Live data from Hacker News

Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable

wired.com

1–10 of 108 posts

Re: Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable

#2
Interessting. If I put it in the context with megaupload, it basically means that .com is under the iron grip of us law (or any other copyright-y what ever law in the world) and if that doesn't work out you can arrest german citizens living in NZ operating a website owned by a company in Hong Kong for aleagly breaking us law. Wow, that explains why the web is speaking english. How do I miss the time of the treestructred websites back the day when the internet was still 56k fast but free. Great news for content owners, on the other hand.

Re: Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable

#3
Credit card transactions are also by design bound to the US. A transaction going from France to Germany, legal in both places, may still need to be routed through the US and hence controllable. And when all that fails, the US can pull on their extradition treaties to get governments to hand over anyone else.

Re: Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable

#4
This is really dangerous for the .com brand!

What are generic non country specific domains and is the new domain you have to own? This is the reason why they are so popular, nobody uses .us exactly for that reason.

Is .co a replacement, it's similar to .com, short and non US based. Maybe this will make the domain indifferent, TPB has .se now as the primary domain.

Re: Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable

#6
post #5

It's hard to tell from the article if this was jack-booted thuggery, or if some kind of due process was followed to shut down an organization causing actual harm. Anybody?

I have never seen a report about the US government seizing a domain that also happen to include what most US citizens would consider due process. It's literally you wake up one day and your website is gone. In some cases people found out from a third party, such as the media asking for comment.

Re: Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable

#8
post #5

It's hard to tell from the article if this was jack-booted thuggery, or if some kind of due process was followed to shut down an organization causing actual harm. Anybody?

Does it matter? What the company was doing is legal in Canada, where the company was based (if I understand the article correctly).

Unless if by "causing harm" you mean "not paying enough tax to the US", then I fail to see how this website was causing any harm...

Re: Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable

#9
post #2

Interessting. If I put it in the context with megaupload, it basically means that .com is under the iron grip of us law (or any other copyright-y what ever law in the world) and if that doesn't work out you can arrest german citizens living in NZ operating a website owned by a company in Hong Kong for aleagly breaking us law. Wow, that explains why the web is speaking english. How do I miss the time of the treestruct…

In the long run this is actually really bad for content owners. Content owners, in their effort to protect their business model, has actually given the government the tools to shut them down if their content is found to be "undesirable". Just because the government likes you today doesn't mean it will tomorrow.
Post reply on HN