Court: Website domains can’t be seized

A federal court has ruled that country code domain names such as .us and .uk aren’t property and can’t be seized as part of a court process.

Victims of terrorism from Iran, Syria and North Korea had asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — which handles domain names online — to hand over control of those countries’ domain names, which are .ir, .sy and .kp, respectively.

{mosads}The victims had previously won cases against the governments and had sought to take over the domain names as part of the court-ordered seizures of the government’s property.

This week, Judge Royce Lamberth tossed that argument out.

Country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) “are not property” that can be seized, he ruled, because they “cannot be conceptualized apart from the services provided” by the domain name managers.

The ruling is a victory for ICANN, which had fought against the claim that ccTLDs could be seized.

“The court’s ruling demonstrates a technical understanding of the [domain name system], and the role of ccTLDs in the single, global, interoperable Internet,” John Jeffrey, ICANN’s general counsel and secretary, said in a statement.