ICE seizure of bodog.com causes international concern

Visitors to bodog.com are now shown this image.

The federal government's "Operation Our Sites" has been used to seize nearly 1,000 domain names in the past few months - most of which were for websites used to illegally stream sports events and television shows. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson recently told Threat Level that ICE "has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil."

Canadian-registered domain name Bodog.com, a website for an online gambling site, had its domain seized just last week, causing concern among many non-US companies using .com domains. American company VeriSign controls the .com TLD, allowing the US government to seize any .com domain.

Bodog began operating under the name Bovada in July 2011. Their new website, www.bovada.lv, is registered under Latvia's TLD. Their original website is still available under its IP address, 66.212.249.92, but American users are quickly told that their "funds are still accessible" on Bovada's website. Bodog's founder, Calvin Ayre, and others have been indicted for illegal gambling and money laundering.