There have been numerous domain names confiscated by US authorities over copyrighted content in the past year or so, but it isn’t just intellectual property law enforcement where the US believes that they have jurisdiction to confiscate .com/net/org domains, but also more controversial and non-internationally recognised laws such as anti-gambling.
There have been various cases recently where those operating essentially US-focused sports-gambling services from off-shore locations have found themselves running fowl of US laws, but the case of Bodog.com is different. Bodog is a Canadian online sports-betting company with staff in Canada and Costa Rica, which actually stopped taking bets from US-based customers last year. It is a Canadian company, with Bodog.com registered with the Canadian registrar NameClip, with Canadian servers, and actively preventing US users from using the service. But as it had a .com domain name, which a provided by Verisign supposedly without US interference – and this is apparently sufficient for the US courts to claim jurisdiction
.COM has become the defacto domain extension for internet companies across the world, and is certainly not viewed as being US-centric (there is .US for a reason), but if the US government continues to overreach in cases where none of the customers or business of a company are in the US, then they may lose that status. The US continues to try and keep management of the internet structure “independent” and out of the hands of the UN, but by independent they mean under US control. Seizing a domain for an international company that is acting within that country’s laws, but just fall fowl of the US’ moral prohibition-influenced laws, is not demonstrating a free and fair internet – it is demonstrating a place where the US will assert its power at every opportunity. If any organisation should be in control, it should be an international body like the UN, not a country like the US with a moral axe to grind.
[via Michael Geist]