And Iran gets .com
Compensation for the shooting down of its airliner
A judge in Washington DC has ruled that a country's entire internet registry cannot be seized, averting a global diplomatic crisis. In a ruling [PDF] made earlier this week but released late last night, Judge Royce Lamberth focused in on a single argument presented by DNS overseer ICANN that country code top-level domains ( …
It would have been better if the court had decided that they could seize the domain. I think that would have led quite quickly to a fairly conclusive demonstration that the US doesn't control DNS. Such a demonstration would have been quite helpful for the seemingly unending debate over internet governance.
(For those who remain clueless: If some US-based entity started pushing out new DNS records for *.ir, how long do you think it would take for those in Russia, China and Europe to decide that this was a global-scale attack on the integrity of the DNS system and the best cure is to simply ignore DNS updates coming out of the US?)
Well, the US doesn't control the DNS system. It doesn't even really control the root nameservers.
It does control the IP space though - directly and indirectly through the US-owned carriers that truck most of the internet's bandwidth. If the US made a decision about IP space there wouldn't be a damned thing anybody could do about it.
If they'd found in favour it'd have probably increased the noise regarding the ITU's (and thereby Russia/China's) control of the internet - and *that* is where it gets dangerous.
"In other words, because an internet registry does not exist as its own separate entity, like a car or a house, it cannot be assumed to be an asset that can be seized."
So a bit like various siezed domain names then?
Oh I can understand the diplomatic reasons for not just yanking an entire TLD, but at least be consistent in your reasoning!
The legal theory behind this is that because Iran funded Hamas Iran is responsible for attacks committed by Hamas.
The idea of sueing states for the support of organisations whose actions you disapprove of is clealry a case of the strong doing what they like to the weak and massive hypocrisy.
No compensation has been paid the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner killing hundreds (not even an apology!) or the bombing of an african pharmecutical factory which killed a low end estimate of 10,000 people. The US continues to fund many terrorist organisations and continues to launch drone strikes into countries which it is not at war at. There is no chance whatsoever of anybody getting money from thr US for any of this.
Hamas are quite clealry a resistance movement fighting a guerilla wa, approve or disapprove of their actions being able to use governmentsthat support their actions if universally applied would open a huge can of worms.
The issue of whether a domain name is property or not seems mild compared to this.
From 1990 to 1996, every email, phone call and fax between the UK and Ireland was intercepted and recorded by GCHQ. You could say it was a trial run for the international spying by the NSA.
Article from 1999....
"From 1990 until 1996 the Capenhurst ETF tower intercepted the international communications of the Irish Republic crossing from Dublin to Anglesey on a newly installed optical fibre submarine cable, called UK-Ireland 1."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/how-britain-eavesdropped-on-dublin-1106606.html
The UK should obviously be able to seize all the USA's domain names as compensation for the USA direct support of the IRA.
From what I'm aware though, that wasn't so much US.gov as much as it was a few fucking idiot Americans. "Oh them poor Irish under the thumb of the evil Imperial Bastards" or something.
Never mind that a good portion of people in Northern Ireland actually like things the way they are, thus meaning that even if UK.gov washed its hands of the whole thing and said "there you go, it's yours", there would still be a bunch of pissed off people.
Irish Assembly is about the best solution that could have happened out of that clusterfuck.
From what I'm aware though, that wasn't so much US.gov as much as it was a few fucking idiot Americans.
Shall we search/replace IRA with KLA for a change? Disassembling captured Serbian civilians for organ sales on the black market. USA supported at state level. CIA advised and trained and protected till this day so they are the only party to the Yugo wars that cannot be dragged to the Haague tribunal.
And do not even get me started about Checnia, Basayev and Beslan.
If the USA decides it can arbitrarily seize the property of another sovereign state, will it then decide that this includes the ability to seize the territory of that state?
(Permanently as its own property, rather than temporarily by invasion and occupation or by subversion and installation of a puppet dictatorship.)
They did try that one once.
Now they have a "white" house. Perhaps that lesson is still tickling 'em late at night while they sleep.
Smart, this judge, not putting himself in harms way. If he'd found leverage to pull .ir and hand it to anyone there would have been quite the free-for-all for the next few years while folks settled centuries old grudges .......
> Perhaps that lesson is still tickling 'em late at night while they sleep.
Bah most history challenged Americans didn't even remember the lesson of Vietnam when we invaded Iraq so forget worrying about something 2 centuries ago, back when the UK was still a relevant world power.
I don't want to defend Iran, where they execute people for being gay, amongst other things, but...
If Amazon were ever to go bust then I am sure that courts would not hesitate to sieze their newly and expensively acquired .book top level domain (which by the way stikes me as being appropriation of the English language).
But in the case of a sovereign country, siezing the Internet domain name .ir would make as much sense as siezing the telephone dialling code +98 or the name of the country as a postal destination.
Surely there must be longstanding international or diplomatic law preventing such nonsense. The legal argument that this judge has used seems to be rather contrived.
There is international law on things like phone codes - the international telecommunications union
The US successfully lobbied to stop the ICANN contract going to them - remember all those stories in the summer about the threat of internet being taken over by the communist/foreigner loving UN ?
Wasn't it the ITU or its predecessor that mandated 48+5 for the ATM cell size for lame political reasons. You know just about the worse size possible for a tcp ack packet (with ppp) which is the majority of packets on the internet (number wise). Design by committee with an extra heaping of politics. Win, win.
Half the industry representatives wanted to use it for data and wanted efficent 64byte packets
Half wanted it for phones and wanted low latency 32byte packets
They compromised
A bit like deciding that trucks should drive on the right for compatibility with europe but still having buses drive on the left so they didn't need to change the door.
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"But in the case of a sovereign country, siezing the Internet domain name .ir would make as much sense as siezing the telephone dialling code +98 or the name of the country as a postal destination."
You beat me to it -- I do see trying to seize a whole national-level domain as analogous to trying to seize the telephone country code, or postal codes.
" I do see trying to seize a whole national-level domain as analogous to trying to seize the telephone country code, or postal codes."
And about as useful too. They're just letters and numbers. Even if the judge had handed the plaintiffs ".ir", Iran could've just switched to using something else (internationally sanctioned or not) to identify their domains. Might cause a bit of havoc initially, but long term, those folks would probably find themselves holding an empty bag.
But it would set a precedent.
Russia would seize the code for estonia, the US would have its own DNS that resolved differently.
The French would decide that all .com should really go to .fr if used inside France
The scots would decide that McDonalds.com should resolve to a small cafe in Edinburgh - except if your ISP was owned by an American corporation. Microsoft.com would go to gotse if you typed it on a Mac.
"Russia would seize the code for estonia, the US would have its own DNS that resolved differently.
The French would decide that all .com should really go to .fr if used inside France
The scots would decide that McDonalds.com should resolve to a small cafe in Edinburgh - except if your ISP was owned by an American corporation. Microsoft.com would go to gotse if you typed it on a Mac."
... and yet life would still go on, somehow ...
Cheers
Jon
I think the key point in all this is that the TLD has no value if it isn't operating. Which means that the claimants would somehow have to keep it operating, and keep collecting fees. and pay the bills.
You can read this as a "Don't be silly." Where really is the money in grabbing control? And these people are claiming to be after money.