How Would US Politicians Respond If Spain Seized Domains Of American Companies?

from the a-little-thought-exercise dept

Here's a little thought exercise. We've written about the recent domain name seizures by Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group -- including the domains of a Spanish company (which had already been found to be legal in Spain). The defense of why this is okay seems to be that since this company was using .com or .org domain names, which are both run by US companies, that it suddenly makes those domains US property, and thus subject to seizure under US laws. There are some serious questions to ask concerning whether or not these URLs really are "US" based. I mean, if you are hosting all of the content for a domain on a server in Spain, and the vast majority of the traffic is in Spain, it seems like a stretch to call the domain American.

That said, in the comments Nick Dynice suggests that Spain should retaliate by seizing the Spanish (.es) domain names of various big American companies. And, of course, that raises a related question. How do you think US politicians would react if that's what had happened? If the Spanish government suddenly seized the domain names of some big American companies because Spain decided (unilaterally, with no notice or trial) that the company had violated the law, you would see American politicians screaming bloody murder about how Spain was intruding on American sovereignty, and discussing just how ridiculous it is that the Spanish government felt comfortable seizing a domain off the "open" internet.

So will any American politicians speak up about Americans seizing a Spanish domain?

Filed Under: censorship, domain seizures, international incident, spain, us