[governance] 'US seizes domain name of Spanish company

[Lee McKnight]

Bret,

You're right to say in some sense it's nothing new, except you don't
need gunboats to enforce your laws across virtual seas. 

Lee

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile
>>> bfausett at internet.law.pro 03/12/08 12:19 PM >>>
Several comments, one email. See below.

Ian Peter wrote:
> Can Anyone shed any light on this??

Check the archives of this list. We discussed this last week also (see  
"a wave of the watch list")

Carlos Afonso wrote:
> There is a lot more. It seems the list of blacklisted domains  
> related to Cuba (or the Cuba theme) is quite extensive.

More details of the sanctions program is here:
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/ascii/cuba.txt

What's also worth mentioning is that any U.S.-based company can seek a  
license from the U.S. to engage in business transactions with  
companies on the list.

Lee McKnight wrote:
> As this thread suggests, the Internet has a levelling effect as now  
> all nations can seek (and may feel they have cause to) apply laws  
> extraterritorially.

Perhaps the effects are different, but haven't nations always been  
able to use trade as a lever to apply their policy judgments  
extraterritorially? The U.S. OFAC site makes the case that U.S. trade  
embargoes go back to the War of 1812.

      * * *

I keep coming to the conclusion that there's an IGF session in all  
this. Lessons learned can be:

(1) if you want to be free from the judgments of other nations,  
register in your ccTLD.

(2) for gTLDs, understand that your choice of registrar, and the  
registration contract to which you agree, has implications about what  
laws will govern your relationship to your domain name.

(3) same as (2) for any web host or email provider.

          -- Bret
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