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Don't want your domain seized by the US? then don't use a TLD owned by the US to engage in anti-US activities. Have we already forgotten Iran and their calls for death to America? Would you expect any country to allow usage of their services to advocate for their downfall? Would you expect McDonalds to allow you to have an anti-McDonalds protest inside one of their restaurants?

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.com and .net hardly seem as though they should be subject to US ownership & authority. .us sure, knock yourself out.

It would still be weird even if it were the .us TLD though. State censorship is state censorship.

.com is managed by VeriSign, a US company. For better or worse, that is the world we live in.

But to be honest, with all the new TLDs, there's no longer anything really special about the .com/net/org domains anymore.

.com and .net have always been all but .us. Since .us didn't exist when the web was created

Tim's toy hypermedia system (the "World Wide Web") is from 1990, but the US top level domain was created in 1985 and is one of the first ccTLDs.

I think you're overstating the reasoning behind the takedown, as cited in the original post. The issue was that the IRGC was pretending to be genuine new outlets, not the actual information they posted.

> Don't want your domain seized by the US? then don't use a TLD owned by the US to engage in anti-US activities.

ICANN is based in the US so they can theoretically turn off any domain they want.

Also are you suggesting it's OK for the US to shutdown any website engaging in whatever the US government defines as "anti-US activities?"

> Have we already forgotten Iran and their calls for death to America?

I'd love to see the proof you have that these websites were bannering "death to America" across their websites.

Unless you have some special knowledge about the situation I don't, I think we can safely say we don't know if any of the accusations the US is making about these websites are even true.

> ICANN is based in the US so they can turn off any website they want.

Please tell us more about this. Which ir and ru domains have been seized by the US lately?

They can and exercise a lot of discretion in not doing so. It has nothing to do with the legal authority, which they can also rationalize, feel free to come to the US and appeal in court.

The internet being administered by US corporations makes them easily compellable and any property they steward can be seized despite being for the benefit of foreign citizens and non-residents.

Which law prevents them from doing it?

> Unless you have some special knowledge about the situation I don't, I think we can safely say we don't know if any of the accusations the US is making about these websites are even true.

Just read the article and scan some of the websites in a cache.

Reading your comment, after reading the US's claim in the article, and looking at the websites, leads me to believe your comment is straight disinformation.

US claim, "Today, we successfully seized 92 domains involved in a disinformation campaign conducted by Iran-based actors to promote pro-Iranian propaganda."

Looking at a cross-section of the domains in archive.org, shows them to contain one-sided and incomplete information.

Alternately, should ICANN be barred from ever turning off any domain for any reason whatsoever?

Alternately, should ICANN be barred from ever turning off any domain for any reason whatsoever? Why would you want ICANNs freedom to be trampled?

>Iran and their calls for death to America?

Citation required.

(EDIT: to be clear, it seems that we require a citation to the official Iranian policy, not some clear agitprop around a popular slogan ...)

It's an extremely common slogan in Iran(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America). I should note that Iranian officials generally insist that it's not meant literally, although I'm not taking a position on whether or not that's true.

Oh, its a slogan .. I thought we were talking about official government policy.

I wonder if McCain meant his death chant literally:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7s5pT3Rris

Its probably a good thing he didn't get a chance to set official US policy on Iran.

EDIT: /s

McCain absolutely meant the US should drop bombs on Iran and cause the death of some Iranian people. That's not even a controversial position in the US, probably 75%+ of American voters would support that if proposed by the right person.

And he was a United States senator for 30 years, including a Chair of the Armed Services Committee. How much more involved in setting America's international policy could one be?

I think far, far fewer Americans support its illegal wars than you claim .. they're just silenced by the minority who stand to profit from it and who currently control the war megaphone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America

Uh - is this sufficient?

> Death to America (Persian: مرگ بر آمریکا‎ Marg bar Āmrikā) is an anti-American political slogan and chant which has been in use in Iran since the inception of the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America

No, not really sufficient.

Official Government Policy > populist slogans.

The very next line:

> Ayatollah Khomeini, the first leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, popularized the term.

"Death to America" is US Constitutionally protected speech, regardless of who is saying it. Your McDonalds example is fallacious, as McDonalds is not bound by the first amendment. Someone protesting on the sidewalk outside of McDonalds certainly has that right, even if McDonalds has bought the local government.

Freedom of speech is not simply being able to wear a Pepsi shirt in downtown Atlanta, but about viewpoints that necessarily make us uncomfortable. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". That so many are willing to discard our hard-earned freedoms for the lure of simplistic neo-fascism [0] is harrowing. Our society has been whipped into a stupor by the specter of foreign strawmen, while the real threats to the US are the domestic powers doing the whipping. If you can't see how this action is utterly anti-American, you are contributing to our destruction.

[0] One telltale indicator of neo-fascism is the analogizing of state activity to business activity.

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