Electronic Frontier Foundation Asks Kentucky Court to Uphold Domain Decision

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

EFF and other organizations ask Kentucky Supreme Court to uphold lower court decision.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky filed a friend of the court brief with the Kentucky Supreme Court to uphold a lower court’s decision blocking the seizure of gambling domain names.

According to an EFF press release:

“No state can order a domain name registrar over which it does not have jurisdiction to do anything. The commonwealth simply hasn’t satisfied its burden here,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. “Without these important protections, no website would be safe from arbitrary decisions by foreign courts to silence online content that they don’t like.”

“Under Kentucky’s legal theory, any government in the world would be able to seize any website domain name if the site has content that the government does not like,” said John Morris, general counsel for CDT. “Such a theory, if upheld, would be devastating to free expression around the world.”

Indeed, we could see a Muslim country try to seize MakersMark.com and JimBeam.com. How would Kentucky feel about that?

The press release also mentions that EFF is joined by other organizations, including the domain industry’s Internet Commerce Association.

Further Reading:

  1. ICA Issues Statement on Kentucky Court Ruling
  2. What Domainers Should (and Shouldn’t) Do Post Kentucky
  3. Official GoDaddy Statement on Kentucky Domains Case

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5 Comments » - Posted in Policy & Law by

Comments

  1. Barb Bender
    April 21st, 2009 | 9:38 am

    Thank goodness. I remember seeing the original details of the case, and thought, this is simply crazy. I’m glad kentucky made the right decision.

  2. D
    April 21st, 2009 | 10:03 am

    Problem is REGISTRIES (Verisign, PIR) are in US jurisdicitons.

  3. Latest Domainer News
    April 21st, 2009 | 10:13 am

    Electronic Frontier Foundation Asks Kentucky Court to Uphold Domain Decision – http://tinyurl.com/cjjgk7

  4. Andrew Allemann
    April 21st, 2009 | 10:46 am

    “Problem is REGISTRIES (Verisign, PIR) are in US jurisdicitons.”

    Right, but they aren’t in Kentucky’s jurisdiction.

  5. Andrew Allemann
    April 21st, 2009 | 10:47 am

    Barb – hopefully the Kentucky Supreme Court will agree.

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