Countering The US Internet Domain Clampdown

A new technology purports to help users of websites taken down by the United States government to easily find the sites again when they resurface elsewhere.

US authorities in recent months have raised concern in other nations for taking down websites on assertions of intellectual property rights violations or child pornography. The US enjoys a unique relationship with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) – which makes changes to the underlying internet structure – and with VeriSign, the registry for all .com and .net addresses. So these unilateral actions stirred concern among other governments who prefer a multilateral approach to internet tinkering.

Now Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing reports that the sites taken down were able to reappear elsewhere on the internet under new registered domains, but now a new Firefox add-on makes it even easier. With the MAFIAA plug-in, users clicking on the old address will be automatically redirected to wherever the site is now located.