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THE DOMAIN ADMIN. CONTACT - A CRIMINAL OFFENDER?
10th July, 2003
Full story at
http://www.demys.net/news/2003/07/10_criminal.htm
10th July, 2003
In May 1995, the IANA Report provides, Postel delegated the .ky domain name to a Mr Mole, who was then a Cayman Islands government employee. Some months passed, and Mr Mole left the employment of the government. At this time, according to the Report, 'the government was not aware that Mr Mole was serving as the administrative contact for the .ky ccTLD'.
n 1998, Mr Mole did a deal himself, with a group called the Domain Name Trust. This covered management of the registration of domain names under .ky.
As a result, Mr Mole was under contract to the Domain Name Trust when the Cayman Islands government came to him in February 1999 and asked for a transfer of the administrative role. When the government refused Mr Mole's offer to hand over the domain in a way which would honour his contract with the Domain Name Trust, the stage was set for a legislative show-down.
a criminal matter?
Over the course of the next few years, the government created a Ministry of Information Technology and an Information & Communications Technology Authority (ICTA). It enacted suitable legislation titled 'The Information and Communications Technology Authority Law 2002'. No point having an Authority without any authority, so the legislation granted ICTA sole responsibility for management of .ky.
But how to get actual, real management? The legislation also neatly created a unique criminal offence tailored to Mr Mole's personal situation (and that of any successor) forbidding any person from being an administrative or technical contact for .ky without ICTA's written consent. As the IANA Report puts it, "Mr Mole immediately ceased responsibilities as administrative contact of the .ky ccTLD." Well, you would, wouldn't you?
It is a truly dubious honour to have a piece of leglislation passed by your government which makes you, and only you, a criminal. It's enough to make you want to depart on the first plane. However, it seems to have served its purpose in this case, and presumably it caused Mr Mole's contract with the Domain Name Trust to become unenforceable by way of the legal doctrine of 'frustration' or 'supervening illegality'.
...
what if...?
...it is interesting to conjecture as to what might happen if a new government should request re-delegation of a country code which either with or without their consent had been marketed to individuals around the world as a more generic identifier in the past (for example, .ac, .tv, .ws, .cc and .md have all been developed in this way).
Who would prevail, the government or the worldwide Internet users? IANA isn't telling, for now. It simply states "The IANA will make [the desires of the government] a major consideration in any TLD delegation/transfer discussions."
Meanwhile, any original administrative contacts from the days of the late Dr Postel who have not yet handed over authority to their governments should perhaps be concerned. Or maybe they should plan some travel abroad.
Full story at
http://www.demys.net/news/2003/07/10_criminal.htm
lol. I doubt they would let governments try and take other ccTLDs via legislation. I think this is ok because Cayman Islands did have the TLD before and it was basically an insider stealing it.
