As you are aware it was reported Thursday by the Intellectual Property Watch the Bush Administration has no intention of giving up control of the central root servers that control the internet.
This was not new news. The Bush Administration has turned down requests to give up the control in the past few years.
However as we all know they Bush term ends in just about 5 months.
So the real question is what happens then?
More specifically would Obama give up control of the root servers to say switzerland?
I can find no direct disucssion on this anywhere.
My opinion and prediction is if he becomes President he will give up control.
Not that is necessarily a bad thing
If he did let the root servers leave the US then the jurisdiction that US courts have taken over non-US domain registrants would disappear and asssuming you were non-US based and you used a non-US based registrar, you would not longer be subject to US laws.
Yes, but it scares me to think that another country’s laws could affect the internet. Take China or any of the United Arab Emirates, for example.
U.S. courts can hurt, but they can also protect you.
Andrew
I agree but you would have to strongly assume the US government would only give up control to a country like Switzerland with the servers sitting in Gevena and would not agree to let Beijing have them.
True, if there are conditions I’ll feel more comfortable.
The decission is being made behind close doors once Obama wins the so called election.
I think something’s being confused here. While Obama might “let go” of the root servers, the authoritative Registry of the domain name extension might still remain in U.S. soil.
Last I checked, VeriSign is contracted to manage 2 of them. But that’s (probably) separate from their contract with ICANN to manage the .com and .net Registry.
Unless I’m missing something…
David
I think if you read some of the cases US courts have given jurisdiction to US courts based on the root servers being based in Virgina, with jurisdiction in Virgina.
Verisign can manage the servers no matter where the servers are located.
But the root servers and the .com Registry are “separate” things, aren’t they? The former allow users around the world to access whatever stuff on the ‘Net, while the latter keeps an authoritative record of domain registrations of that extension or so.
Currently I’m thinking that even if the root servers are outside the U.S., non-U.S. registrants can still have legal issues with their .com domain names, for instance, as long as the .com Registry remains in Virginia or whatever jurisdiction it’s in. Dell locked out BelgiumDomains et al, though that’s limited to trademark infringement and not necessarily every other matter.
Then again, that depends on the type of legal issue, and domain registrants may not necessarily be affected themselves other than losing their domain names. *knock on wood*
David
You might be right. We may not know for sure until and unless the root servers are moved out and the courts decide.
On the other hand if the Root servers are allowed to be moved, looking long term and the Verisign contract is up in 2012, my guess would be a non-US company maybe awarded the new contract.