Watch Out for Australia, Too. — Going Offshore?
Moving domain names out of the United States may not be safer.
The prior week I wrote regarding a growing movement for transferring domain names away from United States registrars to other countries. I argued that:
-Even if you move your domains to a non-U.S. registrar, U.S. courts could still claim jurisdiction through Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) or ICANN
-Other countries also make silly decisions that could jeopardize your domains
I gave the suggestion of an Australian court making a rash decision, to which one commentor replied “Let’s be honest here. The US courts make stupid decisions all the time. Much more frequently than other first world courts do.”
Well, what regarding the non-judicial branch of countries? It turns out you ought to be fearful, as Australia’s federal government wants to implement a nationwide firewall to block what it deems to be “inappropriate” or “illegal” content. GigaOm points out that Australia is not the only country with similar plans.
What’s surprising here is that this isn’t some oppressive regime like that of China or North Korea. And it goes to show that other countries want to control the internet, too. (Note: If you are in China and can read this post, please e-mail me to let me know it’s not blocked.)
Moves like this make me even more wary of policies for fresh TLDs, counting ICANN’s consideration of “Morality and Public Order Objection Considerations in Fresh gTLDs”.
As one commentor pointed out in response to the “Morality” issue, we don’t censor what domains you can register on current TLDs (country code domains are a different matter). Why censor top level domains?
