Over the last week I have gotten several comments on my various posts on the domain name seizures with people asking what ICANN position is on them.

Well Rod Beckstrom CEO of ICANN has written about it on his blog and the answers the question quite clearly:

“ICANN Doesn’t Take Down Websites”

That is the titled of the blog post which goes on to say:

“”

There have been many questions in recent days stemming from actions by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in shutting down dozens of web sites. As we have said many times, ICANN was not a party to those actions by ICE, nor was it a target of them.

ICANN does not take down domain names – we have no technical or legal authority to do that. We have no involvement in the takedown of any website, which is an issue of national authority. ICANN knew nothing about this enforcement action until after the fact.

And with good reason, since we are not a law enforcement entity or an agent of the U.S. or any other government. ICANN is the non-profit coordinator of the Internet’s global domain name system and is not involved in website content in any way.”””

There were literally hundreds of stories and blogs on Google news that falsely attributed the domain name seizures, at least in part to ICANN (not mine) so it was a well need statement by ICANN.

However the blog is silent on ICANN objecting in any manner to the seizures and the use of domains and as enforcement tool for alleged criminal activity.

Personally as a stakes holder in the process I would have liked to see a statement to the effect that ICANN objects to the use of domain name seizures as a tool of law enforcement.

It has not been very long since this government and at that only the government of the US has started seizing domains.

As ICANN is regulating a worldwide platform I thought at least a statement to the effect that one government should not be allowed to seize domains was appropriate.

I’m sure it would be a different story if the government of say china went to VeriSign with a court of issued by a Chinese court to seize domain names based off the violation of some Chinese law.