[Rt4-whois] US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction

[Omar Kaminski]

Dear RT, some news that could impact somehow our study and work.

Best,
Omar


http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2083906/claims-com-net-websites-jurisdiction

US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction
Sees an Internet without borders
By Lawrence Latif
Mon Jul 04 2011, 15:53

THE US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) wants to take
down web sites that use the .com and .net top level domains (TLD)
regardless of whether their servers are based in the US.

Erik Barnett, assistant deputy director of ICE said told the Guardian
that the agency will actively target web sites that are breaking US
copyright laws even if their servers are not based in the US.
According to Barnett, all web sites that use the .com and .net TLDs
are fair game and that, since the Domain Name Service (DNS) indexes
for those web sites are routed through the US-based registry Versign,
ICE believes it has enough to "seek a US prosecution".

According to the Guardian, ICE is not focusing its efforts just on web
sites that stream dodgy content but those that link to them, something
the newspaper claims has "considerable doubt as to whether this is
even illegal in Britain". It points out that the only such case to
have been heard by a judge in the UK was dismissed.

Barnett said, "By definition, almost all copyright infringement and
trademark violation is transnational. There's very little purely
domestic intellectual property theft."

However Barnett's claim that because Verisign is the registry for .com
and .net TLDs that gives ICE jurisdiction over servers based in
foreign countries seems tenuous at best. Nevertheless he said,
"Without wishing to get into the particulars of any case, the general
goal of law enforcement is to arrest and prosecute individuals who are
committing crimes. That is our goal, our mission. The idea is to try
to prosecute."

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group told the
Guardian, "This seems absurd [...] if you don't have some idea that
there's a single jurisdiction in which you can be prosecuted for
copyright infringement that means you're potentially opening an
individual to dozens of prosecutions."

ICE is most probably banking on expectations that those it accuses of
sharing copyrighted content won't be able to afford a legal team to
question its claim that its jurisdiction extends beyond US borders.