Costa Rica News – As if the internet service in Costa Rica was not bad enough already.
The US tells Costa Rica, ‘Get rid of The Pirate Bay or we’ll shut down your country’s domain registry.’ Any questions?
Before, if a government took down a top pirating site, fans and pirates would quickly launch a few clone sites. As of late, however, the United States government has strengthened their tactics. They’re even arresting alleged pirating sites founders (even with poor health.)
But exactly how far will the United States go to take down The Pirate Bay? Apparently shutting down other countries’ domain names, according to a new claim from an operator in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica’s .cr domain operator has filed a harassment claim with DNS overseer ICANN.
Dr. Pedro Leon, President of the Costa Rican Academy of Science, claims that he has received harassment from the US Government.
The claim, posted by The Register, states that a United States Embassy representative has threatened to completely shut down the country’s domain registry. Without evidence that the country enables access to The Pirate Bay, Kevin Ludeke has harassed Dr. Leon multiple times.
“The representative of the United States Embassy, Mr. Kevin Ludeke, Economic Specialist, who claims to represent the interests of the US Department of Commerce, has mentioned threats to close our registry, with repeated harassment regarding our practices and operation policies and even personal negative comments directed to our Executive Director, based on no clear evidence or statistical data to support his claims as a way to pressure our organization to take down the domain name without following our current policies.”
Dr. Leon states the US Embassy in Costa Rica has contacted the organization for years about The Pirate Bay.
“Since 2015, the United Estates [sic] Embassy in Costa Rica, who represents the interests of the United States Department of Commerce, has frequently contacted our organization regarding the domain name thepiratebay.cr.”
Since then, the interactions between the Embassy and the organization have “escalated with time.” In fact, the Embassy has sent out various e-mails and made phone calls to shut down The Pirate Bay. Ludeke has even made personal negative comments against Dr. Leon and the organization. In addition, the US Embassy and Ludeke have applied “great pressure” on the organization since 2016.
Should Costa Rica fail to comply, explained Dr. Leon, Ludeke would shut down Costa Rica’s .cr domains.
If true, the US Embassy and Dr. Leon have ignored one key fact: thepiratebay.cr doesn’t have an official affiliation with The Pirate Bay. Accordingly, the domain operates as a third-party site. ThePirateBay.org domain is under United States, not Costa Rica, jurisdiction. The Pirate Bay registered their main domain with The Public Interest Registry in Reston, Virginia.
The Costa Rican Academy of Science also leads national scale projects related to cyber security and Internet infrastructure. It also hosts the national Internet Exchange Point (IXP) to promote internet growth and resilience.
If the US succeeds in shutting down .cr, multiple websites and networks across the country would cease to function. Basically overnight.
By Daniel Adrian Sanchez, Digital Music News
