US government announced a new law

The day before the whole Wikileaks situation has hit the world's press, the US have done something else which is terrible for the Internet world. The have seized web domains by directly going to ICANN, skipping out domain registrars, without legal proceedings or any warnings. Surely they have no jurisdiction to do this? Legality?

Apparently all .com domains have US "jurisdiction" because they are nominally controlled by VeriSign and thence ICANN, which is a US quango, so owners of .com domains are in a legal relationship with a US entity. Outside the US, people have been known to get quite worked up about this arrangement, and there have been serious suggestions that ICANN should cede control (or transfer directly) to a UN body. Whether interference as in this case is legal in international law is, as far as I know, untested. The TLD which was originally intended for use by US commercial organisations was .co.us, which nobody seems to bother with.

This is what the ICE have said about this whole discraceful situation:

Quote:ICE office of Homeland Security Investigations executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names. As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time.

hmm Interesting..

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