Tag Archives: North Korea

North Korea Has Grand Total Of 28 .KP Domain Names

The secretive hermit kingdom of North Korea secretly let slip the country has the grand total of 28 domain names registered for its ccTLD, .kp. It appears .kp domain names are as common as filling dinners!

kim-jong-un-computerThe revelation came about when one of the country’s top level nameservers was briefly and accidentally to allow global DNS zone transfers and revealed the list of .kp domain names.

The list of domains, many for government sites, revealed by GitHub, is:

  • airkoryo.com.kp — for purchasing airline tickets (Air Koryo is North Korea’s state airline)
  • cooks.org.kp — for viewing North Korean cuisine
  • friend.com.kp
  • gnu.rep.kp
  • kass.org.kp
  • kcna.kp — North Korean news
  • kiyctc.com.kp
  • knic.com.kp — an insurance company
  • koredufund.org.kp
  • korelcfund.org.kp
  • korfilm.com.kp
  • ma.gov.kp
  • masikryong.com.kp
  • naenara.com.kp
  • nta.gov.kp
  • portal.net.kp
  • rcc.net.kp
  • rep.kp
  • rodong.rep.kp
  • ryongnamsan.edu.kp
  • sdprk.org.kp
  • silibank.net.kp
  • star-co.net.kp
  • star-di.net.kp
  • star.co.kp
  • star.edu.kp
  • star.net.kp
  • vok.rep.kp.

Interestingly the ccTLD mostly has registrations at the third level, and also allows registrations for .com.kp and .co.kp. Other ccTLDs either have .co.ccTLD (like .uk and .nz) or .com.ccTLD (like .au).

Terrorism Victims Can’t Seize ccTLDs Of Countries For Supporting Terrorist Attacks: US Court

Victims of terrorism can’t seize the country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) of countries that owe hundreds of millions of dollars in US court judgements a US court ruled Tuesday, saying that ruling otherwise would threaten the stability of the internet, the National Law Journal reported.”The terror victims wanted to claim the country codes for Iran, Syria and North Korea (.ir, .sy and .kp, respectively) to satisfy judgments against those countries.””The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit … said the country codes couldn’t be seized to satisfy judgments under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Allowing the plaintiffs to control that data could undermine the functioning of the entire internet, Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in Weinstein v. Islamic Republic of Iran. The court had authority to protect the interests of third parties, including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which manages internet domain names worldwide, and had backing in the case from the U.S. Department of Justice.”A ruling that internet names belong to governments and that their ownership can be transferred could lead to ‘an Internet that is less stable, secure, and free,’ the DOJ lawyers argued in court papers.”In light of the plaintiffs’ recognition that ICANN’s control ‘stems only from the fact that the global community allows it to play that role’ … and considering that the delegation of the three defendant sovereigns’ [country code top-level domains] could likely antagonize the global community … we believe the doomsday scenario is not beyond imagining,” Henderson wrote.”Plaintiffs in a group of terrorism cases went to ICANN in June 2014 seeking to attach the country code domains for Iran, Syria and North Korea. ICANN went to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to quash those requests, writing that it had ‘great sympathy’ for the plaintiffs, but that the country codes couldn’t be used to satisfy the judgments. In November 2014, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted ICANN’s request, finding that the domain names were not ‘goods, chattels [or] credits’ under D.C. law that could be attached.”The D.C. Circuit side-stepped the D.C. law question. Instead, the court considered the plaintiffs’ ability to seize the country codes under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The law shields foreign governments from litigation in U.S. courts, but there are exceptions, such as in terrorism cases.”Even assuming the domain names were subject to the terrorism exception and that Iran and the other countries had a financial interest in them, Henderson wrote, the court still could not allow the plaintiffs to seize them. There were ‘enormous third-party interests at stake,’ Henderson wrote. Giving the plaintiffs control of the country codes would bypass ICANN processes and potentially undercut ICANN’s role in maintaining internet stability, she said.To read the National Law Journal report in full, see:
http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202764203988

Terrorism Victims Wanting Control Of ccTLDs Appeal US Court Decision

In November, a US federal court that ccTLDs are not “subject to attachment” in a case brought by victims of terrorism. However the plaintiffs are now appealing that decision.The victims of terrorism in the case came from Israel and the United States. They sued to have the assets of the Iranian (.IR), Syrian (.SY) and North Korean (.KP), (as well as internationalised TLDs for Iran and Syria) ccTLDs seized for compensation have failed.The federal court ruled that the ccTLD’s “at issue may not be attached in satisfaction of plaintiffs’ judgements because they are not property subject to attachment under District of Columbia law.”The court ruled that under District of Columbia law their attachment is not permissible. However the court also noted that even though ccTLDs may not be attached, it did not mean they cannot be property. In a footnote, “the Court concluded that ccTLDs may not be attached as a matter of District of Columbia law, there are no factual disputes that require further consideration. Therefore, the Court denies the plaintiffs’ motion for discovery as moot.”The federal court ruling agreed with ICANN’s legal filings in the case. ICANN sought to quash the writs of attachment citing ICANN’s technical coordination role in the domain name system (DNS) and arguing that ccTLDs are not subject to attachment.At the time ICANN noted they were pleased with the ruling.”We are pleased that the court ruled in our favour on the grounds that the ccTLDs are not property, subject to attachment”, said John Jeffrey, ICANN’s General Counsel and Secretary. “The court’s ruling demonstrates a technical understanding of the DNS, and the role of ccTLDs in the single, global, interoperable internet.Should the appeal be successful, it could set a precedent and mean countries, in this case Iran, North Korea and Syria, could lose control of their ccTLDs. The case was brought by families who have won American federal court judgments that amount to more than a billion dollars against the Iranian government seek to own all the TLDs provided by the US to Iran including the .ir TLD, the ‘̱’F TLD and all Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being utilised by the Iranian government and its agencies. The court papers were served on ICANN.The case followed earlier cases brought in the US by the terror victim plaintiff/judgment holders against Iran. The districts courts repeatedly ruled that the suicide bombing and shooting attacks perpetrated by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organisations in Israel were funded by the Islamic regime through MOIS. However, although the families have received compensatory and punitive damage judgments against the defendants, Iran refused to satisfy the court awards. Iran has been designated by the Department of State as an outlaw nation that provides material support and resources to terrorist groups worldwide since 1996.For more details on the case, including an interview with one of the plaintiff’s lawyers, see Kieren McCarthy’s article in The Register here.

In Quashing .IR Attachment Order Against ICANN DC District Court Declares That ccTLDs Are Akin to Second Level Domains by Philip Corwin, Internet Commerce Association

Internet Commerce Association logoOn November 10th the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted ICANN’s motion to quash a writ of attachment and a related motion for further discovery in a politically charged case in which private plaintiffs sought to seize control of Iran’s .IR ccTLD.

The litigation was brought under a US law that allows victims of terrorism and their families to seize the assets of foreign nations that funded the related terrorist acts. While most of the plaintiffs were targeting Iran the decision also covered the ccTLDs for Syria and North Korea.

In its Order in the case of Stern v. Islamic Republic of Iran the Court wrestled with the issue of whether a ccTLD could be attached in satisfaction of a judgment. In reaching its decision, the Court stated:

There is little authority on the question of whether Internet domain names may be attached in satisfaction of a judgment. Indeed, no reported decision of any American court appears to have decided the specific issue of whether a ccTLD may be attached. The Virginia Supreme Court’s discussion of these issues in Network Solutions, Inc. v. Umbra Int’l, Inc., 529 S.E.2d 80 (Va. 2000) is helpful in illuminating the questions presented. There, the court held that a domain name could not be garnished by a judgment creditor under the relevant Virginia statute because it was “inextricably bound” to the domain name services provided by the registry operator. Id at 86. The court elaborated:  “[W]hatever contractual rights the judgment debtor has in the domain names at issue in this appeal, those rights do not exist separate and apart from [the registry] services that make the domain names operational Internet addresses.” Id. The court further observed that allowing garnishment of a registry’s services as part of garnishing a right to a domain name would mean that “practically any service would be garnishable.” Id. at 86-87.

The Court finds this reasoning persuasive as applied to District of Columbia attachment law as well. The ccTLDs exist only as they are made operational by the ccTLD managers that administer the registries of second level domain names within them and by the parties that cause the ccTLDs to be listed on the root zone file. A ccTLD, like a domain name, cannot be conceptualized apart from the services provided by these parties. The Court cannot order plaintiffs’ insertion into this arrangement. (Emphasis added)

 

As can be seen, this Federal Court decided this 2014 case involving a top level ccTLD by relying on a 2000 Virginia Supreme Court decision involving a second level domain at a generic top level domain (gTLD).

But, while analogizing the operation of a ccTLD to the provision of services, the Court did not decide that TLDs or, by analogy, second level domains were not a form of property.

In footnote 2 of its decision the Court makes that distinction quite clear by again citing the 2000 Network Solutions case:

The Court notes that judicial decisions have construed domain names to be a form of intangible property. See, e.g., Kremen v. Cohen, 337 F.3d 1024, 1030 (9th Cir. 2002).  But the conclusion that ccTLDs may not be attached in satisfaction of a judgment under District of Columbia law does not mean that they cannot be property. It simply means that they are not attachable property within this statutory scheme.  Indeed, in Network Solutions, the Virginia Supreme Court nodded to this precise point in stating that it was not “essential to the outcome of this case to decide whether the circuit court correctly characterized a domain name as a ‘form of intellectual property.”‘  (Emphasis added)

 

This decision thus  leaves open the possibility that domains may constitute a form of intellectual property that cannot be attached to satisfy a judgment. Reaching that conclusion in future litigation might provide domain owners with arguments for greater parity with trademark rights while protecting their assets against attachment and other legal processes.

ICANN issued a press release in response to the decision in which John Jeffrey, its General Counsel and Secretary, stated, “We are pleased that the court ruled in our favor on the grounds that the ccTLDs are not property, subject to attachment. The court’s ruling demonstrates a technical understanding of the DNS, and the role of ccTLDs in the single, global, interoperable Internet.” Unfortunately, that declaration misstates the judicial opinion, which took no position on whether ccTLDs were some form of property, but simply determined that their service-like aspects protected them from judicial attachment.

It is not known at present whether plaintiffs in the case will seek to appeal this important decision. In addition to adding to the slim body of court decisions regarding the legal status of domains, the ruling also defuses a huge potential political problem for both ICANN and the United States in the midst of ongoing ICANN community discussions of the IANA functions transition and related enhanced accountability measures for ICANN. If a US Court – especially one as prestigious as the DC District Court – declared that it had the authority to order the transfer of a nation’s ccTLD to private litigants it would undoubtedly trigger a global outcry against ICANN’s continued status as a non-profit, private-sector led corporation under California law. That in turn could strengthen the hand of those nations that would prefer to see ICANN’s functions transferred to the International Telecommunications Union or to a newly created UN agency under intergovernmental control.

 This article by Philip Corwin from the Internet Commerce Association was sourced with permission from:
www.internetcommerce.org/cctlds-not-attachable/

US Court Rules ccTLDs Not Property Subject to Attachment In Case Brought By Terrorism Victims [UPDATED]

Victims of terrorism from Israel and the United States who sued to gain the assets of the Iranian (.IR), Syrian (.SY) and North Korean (.KP), (as well as internationalised TLDs for Iran and Syria) ccTLDs seized for compensation have failed.The decision came as a result of a U.S. federal court ruling that the ccTLD’s “at issue may not be attached in satisfaction of plaintiffs’ judgements because they are not property subject to attachment under District of Columbia law.”The court ruled that under District of Columbia law their attachment is not permissible. However the court also noted that even though ccTLDs may not be attached, it does not mean they cannot be property. In a footnote, “the Court concluded that ccTLDs may not be attached as a matter of District of Columbia law, there are no factual disputes that require further consideration. Therefore, the Court denies the plaintiffs’ motion for discovery as moot.”The ruling agreed with ICANN’s legal filings in the case. ICANN sought to quash the writs of attachment citing ICANN’s technical coordination role in the domain name system (DNS) and arguing that ccTLDs are not subject to attachment.”We are pleased that the court ruled in our favour on the grounds that the ccTLDs are not property, subject to attachment”, said John Jeffrey, ICANN’s General Counsel and Secretary. “The court’s ruling demonstrates a technical understanding of the DNS, and the role of ccTLDs in the single, global, interoperable internet.Had the case been successful, the case could have set a precedent and meant countries, in this case Iran, North Korea and Syria, could lose control of their ccTLDs. The case was brought by families who have won American federal court judgments that amount to more than a billion dollars against the Iranian government seek to own all the TLDs provided by the US to Iran including the .ir TLD, the ایران TLD and all Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being utilised by the Iranian government and its agencies. The court papers were served on ICANN.The case followed earlier cases brought in the US by the terror victim plaintiff/judgment holders against Iran. The districts courts repeatedly ruled that the suicide bombing and shooting attacks perpetrated by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organisations in Israel were funded by the Islamic regime through MOIS. However, although the families have received compensatory and punitive damage judgments against the defendants, Iran refused to satisfy the court awards. Iran has been designated by the Department of State as an outlaw nation that provides material support and resources to terrorist groups worldwide since 1996.ICANN has published the ruling at:
https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/order-memo-granting-motion-to-quash-writs-10nov14-en.pdf

Is ICANN’s .IR Response at Odds with the ACPA and ICE Domain Seizures? by Philip Corwin, Internet Commerce Association

Internet Commerce Association logoAn initial review of ICANN’s response to litigation seeking it to turn over control of the ccTLDs of Iran, Syria and North Korea led to the conclusion that it had opened a “legal can of worms”. A few more just wriggled out, and they threaten the basic assumption that underlies the U.S. statute governing cybersquatting and the practices engaged in by Federal officials seizing domain names engaged in intellectual property infringement.

In a blog post, “Are Internet domain names “property”?”, placed at the influential Volokh Conspiracy legal discussion website, Temple University Law Professor David Post further explores the implications of ICANN’s response. His comments carry considerable weight, as he is also a Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Nexa Center for Internet and Society.

Professor Post starts out by declaring his distaste for “resolving through private litigation matters that are more properly viewed as substantial international disputes between nation-states”. That aversion is heightened when it “embroils ICANN in either (a) complicated questions of international politics or (b) the resolution of private disputes”. And he gets to the heart of the potential international political dangers of this litigation with his observation that, “the notion that the decisions of US courts can interfere in ICANN’s management of the domain name system in a way that courts elsewhere cannot… will not go over very well in an international community that already thinks the US government exercises too much control over ICANN, and over Internet infrastructure in general.

While agreeing with ICANN’s argument that a ccTLD is not property, he goes on to observe that this contention is actually at sharp odds with existing U.S. law and enforcement practices involving the protection of trademarks and copyrights:

It’s a very sensible argument, and I’ve made it myself many times.  The problem, though, is that US law already – very unfortunately, in my view, but there you are – treats domain names as if they were “property”.  The Anti-Cybersquatting Protection Act permits aggrieved trademark owners to institute in rem actions against domain names whose owners are located abroad (and not subject to the jurisdiction of the US courts) – to seize the domain names and then to adjudicate the rights associated with them, on the fiction that the names are indeed property located in the judicial district where the particular domain name registry is located.  On very much the same theory – that domain names are seizeable “property” – the Dept. of Homeland Security has issued several thousand seizure orders over the past few years against domain names allegedly involved in large-scale copyright infringement.  

Professor Post, after noting that, “I would expect the plaintiffs here to press this argument in opposition to ICANN’s motions to quash”, concludes his post with the hope that “ICANN’s other arguments are strong enough that the judge can (and hopefully will) grant its motion without having to delve into this rather tricky nomenclatural minefield about what is, and what isn’t, property”.

But what if the case doesn’t play out that way? What if the plaintiffs raise the “are domains property?” issue with sufficient force to get the DC Court of Appeals to rule on it? What if the politically fraught nature of this case propels it on to the Supreme Court, which may have to resolve conflicting Appeals Court decisions that have split on whether second level domains are property or just a form of licensure?

Any holding that domains are not property could well be the basis for a challenge to the in rem provision of the ACPA, and to ICE’s domain seizure practices.

There is of course an argument to be made that ccTLDs assigned to nation-states and whose relationship with ICANN is strictly voluntary are fundamentally different in legal character than gTLDs that are based upon a registry agreement contract between the operator and ICANN. But that argument is most unlikely to be raised in this case as it only involves ccTLDs.

Lots of parties not involved in this litigation have a considerable stake in it. New gTLD applicants that have expended large investments in their registries would like certainty over the U.S. legal status of them, since all registry contracts are governed by US law. While there is no consensus within the domain investment community as to whether it would be desirable to have interests in second level domains classified as a property right, it seems axiomatic that if a gTLD is found to not constitute property than a second level subunit of it will likewise lack that status. And trademark and copyright owners may not be pleased with any judicial decision that undermines the basis of their current online protections.

This is but the latest potential fallout of this most unusual case. More consequences may be in the offing. Stay tuned.

This article by Philip Corwin, Internet Commerce Association, was sourced with permission from:
www.internetcommerce.org/is-icanns-ir-response-at-odds-with-the-acpa-and-ice-domain-seizures/

ICANN’s .IR Response Opens Legal Can of Worms by Philip Corwin, Internet Commerce Association

ICANN has filed its initial response to writs of attachment issued by U.S. Courts that seek to have ICANN transfer control of the country code top level domains (ccTLDs) of Iran, Syria and North Korea to plaintiffs in various legal actions. The lawsuits were brought under a U.S. law that permits victims of terrorism and their family survivors to seek the assets of governments that provided support or direction of the terrorist acts.As expected, ICANN vigorously opposed the court orders and sought to quash them. In an “everything and the kitchen sink” defense, ICANN argues that ccTLDs are not “property”; are not ‘owned” by the nations to which they are assigned; are not within US jurisdiction; are not subject to court jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) even if they are “property”; are not subject to ICANN’s unilateral power under its existing contractual agreements; and that forced re-delegation of the ccTLDs would destroy their value and thus be futile. All these arguments raise subsidiary questions of law and policy.Anything less than full court opposition by ICANN to the writs of attachment would be politically explosive – especially at a time when the IANA functions contract and its remaining official relationship with the US government is in transition.I have just completed a quick scan of the ICANN filing in the case of Ben Haim vs. Islamic Republic of Iran (although all of ICANN’s responses in the separate cases appear identical) and have a few preliminary observations – all of which relate to the central observation that this case has opened up a can of worms of legal issues:

  • The filing does its best to distinguish ccTLDs from gTLDs. However, because all the relevant US case law involves gTLDs it is forced to cite it and that inevitably muddies the distinction to some extent. For example, at p. 11 of the Motion to Quash (p.21 of the PDF) it cites the 1999 decision of the 9th Circuit in Lockheed Martin vs. Network Solutions which held that the then-manager of the .com registry fell “squarely on the ‘service’ side of the product/service distinction”. Extending this analogy to the present would imply that all incumbent and new gTLD registry operators, including those of .brand registries, have no property rights in those registries, notwithstanding the fact that all the relevant contracts with ICANN provide for a strong presumptive right of renewal.
  • At the top of page 18 (28), the memo makes the argument that, under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), Plaintiffs must show that the “property in the United States of a foreign state” is “used for a commercial activity in the United States”. While .IR and the other ccTLDs at issue have no commercial contacts in the U.S., this is not true for .CO and other ccTLDs that have been repurposed as quasi-gTLDs and are being administered by entities located within the U.S. – noting, of course, that this consideration would only be of consequence if a ccTLD with US commercial contacts was determined to constitute “property” under US law.
  • At p.20 (30) of the memo, it is noted that ICANN’s authority is limited to recommending a transfer of the ccTLD to the Department of Commerce (DOC) under the current IANA contract; that under that contract ICANN may only recommend re-delegation for narrow technical and ministerial reasons; and that DOC retains the ultimate authority on the matter (in essence, this position tosses this “hot potato” case into DOC’s lap).

However, this argument immediately raises the question of what the situation will be for ccTLDs will be after the IANA transition, when DOC no longer possesses final authority on TLD re-delegations and when there may be no contract at all in place governing the conduct of the IANA functions. Ironically, terminating the IANA contract between DOC and ICANN may place ccTLDs at greater risk of being re-delegated pursuant to the judicial orders of U.S. courts because this fallback contractual argument will no longer be available!For now at least the DOC does not have to take any position on these disputes, as ICANN has not recommended that any of the ccTLDs be re-delegated pursuant to the Writs. It is probably accurate to speculate that the DOC would prefer to never be asked to make the decision of whether such actions should be taken to compensate US terror victims under applicable US law, as all the answers available would have significant domestic and international political and legal repercussions.Again, these are just preliminary views based on a quick initial review of the filing. But, while ICANN has done its best to quash the writs of attachment for the ccTLDs in question, its arguments raise multiple other questions and issues.Now we must await the response of plaintiffs to these motions, assuming that they will make their best efforts to blow holes in them.But, however these cases proceed, they cannot answer the question of what the judicial exposure of ccTLDs will be when and if the IANA contract is transferred or extinguished, presuming that ICANN remains a non-profit corporation organized under California law – much less what the answer would be if ICANN ever made the IANA functions subject to another nation’s jurisdiction.ICANN’s press release regarding its response is at https://www.icann.org/resources/press-material/release-2014-07-30-en.Its legal filings are at https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann-various-2014-07-30-en.The original Writs of Attachment are at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_dOI5puxRA9M3hweE9Eel9mVTQ/edit?pli=1.This article by the Internet Commerce Association’s Philip Corwin was sourced with permission from:
www.internetcommerce.org/icanns-ir-response-opens-legal-can-of-worms/

In Case Over Attempts To Seize Iran’s ccTLD, ICANN Tells Court ccTLDs Are Not Property

ICANN has told a US federal court in the District of Columbia, that a ccTLD cannot be considered “property,” and thus cannot be attached by plaintiffs in a lawsuit, who are trying to obtain the assets of countries that they argued have supported terrorism.”We filed a Motion to Quash in the US federal court today, to ensure that the court has the essential information about how the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) works. While we sympathise with what plaintiffs may have endured, ICANN’s role in the domain name system has nothing to do with any property of the countries involved”, said John Jeffrey, ICANN’s General Counsel and Secretary.”We explained in our Motion to Quash, that country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD) are part of a single, global interoperable Internet which ICANN serves to help maintain.” Jeffrey further explained that “ccTLD’s are not property, and are not ‘owned’ or ‘possessed’ by anyone including ICANN, and therefore cannot be seized in a lawsuit.”ICANN’s arguments were put forth when the victims of terrorism who had successfully won lawsuits against Iran, Syria and North Korea, sought to collect on those civil judgments. In their attempt to recover assets from these countries, the plaintiffs served ICANN with “writs of attachment” and subpoenas seeking information to help them seize the ccTLDs of those nations.ICANN also argued that if ccTLDs were property, they would not be “in the US” and therefore subject to attachment — rather the ccTLDs are located where the servers that contain the domain are located — in this case in Syria, Iran and North Korea, Paul Rosenzweig wrote on the Lawfare blog.Rosenzweig, a conservative attorney, also wrote that ICANN “argues that the suit is barred by the sovereign immunity of the “property” owners; and that it lacks legal authority to make the transfer requested. Finally (and to my mind most persuasively) it argues that having US courts force the re-delegation of the domains would destroy their entire value and go a long way to fracturing and destroying the general domain name system of the internet.”If successful, as I wrote on Domain Pulse/Domain News, the case could set a precedent and mean countries such as North Korea and Syria could lose control of their ccTLDs. The case was won by families in late June who won American federal court judgments that amount to more than a billion dollars against the Iranian government seeking to own all the TLDs provided by the US to Iran including the .ir TLD, the ایران TLD and all Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being utilised by the Iranian government and its agencies. The court papers were served on ICANN.The ccTLDs (and related IP addresses) targeted by the plaintiffs include; .IR (Iran), .SY (Syria) and .KP (North Korea), as well as internationalised top-level domains in non-ASCII characters for Iran and Syria.”This is the first time that terror victims have moved to seize the domain names, IPs and internet licenses of terrorism sponsoring states like Iran and are attempting to satisfy their court judgments,” attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Tel-Aviv said in a statement in June. “The Iranians must be shown that there is a steep price to be paid for their sponsorship of terrorism. In business and legal terms it is quite simple – we are owed money, and these assets are currency worth money.”

North Korea’s ccTLD Under New Management

The North Korean ccTLD delegation has been transferred to the Star Joint Venture Company, a government-backed venture in conjunction with a Thai company, after the previous operator appears to have lost interest in managing .KP.According to an IDG report, .KP “was first assigned in 2007 to the Korea Computer Center, one of the country’s top computer science establishments. KCC had agreed to let a German businessman, Jan Holtermann, set up a satellite Internet connection to North Korea and run the dot-kp domain through a German company, KCC Europe.””The company ran the domain and a handful of North Korean websites from servers in Berlin until mid 2010 when they suddenly disappeared from the Internet.”To read the IDG report in full, see:
www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/228202/.html

.KP Going Back Online After Few Months Offline

.KP domain names, North Korea’s country code, could be back online after being offline for some months reports PC World.

A number of .KP domain names became unavailable in the third quarter of 2010 according to the report with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) pointing the ccTLD to new servers in a first step toward bringing it back online.

“The new servers do not yet appear to be online, but IANA’s records now point to North Korean Internet addresses. The servers carry the “kptc.kp” name, which is probably a reference to Korea Posts and Telecommunications Corp., the country’s official telecommunications carrier.”

To read the PC World report in full, see:
www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/215412/.html