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Impact of Recent ICE Seizures on the Hosting and Domain Name Industries

Posted by whirbot 458 days ago (http://feedproxy.google.com)

By David Snead

Prior to the Super Bowl, Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiated another set of domain name seizures. These seizures were designed to prevent sites from streaming sports events. Like the "Cyber Monday" seizures I discussed in my November blog post, this set of seizures may be based on questionable legal foundations. In particular, several of the sites seized had been expressly determined to be legal in their countries of origin. The only aspect of the site "resident" in the United States was the fact that a U.S. company, VeriSign, has been given the exclusive right to administer the domain names by the U.S. government.

The fact that the U.S. government is exercising its police authority in this way is troubling in many ways. As an initial matter, this exercise illustrates the grave danger of placing what is now essentially a public resource in the hands of a single country. It is clear that the U.S. government will not exercise "benign" authority over the Internet, but will use it to advance political goals on which there is substantial debate. This exercise of authority is just what non-U.S. businesses have feared. At every single conference I attend outside the U.S., I receive more questions about the impact of U.S. based policies like the PATRIOT ACT, and other policy based laws, than any other question. In the past it has been easy to respond to these questions since the U.S. government had not taken actions that were subject to significant legal debate. That has changed.