All .COM domains now subject to US Law

[Triple Zero]

http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us-authorities/

Yesterday Forbes broke the news  that Canadian Calvin Ayre and partners who operate the Bodog online gambling empire have been indicted in the U.S., and in a blog post Calvin Ayre confirmed that their bodog.com domain had been seized by homeland security. As reported in Forbes (hat tip to The Domains for the cite),

According to the six-page indictment filed by Rosenstein, Ayre worked with Philip, Ferguson and Maloney to supervise an illegal gambling business from June 2005 to January 2012 in violation of Maryland law. The indictment focuses on the movement of funds from accounts outside the U.S., in Switzerland, England, Malta, and Canada, and the hiring of media resellers and advertisers to promote Internet gambling.

"Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country," Rosenstein said in a statement. "Many of the harms that underlie gambling prohibitions are exacerbated when the enterprises operate over the Internet without regulation."

That is a truly scary quote but we'll emphasize that: "The indictment focuses on the movement of funds outside the U.S." and that you can't just "flout US law" by not being in the US. What also needs to be understood is that the domain bodog.com was registered to via a non-US Registrar, namely Vancouver's domainclip.
So Here's Where It Get's Scary...


We all know that with some US-based Registrars (*cough* Godaddy *cough*), all it takes is a badge out of a box of crackerjacks and you have the authority to fax in a takedown request which has a good shot at being honoured. We also know that some non-US registrars, it takes a lot more "due process-iness" to get a domain taken down.

But now, none of that matters, because in this case the State of Maryland simply issued a warrant to .com operator Verisign, (who is headquartered in California) who then duly updated the rootzone for .com with two new NS records for bodog.com which now redirect the domain to the takedown page.

This is exactly the scenario we were worried about when Verisign originally tabled their very troubling takedown proposal. Said proposal was quickly retracted, but here we have the same situation playing out anyway. Granted, this was an actual court order, to Verisign – not a "request" from a governmental or "quasi-governmental" agency as originally proposed.

But at the end of the day what has happened is that US law (in fact, Maryland state law) as been imposed on a .com domain operating outside the USA, which is the subtext we were very worried about when we commented on SOPA. Even though SOPA is currently in limbo, the reality that US law can now be asserted over all domains registered under .com, .net, org, .biz and maybe .info (Afilias is headquartered in Ireland by operates out of the US).

This is no longer a doom-and-gloom theory by some guy in a tin foil hat. It just happened.

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[Nephew Twiddleton]

Pickles' sorta-girlfriend was hang out with me in my room last night and mentioned something about how she liked dystopian future novels. I then asked her if she noticed that we were living in one and it just kinda sneaked up on most people. She was surprised by the revelation. I have another bit of fodder for her now.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

That's making me crazy.

Just because you are a non-US citizen running a non-American business in a foreign country doesn't mean that not only are you not subject to US law, but actually the law of a specific state.

Twid,
Has to learn the books from 49 different places now, apparently.

[Don Coyote]

So this mean that PD.com needs a new TLD? Why is my country full of retard?

[Triple Zero]

Yeah when we move hosting to a German dedicated server, we might want to consider that.

And what goes for .com, goes for .org and .net too (so PD.org won't work either)

Although it's not that bad, they "just" order the DNS to point the domain to a different IP that hosts the takedown notice. If the server itself is not under US jurisdiction, it continues running just fine--you'd need to surf straight to the IP, or have another domain point at it.

It sucks for the Google rankings, and for people that might not be able to find where it went, if such a thing happens.

When we get the dedicated set up, it might be worth configuring some non-US (sub)domain to point at it, just so people know beforehand where to go. I say sub domain, because they're basically free. We could ask the guys at the German Discordia forum (they seemed nice) maybe.

This is probably why Kicvkasstorrents is now at kat.ph, as everybody saw this coming, of course.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Let's get a Kickstarter to put our server on the Moon.

[LMNO]

Let's get a Kickstarter to put our server on the Moon.

No good. Dok Howl is gonna blow it up, remember?

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

God damn I hate our justice system.

[Triple Zero]

Let's get a Kickstarter to put our server on the Moon.

No good. Dok Howl is gonna blow it up, remember?

Let's get a Kickstarter to replace the Moon with our server, then. Dok can blow it up, that means the space is free, right?

[Freeky]

Let's get a Kickstarter to put our server on the Moon.

No good. Dok Howl is gonna blow it up, remember?

Let's get a Kickstarter to replace the Moon with our server, then. Dok can blow it up, that means the space is free, right?

Not sure if punning...

[Triple Zero]

Apparently .info is controlled by an Irish company.

We could also get principiadiscordia.eu since Faust's in an EU member state.

A quick check shows both would cost about 32,50 euro per year. Is that much? What do we (Faust) pay for our other domains?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Apparently .info is controlled by an Irish company.

We could also get principiadiscordia.eu since Faust's in an EU member state.

A quick check shows both would cost about 32,50 euro per year. Is that much? What do we (Faust) pay for our other domains?

You Germanic types and your commas. I read that as EUR 32500 and almost choked.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Apparently .info is controlled by an Irish company.

We could also get principiadiscordia.eu since Faust's in an EU member state.

A quick check shows both would cost about 32,50 euro per year. Is that much? What do we (Faust) pay for our other domains?

You Germanic types and your commas. I read that as EUR 32500 and almost choked.

Me too. My question is if we get a new server and a new domain and such . . . will Faust be allowed to accept funds from US citizens for site upkeep or will that give the US all the rights it needs to jump in because "Funds are moving outside the US" ?

[Doktor Howl]

The indictment focuses on the movement of funds from accounts outside the U.S., in Switzerland, England, Malta, and Canada, and the hiring of media resellers and advertisers to promote Internet gambling.

"Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country,"

Holy fuck.  Could we be any more arrogant as a nation?

[Doktor Howl]

Let's get a Kickstarter to put our server on the Moon.

No good. Dok Howl is gonna blow it up, remember?

Who cares?  Kickstarter is for leeching money off of suckers.

Or so I am told.