The US Government’s seizure of several gaming domains over the last couple of years has elicited a lot of questions about the US’ jurisdiction over the internet. With a designation like the World Wide Web, many might mistake the world of “.coms” as some sort of international waters. Many find it especially fishy when the US Government seizes domain names originally registered in a different country and wholly operated outside of the US.

The latest example of this was the seizure of Bodog.com and the indictment of Calvin Ayre. Not only had the domain been registered in Canada and the gaming operation been run from there, but also Bodog/Bovada had all but ceased usage of Bodog.com for any gaming purposes. There was no shortage of people to point this out, in an outrage over the US Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and the ICE banding together to overstep their jurisdiction.

However, the outcry is for naught. The US is putting into effect the same powers they’ve used to shut down hundreds upon hundreds of foreign domains over the years. Some of the most famous ones include the lockdown of Megaupload.com, the big three poker sites on Black Friday, and 307 sites that happened in one month alone, leading up to the Super Bowl.

What all of these sites had in common—beside the obvious fact that they were suspected of infringing on US law—was that they all had domains administered by a US-based company, Verisign. This is because regardless of where and with whom a domain is registered all of the most common classes of names are through Verisign, including .com, .net, .cc and .tv.

In fact, this is why Ayre had moved the nuts and bolts of Bodog/Bovada to .eu sites, which are wholly administered by gaming-friendly countries. Though it’s technically possible for the US Department of Justice to get a warrant to take over such sites, it seems unimaginable that facilitating gaming for American players would be sufficient for gaming-friendly countries to turn them over.

So in spite of how dubious many might find the process, it is in fact wholly legitimate. And as beneficial as it would seem for companies operating outside of the US to be free of their enforcement, it’s unlikely to change. As long as Verisign runs the .com domains and as long as they’re US-based, the current system seems inevitable.