Verisign obeys court orders for domain takedowns

INTERNET REGISTRY Versign has said that it "takes the appropriate actions" when handed a court order after the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) claimed it had jurisfiction over all web sites that use the .com and .net top level domains (TLD).

ICE's statement that all web sites that use .com and .net TLDs was based on the fact that Verisign, a US based firm, acts as the registry for the TLDs. Erik Barnett, assistant deputy director of ICE told the Guardian that the agency was not only going after web sites that stream copyright content but those that link to it as well, a policy that the newspaper claims might not break British law.

Verisign, the company used to justify ICE's claim of jurisdiction over all web sites that use .com and .net TLDs regardless of where their servers are located, issued a statement to The INQUIRER in which it said that it cooperates with US law enforcement authorities, though only after it is handed a court order.

"Verisign cooperates fully with law enforcement to take down websites that have been found through due process to contain illegal content. When Verisign receives court orders directing certain actions to be taken with respect to specific domain names, the company takes the appropriate actions. Verisign looks forward to continuing its work with law enforcement to develop and implement best practices in this regard. Further questions should be directed to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency."

Verisign's response is not surprising. Few would expect the firm to counter ICE's claims publicly. However the fact that it cooperates to take down websites "that have been found through due process to contain illegal content" highlights the fundamental issue here: can ICE's claim of worldwide jurisdiction hold up in court?

The response of the public to Bennett's claim of web-wide jurisdiction has been one of anger. Readers of The INQUIRER have almost unanimously commented with disgust at what one reader called "ICE the Tyrant", with another reader saying, "The argument that sites that use domains hosted in the US are under US authority is preposterous."

Another INQUIRER reader claimed that ICE's latest mission statement was being pushed by corporations. "This is a complete joke, the US does not have jurisdiction over every single website with .com or .net, next are they going to come after the .ca domains. Its the corporations like Sony MGM and Columbia etc that are the ones that are pushing for these crack downs." We don't doubt that the media content MAFIAA will be rubbing its hands with glee at ICE's latest comments.

The heated debate continued on the popular web community Reddit. There was the usual well humoured banter about the use of other TLDs and profane domain names but the overwhelming sentiment again was one of anger. One commenter going by the handle of Skynne wrote, "Right [to previous post]. But the content which is breaking US laws is NOT within the US. When a user connects to a .com address, it asks an American DNS server (in 99% of the cases) what IP to actually connect to. Regardless of what laws the US has, it does not give them jurisdiction in other countries. The arrogance of the US government is [expletive removed] ridiculous."

One Reddit commenter, creatively named IOIOOIIOIO, suggested a move to a decentralised DNS, with another reader mentioning distributed hash tables (DHT) as a possible solution. DNS is 'distributed', though not quite in the sense of a peer-to-peer network using the anycast protocol, however the use of DHTs presents serious challenges in terms of both reliability and quality of service and at present it is not recommended for core internet service deployments such as DNS.

What ICE and Verisign have managed to do is promote the use of other TLDs. Whether .com and .net are truly US owned TLDs is up for debate, however given the assertions of authority made by ICE, it's likely some web sites will consider moving to a country-specific TLD, such as .uk or .de or anything except .com or .net, really.

Verisign in many ways cannot be blamed for its stance. As a US based company it cannot fail to comply when served with a court order to take down a domain name. The problem, as hinted by its statement, is whether the process of obtaining such a US court order is truly legitimate in all cases, given that .com and .net web sites can be hosted outside of the US.

The internet's DNS service is often viewed as a choke point for internet services and the claim by ICE that it has control over the two most popular TLDs in use today will reignite debates on the level of government control being exerted on the internet. One thing that is almost certain, however, is that Verisign's control of the .com and .net TLDs must remain in place for ICE to continue to pursue its campaign against copyright infringement on behalf of the music and film cartels. µ