Bomb victims denied .ir grab

The Washington DC Court of Appeals has decided that terrorism victims are not entitled to lay claim to a country's top-level domain in lieu of payment as it would pose a threat to the stability of the internet.

The long-running case stems from an Iran-financed bombing in Jerusalem back in 1997. Lawyers for nine US citizens injured in that attack sued and won a multimillion-dollar judgment in 2000 that they have been seeking to collect on.

As part of that asset seizure, in 2014, the group went after Iran's .ir country-code top-level domain (ccTLD). DNS overseer ICANN said it was unable to hand over the ccTLD, and a judge agreed. But the judge's ruling was shaky at best and the victims' lawyers appealed.

That appeal say a top-level domain could not be handed over as part-payment since that act would "undermine the functioning of the entire internet".

Notably however the appeal court bypassed the shaky legal argument over why the ccTLD was not property and instead referenced the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act which shields foreign governments from US court rulings. ®