They serve a purpose but could potentially splinter the web.
Over the long holiday weekend the U.S. government seized a number of domain names that were allegedly being used for piracy.
Both Michael Berkens and Elliot Silver have given their thoughts on the seizures. They had somewhat different opinions. And I agree with both.
I tend to agree with Elliot that there’s not much for the typical domain name owner to worry about. If you’re not doing anything illegal you shouldn’t worry. Your domain names are not at risk.
But here’s the rub. What’s legal in one place isn’t necessary legal in another. And what the U.S. government is doing could eventually fracture the web, which would put all domains at risk.
How can we tell China not to censor the web? They can point to the U.S. and say we’re doing the same thing.
Should Australia go ahead with its internet firewall? How different is that from seizing domain names?
Should Middle Eastern countries block adult sites?
It’s true that these other locations would have a tough time seizing domain names. It’s easier for the U.S. government given the location of the .com registry and many of the registrars. But they can take other approaches. These various approaches could end up fracturing the domain name system at its core.
I’m not saying it’s wrong for these web sites to be shut down. My worry is the message this sends to the rest of the world.
joedomains says
my guess is they will forget to pay the renewals and we’ll see the names on snap and namejet
John Berryhill says
The answer to a lot of your hypothetical questions is…. why not?
If a country wants to filter or block internet content, it’s their sovereign right to determine what goes on inside their borders subject to whatever laws they may have (unless there is some sort of internet standards treaty – good luck with that).
I mean, a question like:
“How can we tell China not to censor the web?”
Makes me wonder why this “we” is in a position to tell them what they should or should not censor.
When I was in Seoul, I found out that http://www.korea-dpr.com forwards to the South Korean national police. I had to do without my regular dose of Dear Leader’s Glorious People’s Internets For The Advancement Of Juche Idea To Crush Warmongering Imperialism for a couple of days. But as long as the ROK probably logging IP addresses, I made sure ICANN’s meeting network was well represented in their server logs.
Likewise, if you want to sell flights and hotel bookings to Cuba, you should consider doing that without using commercial services provided from the US.
In the olden days, when all of the fun stuff was distributed by UUCP, it was pretty much taken as a given that the universal rule was “your network, your rules”. If someone didn’t want to carry sci.silly.crap on his network, then by golly he didn’t have to. A lot of the new TLD posturing of the last decade recapitulate the USENET newsgroup posturing of the previous decade and a half. Sooner or later someone says, “But everyone is not going to get the exact same thing everywhere” as if the implicit assumption that everything should BE the same everywhere was axiomatically good, desirable, or practical.
Against the “great new development” that TLD’s can now be represented in scripts that ever more linguistically insular groups can understand, notions like “If ASCII was good enough for Jesus in the Bible, it’s good enough for everybody” are a poor fit.
But, hey, I just read that an expedition to reach an uncontacted tribe in South America was called off, so if you’re game, we can wander off into the jungle next week and show them how much fun they are missing by not having access to youtube videos of housecats doing amusing things.
Otherwise, it’s just not the end of the world.
John Berryhill says
“my guess is they will forget to pay the renewals and we’ll see the names on snap and namejet”
…or everlasting expired domain name Limbo like bodacious-tatas.com:
Record expires on 03-May-2003.
jp says
Simple rule of thumb. Whenever there is anything that has a lot of value in it and it becomes known (however slowly) there will always be someone with more weapons than you have that will be working on trying to take it. It’s kinda how the world turns. It’s hard to argue with someone who has a bigger gun than you.
Bad news (well regarding this discussion at least), a lot of countries around the world are starting to see the value power an impact domain names have on their affairs.
Good news america has bigger guns than most countries so we should continue to be able to dictate most of the rules. When push comes to shove.
But as individuals, if someone with a big gun or military behind them decides they don’t like your domain there’s going to be nothing left to do but cry about it.
Lets just hope that the system remains as fair and balanced as possible for all involved parties.