Censorship is as easy as domain name seizure: U.S. seizes dozens of addresses
Yesterday, the Department of Justice once again reminded activists and hackers that it would rather do corporate America's bidding than hold Wall Street accountable when it executed a court warrant allowing for the seizure of several dozen domains, all ending in the .com TLD (top-level domain). Several of the domains pointed to sites that provide search functionality for finding content (music, movies, books, games, etc.) to download via BitTorrent or other means, but did not actually host any "unauthorized" copies of content themselves.
“As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time," the New York Times quoted Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Cori W. Bassett as saying.
TorrentFreak has a fairly comprehensive list of the domains that were taken. Many served as the addresses for sites where counterfeit goods were sold.
It's important to understand that ICE did not seize the physical machines or even take the actual websites offline. They simply disconnected the sites from their addresses, apparently by getting VeriSign, the operator of the .com registry, to give them control of the nameservers.
If the above paragraph doesn't make sense to you, then imagine that you've just logged on to your email one morning, but unusually, there are no new messages in your inbox. You ask a friend to send you a test email but it never arrives. You ask your service provider what's up. At first, they have no idea. Later, they notify you that the U.S. government has seized your address, and any/all message traffic is being routed to government agents. That's basically what happened to the people operating the websites listed on the page linked above.
Losing a domain is a big deal, because a site's primary domain is its identity. Hardly anybody bothers to memorize the numbers that are assigned to the computers hosting the various websites they want to visit, especially since the numbers may change. The domain name system (DNS) helps us find what we want by providing a uniform resource locater, or URL, such as nwprogressive.org.
Now, it may be that the seizure of some of these domains was warranted. People who sell counterfeit goods are crooks trying to make a quick buck at others' expense. But people operating sites that simply provide access to information shouldn't be treated like criminals. If Torrent Finder and RapGodfathers are engaging in illegal activity, then so is Google. So are thousands of other search engines. Should they all be shut down? No, that would be ridiculous.
It's scary that censorship is this easy. If a domain is registered through a registry based in the United States, all the federal government has to do to disconnect it is convince a judge to sign a warrant. That's not that hard to do.
And then, just like that, they can pull the plug.
Gilmore's Law (named after John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) holds that the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. Consequently, it is impossible for the government of a democracy to suppress its citizens' access to content without turning into a totalitarian regime. Torrent Finder and RapGodfathers remain accessible through alternate domain names, and can quickly make large numbers of people, plus crawlers of major search engines, aware of their new addresses through social media.
And those sites' owners have done exactly that.
That doesn't excuse what the government did, however. No valid justification has been supplied for the seizure of these names. A cryptic statement about an "ongoing investigation" is bureaucratic stonewalling, not a legitimate explanation. A legitimate explanation is owed both to the domain owners and to the public whenever a draconian action is taken. No such explanation has been forthcoming in this case... and that's a serious problem.
POSTSCRIPT: There's been some discussion on other blogs about how much of the worldwide domain name system is under U.S. jurisdiction. DNS was created in the United States, and the company that operates the .com and .net registries (VeriSign) is also solely responsible for the Internet's root zone file. However, other nations are not subject to U.S. law, so a domain registered through a registry based outside of the United States is theoretically protected from being seized. Some registries, like .org, are based in the U.S., but operated under contract by a company based in another country. It's not clear whether ICE can seize .org domains as easily as it can seize .com ones.
“As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time," the New York Times quoted Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Cori W. Bassett as saying.
TorrentFreak has a fairly comprehensive list of the domains that were taken. Many served as the addresses for sites where counterfeit goods were sold.
It's important to understand that ICE did not seize the physical machines or even take the actual websites offline. They simply disconnected the sites from their addresses, apparently by getting VeriSign, the operator of the .com registry, to give them control of the nameservers.
If the above paragraph doesn't make sense to you, then imagine that you've just logged on to your email one morning, but unusually, there are no new messages in your inbox. You ask a friend to send you a test email but it never arrives. You ask your service provider what's up. At first, they have no idea. Later, they notify you that the U.S. government has seized your address, and any/all message traffic is being routed to government agents. That's basically what happened to the people operating the websites listed on the page linked above.
Losing a domain is a big deal, because a site's primary domain is its identity. Hardly anybody bothers to memorize the numbers that are assigned to the computers hosting the various websites they want to visit, especially since the numbers may change. The domain name system (DNS) helps us find what we want by providing a uniform resource locater, or URL, such as nwprogressive.org.
Now, it may be that the seizure of some of these domains was warranted. People who sell counterfeit goods are crooks trying to make a quick buck at others' expense. But people operating sites that simply provide access to information shouldn't be treated like criminals. If Torrent Finder and RapGodfathers are engaging in illegal activity, then so is Google. So are thousands of other search engines. Should they all be shut down? No, that would be ridiculous.
It's scary that censorship is this easy. If a domain is registered through a registry based in the United States, all the federal government has to do to disconnect it is convince a judge to sign a warrant. That's not that hard to do.
And then, just like that, they can pull the plug.
Gilmore's Law (named after John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) holds that the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. Consequently, it is impossible for the government of a democracy to suppress its citizens' access to content without turning into a totalitarian regime. Torrent Finder and RapGodfathers remain accessible through alternate domain names, and can quickly make large numbers of people, plus crawlers of major search engines, aware of their new addresses through social media.
And those sites' owners have done exactly that.
That doesn't excuse what the government did, however. No valid justification has been supplied for the seizure of these names. A cryptic statement about an "ongoing investigation" is bureaucratic stonewalling, not a legitimate explanation. A legitimate explanation is owed both to the domain owners and to the public whenever a draconian action is taken. No such explanation has been forthcoming in this case... and that's a serious problem.
POSTSCRIPT: There's been some discussion on other blogs about how much of the worldwide domain name system is under U.S. jurisdiction. DNS was created in the United States, and the company that operates the .com and .net registries (VeriSign) is also solely responsible for the Internet's root zone file. However, other nations are not subject to U.S. law, so a domain registered through a registry based outside of the United States is theoretically protected from being seized. Some registries, like .org, are based in the U.S., but operated under contract by a company based in another country. It's not clear whether ICE can seize .org domains as easily as it can seize .com ones.
# Posted by Andrew : 1:01 PM
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