Stephen

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Keith Davidson <keith@keith.co.nz> wrote:

Hi Sam,

Good question relating to the law, perhaps best not to try and answer that on a technical list. Currently, the closest thing to global "law" applicable to the Internet is the RFC process, developed by techies in a bottom-up, consensus based global decision making forum via the Internet Engineering Task Force. Fortunately most RFC's set to provide technical standards rather than seeking to set global public policy or law (for example RFC1591 seeks boldly to establish some aspects of public policy as it relates to the operation of TLDs in general and ccTLDs in particular)

So which law applies is a truly difficult question, and while there are cases where a US Court (or a French Court commonly also) requires an action from an organisation or individual outside its jurisdiction, or where the Registrar is domiciled, etc, but it may be that the Court in the country where the individual / organisation resides may have a contrary opinion - so nothing is predictable and as the Internet challenges the geographical boundaries, there is much to be done and many more test cases to go before we can categorically determine what laws apply when and to whom.

I don't know much of the details of this specific case, but as I understand it, the tvshack.net case is because the Registrar (the agent who sold the tvshack.net name to Richard O'Dwyer) is USA based, not because Verisign (the .net Registry) is US based. In any case, Verisigns operation of their Root Server is not related to their operation of the .com or .net registries. In this case too, the site was hosted in Sweden. Conceivably, the UK Court may refuse to extradite O'Dwyer, and also conceivably the Swedish and/or UK Courts may order the US Government to reinstate the domain name. Its just at the first step of legal proceedings currently.

The US law enforcement folks are running rampant on many other cases currently, Megaupload and Kim Dotcom for a local example. Again, maybe the NZ Court will find no case to answer and strike out the extradition
order? Who knows...

ICANN, ISOC and others are seeking to establish and maintain global policies applicable to aspects of the Internet and operation of the DNS, based on the multistakeholder model and consensus based decision making. While slow and ponderous it is preferable to having treaty organisations such as the UN or the ITU creating globally binding policies applicable to the DNS.

Cheers

Keith

On 1/04/2012 10:51 a.m., Sam Russell wrote:

"It's a mistake to think that Internet infrastructure is somehow exempt
from the law." - which law? TVShack was hosted in the UK, complied with
UK law, but the judges have ruled that having a .net domain means that
the website has to comply with US law. This is only possible because
Verisign are in charge of the .net gTLD,

My confusion around the root servers was assuming that there are, for
example, 95 L servers, instead of 95 instances of the 1 L server. I'm
not sure why anonymous would be attacking root servers though - I
imagine they're more angry about US-mandated takedowns of .com and .net
domain names that don't violate any of ICANN's rules, and the extension
of this to actually extraditing citizens of other countries.

Is this something that ICANN has, or should have, policy around?

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Joe Abley <jabley@hopcount.ca
<mailto:jabley@hopcount.ca>> wrote:

� �There are indeed precisely 13 root servers. See
� �<http://www.root-servers.org/>.

� �I think you're confusing root servers with authority-only servers
� �for TLD zones, and a purported threat against the root servers with
� �domain take-downs ordered by particular nations' law-enforcement.

� �If you want a domain with a registry managed in a local
� �jurisdiction, go talk to NZRS. There exist gTLDs currently that are
� �operated outside the US. Soon there apparently may be more.

� �It's a mistake to think that Internet infrastructure is somehow
� �exempt from the law.

� �I won't contradict your legal analysis for the case you mentioned
� �because I am not a lawyer, I don't know the facts of the case and
� �(last but not least!) this is an operations list.

� �Sent from my Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7

� �On 2012-03-31, at 16:41, Sam Russell <sam.russell@reannz.co.nz
� �<mailto:sam.russell@reannz.co.nz>> wrote:

� � > The article said there are only 13 root servers so I'm not sure that
� � > the article was sure what it's talking about.
� � >
� � > The controversy at the moment seems to be the extradition of the
� � > 23-year-old admin of tvshack.net <http://tvshack.net> to the USA.

� �The server wasn't hosted
� � > in the USA, but having a .net domain meant that he could be tried
� � > under US law. As a generic top level domain (gTLD), a .net domain
� � > shouldn't be bound by the whims of any one country, but only by
� � > ICANN/IANA.
� � >
� � > The problem is that the gTLDs are all hosted in the USA, and judges
� � > are interpreting this to mean that websites with gTLDs are bound
� �by US
� � > law. This is the same as if the printing of our phone books was
� � > outsourced to China, and then China extraditing the Tibetian embassy
� � > because their phone number is in a Chinese-printed phone book.
� � >
� � > tl;dr 60+ year old judges don't know how the Internet works, and this
� � > is just the next part of the slippery slope that geo-IP boundaries
� � > have put us on
� � >
� � > Sent from my iPhone
� � >
� � > On Apr 1, 2012, at 6:28 AM, Joe Abley <jabley@hopcount.ca
� �<mailto:jabley@hopcount.ca>> wrote:
� � >
� � >>
� � >> On 2012-03-31, at 06:00, Sam Russell wrote:
� � >>
� � >>> I enjoyed the article, but it really made me wonder whether
� �this would be happening if the gTLD servers weren't under US
� �jurisdiction
� � >>
� � >> What are "the gTLD servers", and why do you think they are
� �related to the threat that article was talking about?
� � >>
� � >>
� � >> Joe
� � >>
� � >

--
Sam Russell

Network Operations
Research & Education Advanced Network NZ Ltd
ddi: +64 4 913 6365
mob: +64 21 750 819
fax: +64 4 916 0064

http://www.karen.net.nz <http://www.karen.net.nz/>

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