Re: New DNS vulnerability: political overreach

[William Herrin via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2026 at 4:05 AM Kevin Tillery via NANOG
<nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:
> A Texas court has suspended the .com domain of a Dutch porn site
> which doesn't have any business presence in Texas, because it
> doesn't comply with Texas rules about porn (which are extremely onerous):
>
> https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-secures-landmark-legal-victory-lock-pornographic-website-domain-and
>
> Clearly the US is not fit to manage top-level domains
> (other than .us of course) even though it ended up with
> them by historical accident. It worked for a while but now
> it's not working any more. Has anyone come up with any
> plan to solve this and make the DNS more neutral?

Hi folks,

Here's my take on the matter:

First, the law impacts network operations. Just as the "wild west" was
tamed, the law's long arm will reach us more and more. So long as we
can stay focused on the operational issues, I think that discussion is
fair game here. And I think that includes discussing how we, as
engineers, would like the law to evolve to better support network
operations.

Regarding the specific incident: .com is operated by a U.S. company
and the web site operator (Kick) was sued in a U.S. court. If you want
to continue doing business with a U.S. company, directly or
indirectly, you can't ignore lawsuits in U.S. court. You have to
respond. If you don't, the "prima facie" case goes unrebutted as do
the proposed remedies. This is not unique to the United States. No
matter which flag the .com operator flies, .com registrants will have
to answer legal challenges in that flag's jurisdiction.

Had Kick availed themselves of the U.S. legal process, the first thing
they'd have done would have been to have the case removed from Texas
court to Federal court. Paxton's case would likely have fallen apart
from there. Kick didn't and "default judgements" bite hard.

That said, I think it's an operational problem that federal law does
not require orders compelling action from _TLD domain operators_ to go
through federal court, regardless of the outcome of a state or local
level case. The TLD operator is fundamentally international in scope.
Under the U.S. legal system things that are fundamentally
international in their nature are supposed to be exclusively in
Federal jurisdiction. Am I wrong?

Regards,
Bill Herrin



-- 
For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/
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