Time to dump that dangerous dot.com name?
If your web site is doing something that might be legal in the UK, you could still be arrested and extradited to the US, if your site has a .com or other US-registered domain name. This might sound mad, but Richard O'Dwyer, a 23-year-old British student, now faces extradition for running TVShack.net. It is also a signal: everyone who runs a .com, .net or similar site should now consider whether the value of using a US domain name registered with Verisign is worth the risk of being thrown in jail.
Those using catchy domain names such as Libya's .ly or Malaysia's .my might also think about whether these countries might be inspired to follow America's example and decide that they have some legal jurisdiction over foreign nationals living thousands of miles away. It would certainly be interesting to watch the US government's reaction if Colonel Gaddafi tried to extradite some American site owners living in the US, on the grounds that using .ly brought them under his jurisdiction.
The DNS domain name strategy is being used by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), which is "targeting overseas websites it believes are breaking US copyrights whether or not their servers are based in America or there is another direct US link," according to the Guardian. The newspaper interviewed Erik Barnett, the agency's assistant deputy director, and reported:
The agency has been running a year-long campaign, Operation In Our Sites, which has thus far "seized" 125 of the most popular unlicensed film, TV and sport websites, including TVShack, as well as ones selling counterfeit physical goods. Aside from the contravention of US trademarks, website names are central to deciding which are chosen, Barnett said: "The jurisdiction we have over these sites right now really is the use of the domain name registry system in the United States. That's the key." The only necessary "nexus to the US" is a .com or .net web address for which Verisign acts as the official registry operator, he said.
Many UK firms took out .com names when this was what users expected, rather than use a "local" .co.uk for their sites. Also, the US provided the majority of Internet users. Things have changed over the past decade, so having a .com name is not as attractive as it used to be. However, it might be painful to transition away from an existing .com site, and it's not clear if that would keep you out of ICE's clutches.
Although ICE is currently acting as an enforcement arm for the US entertainment industry, there is no reason why the operations of its 7,000 investigators could not be expanded to cover other areas in the future.
ICE has left its certificate on TVShack.net