[Chapter-delegates] The Internet Society on the Wikileaks issue

[Christian de Larrinaga]

The issue of domain seizures is also being discussed in the UK at the instigation of SOCA (Serious and Organised Crime Agency)

Nominet - http://www.nominet.org.uk/policy/issuegroups/current/domainsassociatedwithcrime/
I recommend input into this issue. 

For some background opinion you can read Alex Bligh who blogged his thoughts http://blog.alex.org.uk/2010/11/26/domain-names-and-criminals/

I thing we should expect this issue to travel. 

That is one reason why I also think it would be helpful for ISOC community to draw together an implications statement.

Christian 

On 8 Dec 2010, at 22:25, Michiel Leenaars wrote:

> Hello Christian,
> 
> a reasonable assumption would be that the .org domain name is far more
> prone to be seized than a .ch-domain name - at which point no DNS
> hosting provider could help them. PIR after all is legally based in the
> USA. The chance is quite real that the United States government would at
> some point seek to seize the name, like it has done early last week for
> mere torrent hosts:
> 
> http://torrentfreak.com/us-government-responds-to-domain-seizures-ignores-the-big-question-101129 ) 
> 
> (these were all .net and .com, with the same USA-based company Verisign
> as the registry). Moving Wikileaks to a Swiss domain name makes taking
> down that new domain name at that level more difficult - I'm assuming
> that seizing it would involve the government of Switzerland, and
> possibly would have to involve an entire restructuring of the
> relationship between SWITCH and the Swiss government. And since SWITCH
> is doing an excellent job as is, and the Swiss government is rather
> independent, that would take a lot of effort - beyond the scope of this
> specific case, I would hope.
> 
> CDL> As a separate item ISOC might well find this is a good time to
> CDL> start a consultation with members on the growing issue of DNS
> CDL> interventions. These could become destabilising. 
> 
> I second that. Certainly governments and law enforcement agencies seem
> to be at the gates of ICANN to make DNS intervention across their own
> judicial system easier. A case like this is a strong reminder of certain
> risks for the global free flow of information that would involve.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Michiel Leenaars
> Directeur 
> 
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