Governments have long sought ways to regulate Internet activity, whether for the purposes of taxation, content regulation, or the application of national laws.  Effective regulatory measures have often proven elusive, however, since, unlike the Internet, national laws typically end at the border. Earlier this month, the United States began to move aggressively toward a new way of confronting the Internet’s jurisdictional limitations – the domain name system.

Domain names are widely used to ensure that email is delivered to the right inbox or to allow users to access a particular website.  The system includes a large database that matches the domain name (e.g. michaelgeist.ca) to a specific IP address (i.e. the location of the computer server).  The system is used billions of times every day to route Internet traffic to its intended destination. 

As every Internet user knows, inadvertently entering the wrong email or web address typically means that the email bounces back or takes the user to an unexpected destination. As my weekly technology law column notes (Toronto Star version, homepage version), legislators have now begun to consider the possibility of intentionally stopping access to certain sites by ordering Internet providers to block access to their domain names.

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