As court denies motion to seize ccTLDs — Internet wins
Court rules .ir, .sy, .kp and related IDNs cannot be “attached” as compensation.
ICANN and the internet community at sizable got a victory this stretch as a U.S. court denied a request (pdf) to seize country code top level domains (ccTLDs) as compensation in a lawsuit.
A number of claimants that had won a judgement against Iran, Syria and North Korea over terrorism charges had demanded control of the country’s ccTLDs (.IR, .SY and .KP plus IDN versions) as payment.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia determined:
The ccTLDs exist only as they are made operational by the ccTLD operators that administer the registries of second level domains within them and by the parties that cause the ccTLDs to be listed on the root zone file. A ccTLD, like a domain name, cannot be conceptualized apart from the services provided by these parties. The court cannot order plaintiffs’ insertion into this arrangement.
Had the court ruled otherwise, it would have opened up a can of worms in internet governance. By now, many countries are not comfortable with the U.S.’s “control” of the internet.
There is right now a process to lessen this role by taking the U.S. government out of a contractual relationship for certain functions managed by ICANN. World governments would have been incensed had a U.S. court granted the seizure of an existing country code top level domain name, even if they were those of state sponsors of terrorism.
