[At-Large] U.S. seizure of .ORG domain name

Evan Leibovitch evan at telly.org
Fri Feb 4 19:45:14 UTC 2011


On 4 February 2011 14:26, Patrick Vande Walle <patrick at vande-walle.eu>wrote:

> The Torrentfreak post is incorrect, in that it mentions that Afilias is
> managing the TLD. Afilias is only the backend provider. It does not take any
> decisions about which .org domains to takedown or not.
> Further, Afilias is a registered company in Ireland, and not in the US. It
> only executes what PIR tells them to do.
>
> I have received a direct confirmation from PIR that the takedown notice was
> delivered to them, at their headquarters in Reston, VA.
> There was no way for them to avoid executing the court decision.
>

Affilias has a business presence in five countries -- including the US,
whose office is the company's primary public point of
contact<http://www.afilias.info/contact-us>
-- meaning that it could indeed be the *direct* target of a US government
order. It may have its global head office in Ireland, but it's not accurate
to say that it is not a registered company in the US.

What this means, however, is that it is also possible that the governments
of Ireland, Canada, India and the UK *also* have the ability to takedown the
site should they have (given themselves) the authority to do so using due
process.


-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56



More information about the At-Large mailing list