[At-Large] NYTimes : U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown

[Bill Silverstein]

As a person who has seized domain names through legal process, I must
disagree with you.

While the seizing1 of a domain name does effect all services with that
domain name, it is not a risk of collateral damage to innocents. In your
analogy, it is more like taking all containers which have stickers on the
outside that states, "Property of Pirate Inc."  It is also possible to
take the domain name, and recreate the DNS records for the non-web
services.

Now if the police come in and seize the server, which could handle
hundreds of other web sites, that would be a server of another color.

>
> Why not?  If any part of the mechanism of resolving DNS names is within
> the jurisdictional reach of the enforcement agency one ought to have an
> expectation that the agency will exercise that authority.
>
> As I have described elsewhere there is a huge perception that websites
> and domain names are linked one-to-one.  That is, of course, technical
> nonsense; the truth being that domain names point to collections of
> records that can contain all kinds of stuff.  In that regard, taking
> down a domain name because a record references a website could be akin
> to seizing an entire Maersk container ship because one container on
> board is carrying fake Gucci bags.
>
> We are at real risk here on the net (many say it is not a risk but a
> present-day fact) in which enforcement agencies, going after real
> illicit activities, use simplistic techniques that are far overbroad and
> can cause vast collateral damage to lawful activities.
>
> 	--karl--
>
>
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