A very interesting case is that of Rojadirecta which is a sports stream linking website. The main site used to be found on Rojadirecta.org but has since moved to the .es domain extension. Rojadirecta would list out where a bunch of sports were streaming live online each day, a web directory for the sports fans. The website found itself in the Spanish courts over some european football matches that it was linking to. It found itself in Spanish court not once but twice. The outcome from both court cases was that what Rojadirecta was doing in Spain was legal. The Spanish courts found no illegal issues with Rojadirecta linking to sports streams on their sites. If we fast forward two years from there Rojadirecta had their domain name taken from them by the United States government who said that what Rojadirecta was doing was illegal. The reason that the US Gov was able to take the Rojadirecta.org domain name is because the .org registry is run by a US based company. Even though cyberspace is supposed to be neutral and for everyone the US used their power to force the company running the .org domains to turn over this domain name.
This brings up the interesting question of what happens when different countries have different laws about online related issues. Is sports streaming and linking to sports streams legal or illegal or can it be both depending on whose soil you are standing on? Is it legal for the US government to take away the assets of Spanish citizens? What are the ramifications for cyberspace when one country begins to impose their laws on people located outside of their country? These are all important questions that need to be answered before the online world and real world face a collision course.
Rojadirecta was able to easily move their site and operates on the .es registry now, so the US government effectively accomplished nothing but forcing Rojadirecta to change their domain extension. Was this worth harming the US/Spanish relations or sending a signal to the rest of the world that the US will impose their will on foreign citizens? Whatever the end result position of the US the fact remains that Rojadirecta is alive and well and still linking to live sporting events.
