The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) takes the position that if a website is located at a .com or a .net domain, then they have sufficient ties to the USA to make them fair game for U.S. prosecutors. (source)
To understand this position, you need to understand that every domain name has a registrant, a registrar, and a registry. The registrant is the easy part — whoever registered the domain name is the registrant. Registrar is one that most people are familiar with too — this is the company you use to register your domain name. The Registry is the one that sort of flies under the radar. Every top level domain (TLD) is sponsored by a particular registry, and the .com and .net domain name registries are run by Verisign — a U.S. based company.
However, if that logic pans out — anyone who uses a .tv domain name might be well advised to hire a lawyer in Tuvalu.
