Corporation ICANN has faced a very difficult situation indeed. District of Colombia (USA) court commenced proceedings of a suit to impound national domains of Iran, Syria and North Korea .ir, .sy, .kp, as well as internationalized Iranian domains .سور and .ايران. Initiator of the lawsuit is a famous Israeli lawyer and human rights activist Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.
For many years Darshan-Leitner has filed lawsuits to judicial authorities demanding multi-million compensations from countries that sponsor terrorism in favor of family members of terror victims. She has won plenty of these suits. The problem is, however, that countries that she blames to be sponsors of terrorism simply refuse to pay. Therefore, on the next step Darshan-Leitner files suits to impound foreign property and assets of these states. In the latest lawsuit national domains of Iran, Syria and North Korea were considered these “assets”.
This week ICANN representatives have spent a lot of time in courts, preparing petitions and explaining their views on this matter. ICANN’s viewpoint is extremely simple; ICANN believes that national domains cannot be considered “property”, in exactly the same way ICANN is not a “manager” or “controller” of this “property” (as it is stated in the lawsuit). “While we sympathize with what plaintiffs may have endured”, said ICANN general counsel John Jeffrey, “ICANN’s role in the domain name system has nothing to do with any property of the countries involved.”
Experts state that if the court rules in favor of Darshan-Leitner, this might have extremely unpleasant consequences for the whole global network, becoming a treat to already existing principles of domain system organization. Not even mentioning political consequences, because it is scary to imagine Iranian national domains being administered by Israeli human rights organization.
Marina Nikerova, senior deputy director at Technical Center of Internet, commented on this difficult situation: “Unfortunately, many state agencies in all countries of the world do not fully understand principles of the domain name system and persistently try to give them properties of material objects. This quite often happens in Russia: there are cases when in response to a complaint from a user about a stolen domain police with a dog comes up to the registrar’s office determined to find this domain. In my point of view, lawsuit to ICANN has little chance of success, because the very nature of domain zones is very different from any assets that could be used as a compensation for these countries’ activities.”
