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Well he wasn't fat and didn't dress all that funny, but he did have a long beard.

I think the major points that are considered in resolving Domain Name disputes are

1. was it chosen in bad faith - i.e sully a tangible "goodwill" (even an artists name is valubale property)
2. was it chosen to be sold later at a high price to the original trademark/copyright owner
3. was it chosen to divert legitimate trafic to illegitimate sites using typos etc.

In each case you will see that the desire it to see whether bad intentions and commercial gains were involved.

My analogy with the Nissan case was to illustrate that Nissan Computer Company had a much stronger case than Mike Rowe but still lost. So, the enthusiasm must be tempered in taking on MS.

The Domain Name Handbook has a very good listing of many Domain Name Disputes Domain Name Handbook: DOMAIN DISPUTES I - R and you shall see that there are other cases than Nissan.com that might be conceptually more similar to the Mike Rowe case, but they all also mainly deal with the points I enumerated earlier.

An IP Attorney/Lawyer/Agent could probably shed more light on a better prior case to compare Mike Rowe dispute with.

"I am motivated to stick with what I believe in."

And so he should. It would seem Microsoft has no choice but to back down as, legally, it doesn't have a hope in hell of winning and there are plenty of lawyers out there who would love to get a win against Microsoft under their belt.

I think if he does get enough support, he probably should fight back. But it brings another case of the Nissan.com domain to me in which the domain name can't be used commercially.

What I thought was very interesting about the case was mentioned in the FAQ to the Nissan.com case. It said

1. As of June 12th 2000 there are (2223) domain names registered on the Internet containing the word nissan in them. To the best of our knowledge, most of those domains are not owned by Nissan Motor Co. Click here to view a partial list of them.
2. Also here is another list with nissan as the first word of the domain name there are (860 ) of them Click here to view. If you wish to see which entity owns any particular listing, just click on the WHOIS link next to it.

In the www.MikeRoweSoft.com case the interpretion is weaker as the similarity is "phonetic" which is really quite fuzzy, compared to the actual presence of the word "nissan" in the domain name. Despite this the original owner of the Nissan.com domain could not prevail.

If you go to the website Nissan.com you see the following Notice: In compliance with a ruling issued by the United States District Court in Los Angeles on November 14, 2002, in the lawsuit of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. v. Nissan Computer Corporation, this web site has been converted to non-commercial use.

The story from the Domain Name Handbook was

1. Japanese automaker Nissan Motors Co., Ltd. and Nissan North America, Inc. filed suit against Nissan Computer Corp., a North Carolina-based corporation since 1991 with a registered trademark for its name.
2. Uzi Nissan, an Israeli-American born in Jerusalem, registered NISSAN.COM in 1994 to expand his computer business and NISSAN.NET two years later to expand his ISP business.
3. In August 1999, he posted a logo similar to that of Nissan Motor Corp, and began promoting automobile-related products and services.
4. The automaker filed suit for trademark dilution on December 10, 1999. The court granted a preliminary injunction and held that Mr. Nissan is trading on the automaker's goodwill and diverting potential Nissan car customers to other websites.
5. He was ordered to post a prominent disclaimer of any connection to Nissan Motor Corp and refrain from displaying any auto-related information.

So, I guess, I could see something like this happen. Mike Rowe may be ordered to post a prominent disclaimer of any connection to Microsoft Corp and refrain from displaying any computer-related information. IANAL.

The Internet is the primary storage place for all information contained in the world, and largely serves as a global resource onto which a price simply cannot be placed.

Therefore, I and many other feel that the actions of those on the executive board of ICANN must be closely monitored. Anyone and everyone who's ever signed onto AOL or Prodigy or even MSN has a stake in these events.

I've attached below a list of some sites to gleam information from about the latest happenings (and scandals) related to ICANN.

- http://www.icannwatch.org/
- http://www.icannwatch.com/
- http://www.atlargestudy.org/index.html
- And, for reference, http://www.domainhandbook.com/archives/comp-icannb ylaws.html

I'm generally reasonably available by e-mail to talk about this stuff. (karl@cavebear.com)

If you want some of the raw materials a good place to start is Ellen Rony's archives at http://www.domainhandbook.com Also take a look at Bret Fausett's blog - http://www.lextext.com/icann/index.html

The IFWP you refer to was not the source of ICANN. Rather, it was Joe Sims of Jones Day who worked in secret, making unknown agreements with unknown parties for unknown quid-pro-quos who created the ICANN we know today.

The IFWP process was derailed by a self-appointed steering committee that included, among others, the person who (unknown to the public) soon be named the President of the new ICANN.

The IFWP materials may be seen via http://domainhandbook.com/ifwp.html

This kind of thing has been happening with increasing frequency recently, and in many instances the subsequent holder of the domain name is a porner trying to catch those who go to the name thinking that it's still what it used to be.

When the name previously was used for childrens materials my guess is that a case could be made that the second person is intentionally targeting children - and the existing legal system has plenty of cauldrons of boiling oil for those kinds of folks.

There are several useful resources: There's Carl Opendahl's "Considerations for innocent domain name owners"http://www.patents.com/dno.htm

And then there's the collection of things by Ellen Rony at http://www.domainhandbook.com/media.html In particular see: Pornography Takes Over Financial Site for Children http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/technology/26NET .html

Seriously, though, ICANN was created by a few folks back before most country codes were even used, and may have outgrown itself.

I was using the Internet with a .uk address in 1985, which is to say seventeen years before ICANN was founded. It was created (as I've detailed in another post) following an extensive open international consultation process in which I took part - and you could have, too, if you'd been bothered. Certainly it's a mess; certainly it needs to be changed. Join ISOC and campaign!

...as I understand it, ICANN was just sort of created by the Commerce Department without regards to any outside opinions.

This is untrue. There was an extended process of consultation, involving meetings in Geneva (which I attended), Singapore, and Buenos Aires.

It seems like the Commerce Department is extending governmental rights to ICANN since the Commerce Department pretty much goes along with whatever they say.

Well, and what else are they going to do? If the United States Government tried to control Internet governance, the rest of the world would not be very pleased, to put it mildly. Face it, the Internet changes things, and makes national governments less and less relevent. We have to develop new ways to govern the Internet, and ICANN is an experiment. Personally I preferred it's predecessor, and I agree that the current lawyer-driven ICANN is a bit of a mess. But we're learning.

Perhaps we, as Internet users, should petition the Commerce Department for changes we want to top-level domains and other naming issues. To this end, I think we should question the foundation of ICANN.

What has the government of one nation got to do with it? How can the United States government change things? If you want to change things, join ISOC and come to Stockholm next week. If you come to my tutorials, I'll even stand you a beer!

To MPAA, RIAA, lawyers and politicians everywhere: Someday you're gonna die and stink just like everyone else. What will your legacy be?

Let's say someone set up juliaroberts.com, and it was a fan site, and they registered it in good faith. Should she be able to take it away? I'd say not. Obviously the microsof.com guy was abusing microsofts trademark on their name, because he was posting a page related to the software industry. But this has come up before, for example, when the people who produce Archie Comics went and sued a parent who registered veronica.org (which is a dead site now), after his daughter Veronica was born.

Incidentally, you can find a nice collection of these blurbs here.

All in all, its most people with money for lawyers trampling on people without, and it is generally just disgusting abuse of IP law. The guy who once owned tatooine.com doesn't have it any more. And there's not even a web page there.

One obvious indication of squatting is people mass-registering domain names. But I'd say unless squatting is clear, first come, first serve. And even with a squatter, they should be reimbursed for all domain fees paid.

I'm just thankful we have 2600 to push some buttons and stand up for people.

Well, the NFL Players Association said that Gridiron.com can't use players' names on their web site. Additionally, a site called NFLToday.com (and .net, and .org) was slapped down by the NFL. And the New York Yankees didn't like a man who had newyorkyankees.com.

These and more from Domain Diaries, brought to my attention through Google.