Drastic new measures are being used by the US government to seize files and domains even if the guilty party is based outside of the United States. If you now operate a .com or .net domain you are subject to US law. It doesn’t matter if your servers are located outside of the country, YOU are outside of the country or if your site complies with local jurisdiction for the country you are in.

On Sunday, the Guardian reported that Britons could face charges and even extradition to the US even if they have no links to America and the servers are based elsewhere. It follows reports that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) are cracking down on overseas websites if they have good reason to believe they are breaking US copyrights. It is now their opinion that if the domain ends in .com or .net, that the site is deemed to encourage the spread of pirated US movies, TV or other media and make for legitimate targets to be prosecuted under US law. Part of their argument for doing so is that all .com and .net domains have Verisign as their registry, and this is an American based company with their offices in Virginia.

The most recent case to be effected by this new tactic is that of Richard O’Dwyer, a 23 year old British Student who faces extradition to the US because of his site TVshack.net, which offered various streams of unlicensed TV and movie content. If you visit this site currently there is a large logo stating that the site and domain have been “SEIZED by the US Immigration and Customs Department”. If you click the banner for more information you are taken to a YouTube video designed to combat piracy, showing people obtaining illegal DVDs off the street which directly results in the loss of people’s jobs.

O’Dwyer’s family are having a hard time imagining why the United States Authorities are getting involved with a case involving a British national whose site is based on servers outside of the US jurisdiction.

Erik Barnett, ICE Deputy Director, has declined to comment on the O’Dwyer case simply saying in a generic statement:

“By definition, almost all copyright infringement and trademark violation is transnational. There's very little purely domestic intellectual property theft”

Many Civil Rights and Internet Freedom Organisations are up in arms about the heavy handed approach that the US Government are taking, demanding a change in the extradition agreement that we currently have with the US. This would allow a UK Judge to decide where the supposed crime had taken place, and subsequently determine where the case should be tried.

One thing is for sure, the US are taking no prisoners when it comes to the current crack down on internet piracy!

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