After the take down of sports-bet site Bodog.com by the U.S authorities last week, every domain names owner on the internet was shocked because the domain name was registered with a Canadian domain name registrar, DomainClip thus putting it beyond the reach of the U.S. government.
Knowing that, the feds went directly to VeriSign, a U.S.-based internet backbone company that own the contract to manage the coveted .com and other generic top-level domain names on the internet.
Bodog.com was targeted because federal law generally makes it illegal to offer online sports wagering and to payoff online bets in the United States, even though online gambling isn’t illegal globally.
EasyDNS, an internet infrastructure company, publicly protested that the “ramifications of this are no less than chilling and every single organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc. needs to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of U.S. federal and state lawmakers.”
VeriSign, said they are just complying with U.S. law.
“VeriSign responds to lawful court orders subject to its technical capabilities. When law enforcement presents us with such lawful orders impacting domain names within our registries, we respond within our technical capabilities.”
VeriSign often complies with U.S. court orders by redirecting the DNS (Domain Name System) of domain names to a U.S. government IP address that informs online visitors that the site has been seized like ninjavideo.net
“Beyond that, further questions should be directed to the appropriate U.S. federal government agency responsible for the domain name seizure,” the company said.
Despite that, Bodog is now operating using the .eu domain name. A move that is becoming more popular towards other similar themed websites around. Similarly, The Pirate Bay have moved their .org to a .se domain register.
