Originally Posted by Odin

The points you make are accurate. But obviously it is a lot more complex then that. It is a matter of what laws and Government actions are most appropriate. The argument isn't whether the Government has a role, it is a matter of what role we trust them with. Additionally, as much as the US would like to think it controls the internet it doesn't and cannot effectively - that is a fact. Even if they control the root servers, if they start seizing country codes TLD's, etc you can believe that alternative DNS systems will rise immediately.

In any event seizing domains at the moment will prove ineffective past the few headlines it gains at the moment, people will operate from IPs or from the many alternate TLDs the US doesn't have direct control over, in addition to the never ending whack a mole. Not saying it is completely useless, but it will not be effective.

The most effective strategy would be blocking sites at an ISP level in the US (given the size of the market), but even then it will eventually be circumvented on such a scale that it won't even matter, if someone is willing to download utorrent to get their favorite movies, you think they won't download the inevitable circumvention software? That said it will have some effect.

At the end of both these policies though we will be left with laws that leave a dangerous precedent - especially for adult. Domains will be seized regularly in the future for anyone accused of obscenity, or other such matters, and sites will be filtered. This will become normal practice. When they pushed to introduce a child porn ISP filter in Australia, by the time it was about to come to fruition the filtered content included regular porn websites which were viewed as obscene, euthanasia websites, drug advocation websites (include for weed), etc. The US does have constitutional protections in place, but as every adult webmaster is aware the legality of porn, and certain types of porn, is still very much in question in the US.

In reality content owners have to be prepared for a long battle, and it will take international treaties such as ACTA, or the US giving up control of ICANN to an international body that represents all WTO nations, that has a process similar to the UDRP for dealing with infringement, to make any real difference given the nature of the internet. Everything in the mean time will have limited success. Unfortunately it takes years to negotiate such treaties. But 10-20+ years of rampant infringement is a small amount of time in the grand scheme of things given the revolutionary and global nature of the internet. In the mean time have patience and remain vigilant against *bad law past the short term "benefits".