[At-Large] R: R: Is ICANN's oversight really moving away from the US government?

[Michele Neylon - Blacknight]

Seth

As a non-US registrar I’ve got a bit of experience in this area – see responses inline below


Two observations.


1.        What is to stop a non-US court from taking a similar enforcement action against a registrar within that country and seizing domains?  Non-US courts have been known to take jurisdiction over business outside their countries based upon the business’s goods and services being accessible within the country through the Internet.

Short answer – nothing.


2.       Cannot the non-US business that conducts itself legally within the laws of its country register its domains with a non-US registrar?

Yes and they do, however if the registry operator is a US based entity then a US court can issue a court order to have the domains seized directly at the registry. It’s happened to clients of ours.


I do not deny there is an uneven playing field because ICANN is more easily subject to US jurisdiction and law than the jurisdictions and laws of other countries, but your arguments may go too far.

The issue around domain seizures has nothing to do with ICANN. Any domain seizure cases I’ve seen (including the examples cited by Parminder) were all made either at the registrar or registry level.
I haven’t see any cases where ICANN has been involved directly (though they often get named in cases)

If you want to avoid the reach of the US then you need to use:

  *   a non-US registry
  *   A non-US registrar
  *   A non-US hosting provider

Obviously if you want to go down that route you won’t be able to use .com or a lot of the other gTLDs, as even the ones that aren’t US owned are often using US based providers for their backend services.

Regards

Michele

--
Mr Michele Neylon
Blacknight Solutions
Hosting, Colocation & Domains
http://www.blacknight.host/
http://blog.blacknight.com/
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Intl. +353 (0) 59  9183072
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