[!Article About Fed DomainName Seizures!] Gizmodo Goes Crazy, Reality Isn't What It Seems

Market Ticker ^ | 11/27/2010 | Karl Denninger

[Lazamataz]

ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) apparently "seized" a bunch of domain pointers the last couple of days and has generated an immense amount of heat and damn little light.

I'll try to add a bit of light and hopefully, not much (if any) heat.

First, these sorts of things are not new. I used to get subpoenas from Customs on a somewhat-regular basis when I ran MCSNet. I considered them one of the more-reasonable government agencies, actually - they paid for their document production and were rational people.

For those who are unaware if you're importing something into the country (yes, digitally counts) Customs has a right to get involved. I know, I know, the all-on "open borders" folks will scream, but the fact of the matter is that this is in fact a specifically-delegated power.

Second, it appears they're actually getting court orders. This means they're convincing a Judge in a US District Court to issue the seizure warrant.

Note that they didn't seize the site - they can't, as it's outside the United States (beyond their jurisdiction.) Instead they seized the domain name pointers.

Meh. That's a lot of staff attorney time and trouble to get a big fat nothing out of it, which is exactly what they get going down this road. Why? Because all they can do is redirect the domain pointers which will do exactly nothing when the sites re-register under a top-level domain not under the US Government's jurisdiction - and there are lots of them.

[justlurking]

ICE isn't ICANN.

I know that ICE isn't ICANN. But, the registrar for torrent-info.com reportedly claimed that ICANN was responsible for it.

As the article notes, it apparently was Verisign, who is the registry operator for the *.com root domain. Basically, it's the same answer -- Verisign is a US company, subject to jurisdiction by US courts.

And, that may explain why torrent-info.info is still up: the registry operator for *.info is HQ'ed in Ireland, although it does have US offices.

[Mojave]

the registrar for torrent-info.com reportedly claimed that ICANN was responsible for it.

The site quoted the owner of torrent-finder.com:

“I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN.”

For anyone involved in the domain name industry and the ICANN community, this allegation screams bogosity, but just to be on the safe side I checked with ICANN.

A spokesperson told me he’s checked with ICANN’s legal, security and compliance departments and they all had this to say:

ICANN had nothing to do with the ICE investigation… nobody knew anything about this and did not take part in the investigation.

All of the seized domains were .coms, and obviously ICANN has no technical authority or control over second-level .com domains. It’s not in the position to do what the reports allege.

As the article notes, it apparently was Verisign, who is the registry operator for the *.com root domain.

Exactly. COM is not INFO.

[Lazamataz]

UPDATE: VeriSign sent this statement: VeriSign received sealed court orders directing certain actions to be taken with respect to specific domain names, and took appropriate actions. Because the orders are sealed, further questions should be directed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

HOW THE **@&@&&^!@(&$()& ARE COURT ORDERS SEALED LIKE THAT????!?!??!

Wow, we really are living in a fascist dictatorship. Can Secret Courts be far behind?