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[Update 18:33] There seems to be a lot more at work here than I had originally noted. I'm going to clean up a lot of these updates later on when I get in - suffice to say, I'm not comfortable with the actions of the USG and the lack of clarity concerning what authority they acted under is very concerning. I no longer think that this was a sell-out as I had initially presumed - there's something far worse at work here. You read the redux here in which I try to what happened.

I am simply amazed that Verisign would cooperate with the feds to the degree that they would hand-over domain names to the feds - nameservers and all before the courts have made a determination. CNET has the full story. Feds confiscate 'illegal' domain names | CNET News.com

Apparently Virginia law presumes guilt before and during the until proven otherwise part...

More on this when I've recovered some from my rather emotional (I really can't believe how heinous this is) initial reaction. I'm sure that this will be picked up rather quickly across the internet.

[Update 12:20] So I've read this over again with a little bit more care and it seems that Verisign would be acting under the authority of the judge presiding over the matter. I still don't like the implications however - someone has made the leap of faith that domain names, dns and webserver content can all be treated the same.

In fact, they are all very different and probably deserve different treatment. Extend this type of treatment to domain names, dns and email and some of the problems that this leap of faith causes quickly comes into relief. The mappings between content and routing identifier is tenuous and rarely direct - the law needs to take this into account lest we get more bad law.

I've not heard Verisign's side of the story, but I sincerely hope that this was not an issue of choice for them. If it was, they made the wrong one.