In a landmark ruling that signals a win for the current system of Internet governance, a U.S. court has quashed an attempt to seize Iran’s, Syria’s and North Korea’s domains as part of a lawsuit against those countries’ governments.

The plaintiffs in the case wanted to seize the country’s ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) .ir, .sy and .kp after they successfully sued Iran, Syria and North Korea as state sponsors of terrorism. The domain seizure was part of a financial judgment against those governments.

The claimants wanted to seize the domains from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit US-based organization which oversees the Internet.

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