Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the situation but I think this rather highlights the awkward position the world allows itself to be in: to let the USA govern the entirety of the domain space. I believe this ought to be a global affair. Sure this might be headed by the USA as per usual, but the current situation is not one I think we should desire as a global populace.
I think what Iran did here is wrong, no doubt. But don't fool me that the USA does no such similar tactics as well, perhaps a tad bit more convoluted, through side companies for example But it's nothing weird to conceive the USA meddling in other countries their news feeds, right?
> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the situation but I think this rather highlights the awkward position the world allows itself to be in: to let the USA govern the entirety of the domain space.
You are misunderstanding the situation. The US does not govern the entirety of the domain space. Nations have full control over their own ccTLDs, and many (e.g. China and India) absolutely do fully exert that control by censoring outright domains they don't agree with. And there are plenty of other gTLDs that are not run out of the US either, e.g. Radix is a Dubai-based company that runs .site, .online, .store, .space, .fun, .website, .tech, and more, Minds + Machines is a British VI-based company that runs .vip, .work, .fit, .london, and more, etc.
All of these enforcement actions against Iran were able to happen because the registries and/or registrars in question are US-based companies. Of course governments are able to enforce their laws on companies based on their own soil, but that's also all the US is able to do without the cooperation of other countries.
If some outfit claims to be based in the Virgin Islands, you should take that with a large dose of salt unless it's a hotel or something. The BVI is a tax haven.
In practice so far as I was able to tell this is a Californian company which for tax reasons is notionally owned by a company in the BVI.
Thank you for the correction. I wasn't aware of the other options. It still feels a bit wrong though for the USA to solely have the governance on a ubiquitous domain as .com
If Iran hosted these sites in, say, Myanmar, I have a strong suspicion the DOJ and FBI couldn't take down these sites. That said, perhaps the military would end up getting involved, if the threat was serious enough.
>Sure this might be headed by the USA as per usual, but the current situation is not one I think we should desire as a global populace.
Okay, right now, remove the USA from their global role. Who do you want to fill the void? Remember that sudden power vacuums allow bad actors to fill in (ISIS being the most modern example of such).
As controversial as it may sound, the USA still allows for the greatest expressions of liberty of any country, period. It ain't perfect, but no representative system is.
>But don't fool me that the USA does no such similar tactics as well, perhaps a tad bit more convoluted, through side companies for example
Of course we do.
Unless a treaty is signed explicitly condemning such behavior, every country possessing or seeking power meddles with domestic politics of other countries. Political power derives its strength from perception. If a domestic populace views their leaders as capable, political power increases, and vice versa. This reality is used by militaries and intelligence services to influence domestic and foreign nations.
For example, if you're China, you attempt to convince the USA population to perceive their government as weak, ineffective, and non-representative, and you simultaneously tell the USA population that China is a worthy successor to the USA and is totally not a threat. If the population is unaware of these efforts (often spanning years if not decades), you have a fairly high success rate, as you are fabricating an alternate reality which is deemed plausible enough to pass as truth. Raise a whole generation on this reality, and you've laid a new foundation for that society. (For more information on the topic, look up "psychological operations".)
> Okay, right now, remove the USA from their global role. Who do you want to fill the void? Remember that sudden power vacuums allow bad actors to fill in (ISIS being the most modern example of such).
He already said/implied, an international committee or coalition, representative of the world, while possibly still headed by the US. Unless you're seriously arguing ISIS would be a potential alternative to US control of domain names, why even mention them?
> As controversial as it may sound, the USA still allows for the greatest expressions of liberty of any country, period.
Even within the US, authorities regularly and routinely confiscate the property of American citizens, without charging them with anything. So the idea that the US is the greatest protector of liberty for people outside the US is not credible.
>He already said/implied, an international committee or coalition, representative of the world, while possibly still headed by the US. Unless you're seriously arguing ISIS would be a potential alternative to US control of domain names, why even mention them?
I mention ISIS simply to demonstrate that power vacuums can lead to unintended consequences. ICANN has issues, but will pushing the power of domain management to an international coalition be good for the health and openness of the Internet? Hard to say.
>Even within the US, authorities regularly and routinely confiscate the property of American citizens, without charging them with anything. So the idea that the US is the greatest protector of liberty for people outside the US is not credible.
You do know civil asset forfeiture doesn't happen for no reason at all, right? That said, you're right that many local law enforcement agencies started stretching the law to excessively seize assets and thereby fund their departments. You may be interested to know the Supreme Court, two years ago, held state and local law enforcement are also subject to the Excessive Fines Clause, just like federal law enforcement [1]. While there's plenty of work to do to enact limits for each state [2], the foundation for future efforts to restrict civil asset forfeiture is now established.
Look, I get that hating on the USA is in vogue these days. All the cool kids talk about how much the USA sucks, and anyone expressing otherwise is not worth the cool kids' time. But consider that the US Consitution is the oldest governing document currently in force. It works damn well, and perhaps so because it protects liberty extraordinarily well, even though the costs of liberty are high.
It has nothing to do with "hating on the USA", it has to do with knowing the US acts in its own interests only, not those of other countries. (Why wouldn't it?)
The US Constitution means as much to people in other countries as the constitution of Russia or China or anywhere else means to Americans. It doesn't apply, regardless of how old it is.
The point about civil asset forfeiture is that if the US Constitution can't protect Americans against the US government or law enforcement, what hope does the rest of the world have?
The US Constitution does protect Americans from the federal government, though, far more than almost any Western nation. States' rights are still very real. In fact, states' rights are the whole reason why that case went to the Supreme Court in the first place.
What hope does the world have? Give it a few months yet.
The difference between the USA and other Western nations is explainable by understanding the difference between a federation and a confederation.
All confederations are federations, but not all federations are confederations. The difference comes from the federal government's power.
Both constitute a union of regions under a federal government. However, the confederation is distinguished by a union of sovereign regions under a federal government. Independence of the state was so important at the founding of the USA that the first governing document of the country is names the "Articles of Confederation". However, the Articles of Confederation were too weak and did not allow the federal government to levy taxes, so they were scrapped for the present-day Constitution to grant the federal government a bit more power.
The USA isn't an ideal confederation, but the confederal elements pop up from time to time (e.g. any person talking about "state's rights")
Canada is also close to being a confederation, but the executive power is still vested in the British monarchy.
I don't believe any European nation can be considered a confederation.
So, to your point: the most free nations in the world are those espousing confederal values. Even among Western nations, only a handful qualify, and the USA is one of those.
They were subject to US seizure because the Iranians used US-based domain registrars (in the examples given it looks like Namecheap and OnlineNIC). These are US companies that are subject to US law and export restrictions.
Had they used Active.Domains in Russia, DotMedia in Hong Kong, KuwaitNET in Kuwait, or any of the other non-US registrars, they would have been fine.
They also would have needed to have used different TLDs to be outside the reach of US law enforcement. .com is run by Verisign, a US company, and if the FBI gives Verisign a court order to confiscate a given .com domain then Verisign can't say no.
.com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov are very much US-based and US-centric TLDs, which lots of people tend to forget. Whereas other countries use their own ccTLDs, we have .us but barely use it, for historical reasons.
> .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov are very much US-based and US-centric TLDs,
.com, .net and .org weren't created as US-centric and it's a tragedy they are ( and it's an even bigger tragedy that .edu is US only). .org is widely used around the world though.
They were created in 1985 before most of the world was even connected to the Internet. Near as I can tell it was just the US and the UK connected by a single undersea cable at that point in 1985? (Would love to know more history here though.)
.com/.net were originally administered by the US Department of Defense, then in 1993 it went to the US National Science Foundation. They've always been US-centric, and most other countries have always generally tended to use their ccTLDs. .org too has always been run out of the US.
If you don't want to be under the US's power, the correct course of action is and always has been to not use the gTLDs like .com, .net, .org that are operated in the US (and that for the first decade plus of existence were operated by the US). These TLDs were simply never country-agnostic; they have always had a much greater association with the US than with any other country. At some point, whatever the intent might have been 30+ years ago doesn't really matter practically speaking today. They are what they are and everyone knows, or should know, what they're getting with them.
US does plenty of such tactics. See, for example, recent leaks that came out about a massive propaganda campaign to support opposition groups in Syria.
I think what Iran did here is wrong, no doubt. But don't fool me that the USA does no such similar tactics as well, perhaps a tad bit more convoluted, through side companies for example But it's nothing weird to conceive the USA meddling in other countries their news feeds, right?