Red Alert: ICANN and Verisign Proposal Would Allow Any Government In The World To Seize Domain Names:
ICANN, the organization that regulates global domain name policy, and Verisign, the abusive monopolist that operates the .COM and .NET top-level domains, have quietly proposed enormous changes to global domain name policy in their recently published "Proposed Renewal of the Registry Agreement for .NET", which is now open for public comment.
Either by design, or unintentionally, they've proposed allowing any government in the world to cancel, redirect, or transfer to their control applicable domain names! This is an outrageous and dangerous proposal that must be stopped. While this proposal is currently only for .NET domain names, presumably they would want to also apply it to other extensions like .COM as those contracts come up for renewal.
The offending text can be found buried in an Appendix of the proposed new registry agreement. Using the "redline" version of the proposed agreement (which is useful for quickly seeing what has changed compared with the current agreement), the critical changes can be found in Section 2.7 of Appendix 8, on pages 147-148. [...]
It would allow Verisign, via the new text in 2.7(b)(ii)(5), to:
" deny, cancel, redirect or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold or similar status, as it deems necessary, in its unlimited and sole discretion" [the language at the beginning of 2.7(b)(ii), emphasis added]
Then it lists when it can take the above measures. The first 3 are non-controversial (and already exist, as they're not in blue text). The 4th is new, relating to security, and might be abused by Verisign. But, look at the 5th item! I was shocked to see this new language:
"(5) to ensure compliance with applicable law, government rules or regulations, or pursuant to any legal order or subpoena of any government, administrative or governmental authority, or court of competent jurisdiction," [emphasis added]
This text has a plain and simple meaning — they propose to allow "any government", "any administrative authority" and "any government authority" and "court[s] of competent jurisdiction" to deny, cancel, redirect, or transfer any domain name registration (as I noted above, this is currently proposed for .NET, but if not rejected immediately with extreme prejudice, it could also find its way into other registry agreements like .COM which the abusive monopolist Verisign manages).
You don't have to be ICANN's fiercest critic to see that this is arguably the most dangerous language ever inserted into an ICANN agreement.
(Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Monday April 24 2023, @08:27AM (3 children)
The Ethereum Name Service suddenly looks very attractive. "There's no use case for decentralized ledgers" they say. "Just trust the centralized entity" they say.
(To be honest, I had also dismissed the value of ETH because smart contracts suffer from the oracle problem. It seems like there are at least some applications that don't require oracles.)
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Monday April 24 2023, @08:45AM (2 children)
Setting aside the question of what that actually does or fails to do, just how do you propose to get that pre-installed on all the off-the-shelf Apple, Windows, and Linux systems produced by the various OEMs enough to produce a critical mass?
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by darkfeline on Monday April 24 2023, @10:23AM (1 child)
There's no need, ENS resolution can be added as an extension to existing DNS servers. End users don't even have to know anything's changed. Enthusiasts and organizations dealing in wrongthink can run their own resolvers. Once it reaches critical mass, popular public servers will add support.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday April 25 2023, @02:03AM
And how do you propose to get the existing DNS servers to add it? OpenDNS might, but that's a drop in the bucket.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Username on Monday April 24 2023, @09:09AM (1 child)
They already do that now. Remember the whole dailystormer thing? You're domain can be taken at any time.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2023, @09:36AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Monday April 24 2023, @01:25PM (3 children)
What if China says "I ban microsoft.com".
China can do it anyway, but now they can point at ICANN? I don't understand how this works or what it really means.
> any administrative authority
What is an administrative authority?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 24 2023, @03:40PM
What if Iran wants to ban something?
What if some teeny tiny country wants to ban something?
What if this were done in wartime and OMG! people could not get to twitter?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday April 25 2023, @02:05AM
More to the point, what if China says, "We own microsoft.com" ??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by jb on Tuesday April 25 2023, @08:14AM
Then for the first time ever, they'd be doing the whole world a big favour!
Depending on where in the world you live, that could mean a quasi-judicial tribunal dealing with administrative law matters, or it could mean the (individual) holder of any statutory office. Is the term defined elsewhere in the document? If not, then yes it does seem rather ambiguous.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday April 24 2023, @02:32PM
Reminds me of the attempt a few years ago to take .org private. I agree this is a terrible idea. If this proposed policy were to be accepted, and it spread to .org, it wouldn't be long before Project Gutenberg, Archive, and Wikipedia were taken. Just one podunk school board could do it and there are hundreds that would. No news site would be safe from this. Trust governments? Not with this power, hell no!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GloomMower on Monday April 24 2023, @03:50PM
Why does ICANN and Verisign want this. Has it becomes a big burden legally with how it currently is?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FavoritoHJS on Monday April 24 2023, @06:16PM (2 children)
At the very end of the page:
What can I say, other than fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK, if not undone RIGHT NOW it's just a matter of time until ANY government/politician/ANYTHING in the WHOLE WIDE FUCKING WORLD realizes this and it's lights out for anything resembling freedom of information anywhere in the whole fucking world since literally all links from the last 40 years will all suffer terminal link rot, at the same time, as the only thing that will survive will be direct IP addresses that no-one uses, ever -- if that.
I hope this is a gigantic misunderstanding because otherwise...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 25 2023, @02:59PM
I've held all of my domains for longer than three years. If they try to take any of them, I'll see somebody in court. They're supposed to be permanent as long as you keep paying the yearly registration fee.
Somebody at ICAAN must be smoking crack. There will be LOTS of lawsuits if this idiocy comes to pass. But I intend to put links on the front pages of my domains pointing to the IP address. We use numbers for phones and buildings, I don't understand why we even need domain names.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by FavoritoHJS on Friday May 05 2023, @12:36AM
In the top of https://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/proceeding/proposed-renewal-of-the-registry-agreement-for-net-13-04-2023 [icann.org] there is an ammendum for this.
Aside from gems like (for best effect read with the most aristocratic voice imaginable)
and
it contains something that might reduce this from End of the Internet Bad to just Really, Really Fucking Bad. (emphasis mine)
If I understand this correctly, this means that a takedown can be avoided if laws that affect the registrar say "god fucking no"... which at this point is just the USA, so good luck getting a Domain Name Protection Act or something passed through all that bikeshed before it's too late.
...is there a way I, a mere mortal, can back up the entire DNS?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2023, @04:41AM
The WAN has to be ad-hoc... demand the dumb pipe! You can buy naming services as you see fit