VeriSign, which is now a subsidiary of Symantec, recently filled a motion to ICANN, demanding the power to terminate the activity of any .com domain in the world if it's considered to be illegal or abusive, in the effort of aiding law enforcement officials.
According to
The Register, the biggest issue rises from the fact that certain web locations that might be considered legal in the US or Europe can be just the same considered illegal in some Asian countries and in this case it would be hard to act in accordance with both parties.
The company has worked on many occasions with law enforcement agencies in the US, helping them shut down sites that were advertising illegally obtained merchandise and they claim that police agencies around the world ask for their aid in similar operations.
"Various law enforcement personnel, around the globe, have asked us to mitigate domain name abuse, and have validated our approach to rapid suspension of malicious domain names," VeriSign told the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
If they'll receive the powers they demand, they will no longer require a court order to take down a certain address, a request from legal authorities being enough.
Finally, to show that they're part of a security solutions provider organization, they also asked the permission to start a "malware scanning service" that would allow them to keep a closer eye on .com domains all over the world, informing the registrar responsible for it in case anything wrong should be discovered.
The document filled to ICANN might be set up for public comment so anyone who has an opinion on the matter will have the chance to make it known. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this demand because as we've seen in many cases, with great power comes great responsibility.
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