Will Homeland Security Domain Seizures Lead To Exodus From US Controlled Domains?

from the driving-business-abroad dept

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With Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group now seizing domain names of perfectly legitimate foreign companies , one of the "defenses" of this action is that what those sites do may violate US laws (the lack of an actual court deciding this is conveniently overlooked, but we'll let that slide for now) and thus since the domains are managed by US-based registrars, it's technically property in the US, and thus open to seizure. That, of course, is a case of focusing on the technicality of the situation, rather than the reality of the situation. With Rojadirecta, it's pretty clear that the site was used almost entirely by people in Spain, not in the US. That the .org domain is managed by a US company seems like a weak dodge by US officials at the urging of industry.But, of course, there are serious questions about the wider impact of this decision. Back in October, we highlighted how Libya had begun seizing .ly domains , because they felt that the content on those domains violated Sharia Law.When the US is following in the footsteps of Libya for foreign censorship, there's a serious problem.Of course, after the seizure of the .ly domains, many people started to move away from those domains (including presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who dumped his Mitt.ly domain). It will be interesting to see if more companies (especially foreign ones) start moving away from .com and .org for just this reason. When the US government suddenly decides that it can simply take your domain name with no warning, no due process, no adversarial hearing and no regards to whether or not the site is actually legal in the country it's targeting, that seems like a pretty clear warning sign that it's time to find a safer domain home. If I were a US domain register or registrar, I'd be pretty pissed off at Homeland Security for promoting the fact that the US government has no problem censoring websites it doesn't like. It's only going to serve to drive people away, and perhaps open up a huge opportunity for a new TLD to become a standard from a country thatbelieves in due process and free speech.

Filed Under: censorship, domains, homeland security, ice, seizures