David Kravets for Wired:

But despite EasyDNS and others’ outrage, the U.S. government says it’s gone that route hundreds of times. Furthermore, it says it has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.

This has potentially chilling implications for companies with .com, .net and org domain registrations that may have thought they were out of reach of the US government because they don’t technically operate on U.S. soil. And as seizures like this continue to occur, it adds to a continued debate on the internationalization of domain name registration.