US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction • Hacker News Board

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#111

Post by tobylane » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 9:40 PM UTC

econgeeker wrote: post #102

Silhouette wrote: post #49

England, February 2014: In other news, the Internet Service Providers' Association announced today that no major English ISP now relies on Verisign, the US company formerly responsible for administering major domains such as .com and .net worldwide. This follows a ruling at the European Court last year that Verisign's actions in blocking the domain of German business Musikjetzt GmbH constituted an unlawful restraint…

I worry that brussels and the UN are both just as bad as the US government, only a number of years behind them. The UN doesn't throw its weight around violating people's rights in large part because it doesn't have the power to do so. I think the entire DNS system needs to be out of the hands of government bodies of any type, preferably relying on a cooperative, distributed solution, like the internet itself (theoret…

Oh? I kind of see it as the US gov have already been throwing their weight around, and the spare tire is hitting us all. Didn't Darpa recently not want to completely give up power over the internet, allowing something like this to happen?

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#112

Post by tobylane » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 9:44 PM UTC

younata wrote: post #88

arihant wrote: post #71

I'll get downvoted for this. Argument (I don't completely agree, but someone will make it sometime)- I think it is not good for humanity to trust the jurisdiction of a country which has demonstrated tainted judgement by getting involved in nuclear weapons and given their recent involvements in the middle east. The United States is not the country whose jurisdiction should control any form of worldwide open platform.…

> getting involved in nuclear weapons Pretty much every western country has nuclear weapons. If you're referencing the fact that the US is the only country to have dropped nuclear weapons on another country, keep in mind that it wasn't until 30 or so years later that we realized how bad nuclear weapons are. Hell, in the 80s, at my uni, there was an experiment to see if you could use nuclear radiation to clean toilet…

Pretty much every? No http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_with_nuclear_weapons

Nuclear radiation is very different to weapons, your local major hospital has a dozen different uses for radiation (more powerful than cleaning water).

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#113

Post by rgraham » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 9:58 PM UTC

dsl wrote: post #68

ThaddeusQuay wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The only thing the US government has ever given up is control over the registry and DNS management. Under a MoU[1] that facility was handed over to ICANN ..." That's just a bureaucratic illusion. As we can see from recent domain seizures, the feds can take over any of these domains, unilaterally, and without any notice or due process.

Assets used in the commission of a crime can be seized regardless of if you are charged or even found guilty of that crime. Cars, boats, and houses are regularly seized from suspected drug dealers. None of these people have been deprived of due process. The due process is to go to the courts to challenge it. If you don't like either of these points, you'll need to go to the courts and have the laws changed or thrown…

This is a circular argument.

"Assets used in the commission of a crime can be seized regardless of if you are charged or even found guilty of that crime."

If you don't have to prove there was a crime then how can you claim that the assets were used in the crime? This would mean the government/police could seize assets with nothing more than finger pointing. I'm ignorant of the law here, but I thought you were innocent until proven guilty. Not "innocent sans assets until proven otherwise."

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#114

Post by GHFigs » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 10:00 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #56

nodata wrote: post #12

Everyone else claims .us is in the US jurisdiction. How will this stop anything? Wasn't .com handed to the UN to manage?

.com is managed by US company VeriSign with oversight from ICANN. Some people want to turn ICANN over to the UN or ITU, but the US Dept. of Commerce has held onto it with the argument that the UN allows evil countries to vote and we wouldn't want to give them any level of control over ICANN, however small.

with the argument that the UN allows evil countries to vote

I won't vouch for their exact argument, but this was around the time Sudan was elected to the Commission on Human Rights.

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#115

Post by romland » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 10:01 PM UTC

Hmm. Personally this is how I always thought of the original generic TLDs (com/net/org). In my head I think I even applied the idea to .xxx, .aero and what-not as well. Pretty much how I expect Libya to do whatever they want with the .ly domain.

This seizing of domains has been kind of the de-facto behavior for at least some five years by now. In my head this new policy does not change anything (don't run gambling sites on a .com domain etc?). Hell, I might even go as far as to say that it might be a positive thing if there was no such thing as a generic TLD. Most corporations registers all their domains globally anyway (whether that is good or bad is another story).

Not the most relevant Google query, but it takes the idea home, I guess: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us+seizes+domain+20... -- I didn't bother looking for older entries than that.

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#116

Post by uxp » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 10:30 PM UTC

GHFigs wrote: post #43

tnorthcutt wrote: post #34

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would ICE have anything to do with copyright in the first place, regardless of whether their jurisdiction claims are upheld/fair? How does copyright fall under either immigration or customs?

How does copyright fall under either immigration or customs? Think bootleg DVDs. According to the linked Guardian article, most of the domains ICE has seized were selling counterfeit physical goods.

Selling and Free[1] are interchangeable, as well as physical and digital, in your statement. Realistically, there isn't much difference between a counterfeit luxury handbag being sold for $20 out of the back of some shady shop and an illegitimate copy of a blockbuster movie being given out for free[1], over the internet or hand to hand.

[1] Key point: These domains being seized aren't actually giving away streams or download links for free, they're being reimbursed through ad revenue or affiliate programs.

Side note: A popular watch brand's repair facility in the USA gets a large number of counterfeit watches in for repair every day. They would like to see these thing eradicated, but are restricted by law to not seize the fake goods, after all they have no proof that someone somewhere profited from the production of the fake watch, which be definition is infringement. Anyone can replicate a popular product, but the moment it starts to compete with the original on the marketplace, it is copyright infringement. Blindly stealing fake watches from potential customers is illegal. So, this Watch company, if it desires to do so, will ask the customer if they would like to sell the watch to the company. If the customer agrees, they inform them that selling counterfeit goods is illegal, and they then have jurisdiction to seize the fake watch.

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#117

Post by carbonica » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #110

carbonica wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people who tell you where you can find drug dealers. ... people who get paid to direct you to the nearest drug dealer, and only to drug dealers, organized by type of drug, quality, and potentially even with a rating system. These sites are more than just innocent passers-by. They aren't the "drug dealer," but they aren't just a dude on the street who bought drugs that one time and might know a guy. Where the line i…

> But where some say "they're identical to Google," > I personally see a very large, obvious distinction. If Google's 'Product Search' links you to a website where you identity is stolen, is Google liable? Should the government 'crack down' on Google?

Again, if you are incapable of seeing the distinction between a general-purpose search engine which indexes the entire web and a website dedicated overwhelmingly to links to copyrighted content (including categorization features, rating systems, subsections devoted entirely to individual television programs), then we must just view the world differently.

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#118

Post by _delirium » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 10:58 PM UTC

baltcode wrote: post #98

_delirium wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the case; non-citizens under U.S. jurisdiction also have due-process rights. For example, despite him being a French citizen, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is entitled to the standard Constitutional rights in his criminal trial, including things like being read Miranda rights, not being forced to testify against himself, and receiving a trial that accords with due process. If any of that were violated, he could a…

Unless, in certain cases one law overrules another even thought the two are completely separate. Case in point: https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=139484910828&topi... Note: I am not concerned with immigration, but de-facto denial of basic rights and discrimination on the basis of nationality in cases where those rights are basic human rights, and not privileges granted by the state.

This particular linked case appears inextricably tied up with immigration, though. The person in question isn't alleging that he's being denied rights in any manner other than via the fact that he isn't allowed to legally live in the US. That's a bit different from the question of whether non-citizens caught up in the U.S. legal system (in either a criminal or civil case) have the same rights during the proceedings as citizens do.

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#119

Post by doublec » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 11:10 PM UTC

baltcode wrote: post #99

pizza wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out namecoin.

I had difficulty understanding namecoin. Do you simply pay for DNS registration with namecoins or is the DNS itself hosted in a decentralized and anonymous fashion?

You pay for the registration and update of names with namecoins and the data is stored in the namecoin blockchain. In this way it is decentralized. Lookups are done directly from the blockchain.

Re: US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

#120

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 05, 2011, 11:11 PM UTC

dsl wrote: post #68

ThaddeusQuay wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The only thing the US government has ever given up is control over the registry and DNS management. Under a MoU[1] that facility was handed over to ICANN ..." That's just a bureaucratic illusion. As we can see from recent domain seizures, the feds can take over any of these domains, unilaterally, and without any notice or due process.

Assets used in the commission of a crime can be seized regardless of if you are charged or even found guilty of that crime. Cars, boats, and houses are regularly seized from suspected drug dealers. None of these people have been deprived of due process. The due process is to go to the courts to challenge it. If you don't like either of these points, you'll need to go to the courts and have the laws changed or thrown…

[deleted]