[NA-Discuss] Michael Geist Article

Sun Nov 13 01:05:24 UTC 2011

http://www.thestar.com/article/1085475--geist-internet-belongs-to-us-u-s-argues

Geist: Internet belongs to us, U.S. argues
Published On Sat Nov 12 2011

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[image: Image]<http://www.thestar.com/business/columnists/94542--geist-michael>
By Michael Geist<http://www.thestar.com/business/columnists/94542--geist-michael>Internet
Law Columnist

The U.S. Congress is currently embroiled in a heated debated over the Stop
Online Piracy Act (SOPA), proposed legislation that supporters argue is
needed to combat online infringement, but critics fear would create the
“great firewall of the United States.”

SOPA’s potential impact on the Internet and development of online services
is enormous as it cuts across the lifeblood of the Internet and e-commerce
in the effort to target websites that are characterized as being “dedicated
to the theft of U.S. property.” This represents a new standard that many
experts believe could capture hundreds of legitimate websites and services.

For those caught by the definition, the law envisions requiring Internet
providers to block access to the sites, search engines to remove links from
search results, payment intermediaries such as credit card companies and
Paypal to cut off financial support, and Internet advertising companies to
cease placing advertisements.

While these measures have unsurprisingly raised concern among Internet
companies and civil society groups, the jurisdictional implications demand
far more attention. The U.S. approach is breathtakingly broad, effectively
treating millions of websites and IP addresses as “domestic” for U.S. law
purposes.

The long arm of U.S. law manifests itself in at least five ways in the
proposed legislation.

First, it defines a “domestic domain name” as a domain name “that is
registered or assigned by a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or
other domain name registration authority, that is located within a judicial
district of the United States.” Since every dot-com, dot-net and dot-org
domain is managed by a domain name registry in the U.S., the law
effectively asserts jurisdiction over tens of millions of domain names
regardless of where the registrant actually resides.

Second, it defines “domestic Internet protocol addresses” — the numeric
strings that constitute the actual address of a website or Internet
connection — as “an Internet Protocol address for which the corresponding
Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a judicial district
of the United States.”

Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national
ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called ARIN, the
Americas Registry for Internet Numbers. Its territory includes the U.S.,
Canada, and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP addresses in this
region as domestic for U.S. law purposes.

To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for
its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP
addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would
treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.

Third, the bill grants the U.S. “in rem” jurisdiction over any website that
does not have a domestic jurisdictional connection. For those sites, the
U.S. grants jurisdiction over the property of the site and opens the door
to court orders requiring Internet providers to block the site and Internet
search engines to stop linking to it.

Should a website owner wish to challenge the court order, U.S. law asserts
itself in a fourth way, since in order for an owner to file a challenge
(described as a “counter notification”), the owner must first consent to
the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts.

If these measures were not enough, the fifth measure makes it a matter of
U.S. law to ensure that intellectual property protection is a significant
component of U.S. foreign policy and grants more resources to U.S.
embassies around the world to increase their involvement in foreign legal
reform.

U.S. intellectual property lobbying around the world has been well
documented with new Canadian copyright legislation widely viewed as a
direct consequence of years of political pressure. The new U.S. proposal
takes this aggressive approach to another level by simply asserting
jurisdiction over millions of Canadian registered IP addresses and domain
names.

*Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce
Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can be reached **at
www.michaelgeist.ca.*

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