[liberationtech] decentralized DNS...

[Robert Guerra]

Another option is to use a hosting service,  a registry and registrar that are in a jurisdiction that is out of reach of US authorities..

here's a recent post from Byron Holland, the CEO of CIRA (the top level country code domain for Canada- .ca)

http://blog.cira.ca/2012/03/domain-name-seizures-and-ca/


Posted by: Byron Holland

Domain name seizures have been top-of-mind for many people lately.

It was one of the topics identified at the Canadian Internet Forum, and the high profile seizure by the U.S. government of the Canadian online gambling site bodog.com has been getting a lot ofmedia attention. This also isnbt the first time the U.S. government has seized domain names based on billegalb activity. In 2010, a number of .COM, .NET and .ORG domains were seized, and a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) operated by VeriSign in California, .TV, wasseized as well. In 2011, another 150 were seized.
For the most part, the Internet does not recognize national borders. Internet traffic is routed all over the globe, and itbs possible to register a domain using a wide variety of domain name extensions.

Herebs the thing b the stuff to the right of the dot matters: note that bodog.ca still resolves.
If you register a domain name with an extension that is managed in another country, it is likely subject to the laws of that country b full stop. If a website is found to be in violation of American law, and the domain for that site is an extension managed by a U.S. entity, the U.S. government may seize it.
If you keep your business in another country (in the case of Canada, register a .CA with a Canadian Registrar and use a Canadian web host), foreign governments canbt unilaterally seize it. CIRA has never been asked by a foreign government to shut down or seize a domain name.
The DNS root zone does fall under American jurisdiction with ICANN (through IANA) as the operator. However, ICANN has explicitly stated in a blog post that they do bnot take down domain namesb and that they bhave no technical or legal authority to do that.b

The fact is ICANN couldnbt cherry-pick domains even if it wanted to. If the U.S. government decided that they wanted to shut down a .CA website, and tried to do it through ICANN, they would have to shut down all of .CA in the root zone. This would involve cutting off every single .CA website and email address from the Internet, and theybre not going to do that for a number of reasons (not the least of which is the fact that shutting down the entire .CA domain space and everything in it would be a major international incident).

The global economy would freeze if the U.S. government took such an action. The underpinnings of the Internet would be completely undermined. Think about this: the U.S. government hasnbt even shut down the Internet in nations theybve been at war or have very strained relations with b Iraq, Libya, Iran are just a few examples b because the trust that supports the Internet is fundamental to the economic and social well-being of humanity.  Given that, why would they shut down an entire top level domain over a single website?

The Internet has brought us incredible benefits, many due to the fact that it breaks down national and geographic borders.  However, because of the very nature of the Internet b the fact that it is bvirtualb and bin the cloudb b most of us donbt tend to think of it being governed by the laws of a particular nation. But as the bodog.com case demonstrates, it is critically important to be aware of which jurisdiction your digital assets are in, and therefore what laws they may be subject to.
_______________________________________________
liberationtech mailing list
liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu

Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to:

https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech

If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?"

You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech

Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator.

Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE