Management of the virtual domain rests mainly with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”), a private non-profit corporation, based in California, that is responsible for the Internet names and addresses systems, including the domain names system (DNS).
As the organization in charge of allocating .com, domain names, ICANN delegated the management of .com domain names (which represent approximately 95 million Internet sites) to the corporation VeriSign. Thus, in the Megaupload matter, instead of attacking the various servers scattered all over the world, the American legal system enjoined VeriSign to intervene directly with respect to the 18 domain names that were the subject of the intervention.
Therefore, servers are still operational, but it is from now on impossible to get to them, for lack of a valid address. It remains to be seen whether the closing down of this network will have a deterrent effect on illegal downloading.
