since then, the Department of Commerce’s control ended in 2016:

https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/cheers-to-the-multist...

https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/stewardship-o...

rasengan14• 5 years ago

Even with a CIC, the Operation continues [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_In_Our_Sites

vmception• 5 years ago

to detect and hinder intellectual property violations on the Internet

by detecting and hindering domain name intellectual property

double plus based

moralestapia2• 5 years ago

I always had this question and perhaps someone here can shine some light.

It is my understanding that under US copyright law if you own a trademark you have some grounds to sue someone else that may be using/squatting "your" domain in order to acquire it.

What would happen, though, if the owner of the domain does not live in the US, does not operate in the US, nor has any other thing to do there aside from owning a .com domain?

CrazyStat• 5 years ago

ICANN has a process [1] by which they can take the domain away from you, doesn't matter where you live.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Re...

passerby1• 5 years ago

I'm not a us citizen. But as far as I see, money talks in courts. So if one cannot afford a good lawyer, or at least does not have a valuable domain to defend using a borrowed money, that's it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

0xcde4c3db• 5 years ago

I'm not a lawyer, but my impression is that money mostly matters in tipping the scales of a difficult case (e.g. Google v. Oracle) or in pursuing a case despite low stakes or a fundamentally weak legal position. Someone with a strong, high-stakes case can typically get a lawyer to take it on contingency.

kube-system2• 5 years ago

Minor tangentially related quibble: copyright law and trademark law are entirely separate. The rules by which they work are different.

moralestapia2• 5 years ago

Thank you, you are absolutely right!

encryptluks2• 5 years ago

This is why we need decentralized DNS. Sure you can subscribe to ICANNs list, or create your own TLDs, or pin domains to something ICANN doesn't agree with because fuck governments trying to control domains and TLDs.

ramesh31• 5 years ago

I honestly can't think of a better steward. Believing that independent organizations can continue to main an infrastructure that supports trillions of dollars of economic activity is absurd. And regardless of politics, the US has the most stable and trusted rule of law in the world.

saagarjha• 5 years ago

Not at all, and I say this as an American. I mean we’ve had several protests in just the last year about our legal system’s inability to function correctly.

hda2• 5 years ago

That's why we offer .onion addresses for our services (websites, APIs, everything). These addresses connect customers to tor/onion services hosted on our property. Customers who need to keep disruption at a minimum are advised to implement tor access as a fallback.

I firmly believe that automated DMCA-style processes (and other slow, guilty-until-proven-innocent schemes) are going to become more prevalent around the world. Defending against all of them in a timely manner will become impossible for all but the biggest of players. Smaller players will have to use services like Tor to have any semblance of reliability.

Disclaimer: We're a registered llc (not US-based), and all our activities are 100% legitimate in most jurisdictions including the US.

kube-system2• 5 years ago

Your registration in the DNS is always subject to the policies, procedures, security, and legal environment of the controlling registry.

This is one reason I always recommend avoiding obscure ccTLDs, especially if you have no presence there.

blooalien2• 5 years ago

Old article, but still relevant in that it should be seen as a reminder of the sorts of political and corporate Internet "fuckery" that we should all always be on the lookout for.

Something something … "forget history" … "doomed to repeat past mistakes" ~ Someone Famous

US claims jurisdiction over all .com/.net sites even if outside the US (2011)

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