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Cybersquatting Disputes Resolved Online?
worth writes "Network Solutions, Inc. has launched a new site to help resolve domain disputes online. They call it the online center for Domain Name Dispute Assistance." sounds like a very good, much-needed service. If it works.
It's nice to see that they've essentially admitted that there are problems with the existing system and are taking steps to rectify the situation.
Also, have you looked at some of the prices of domain names on online auction houses (ebay, etc)? they are crazy! some guy (or gal) is trying to sell really rubbish domains like e4banks.org for thousands and thousands of dollars. Its ludicrous! Just because a nifty domain like business.com sold for millions, they reckon they can get a slice of the cake too. Well, its not going to happen, dudes! The only domain that actually had any bids at all was jenniferaniston.co.uk ...
I'd like to see some sort of clause whereby you cannot sell a domain within a certain period of buying it (say 1 to 3 years) that would hopefully discourage these get-rich-quick merchants.
cheers...
NSI's lazy authoritarian policies that were in favor of the attacker, really had to go.
However, I still see problems such as the etoy case happening because the courts are so clueless as to the establishment of domain names.
Let's hope that they run it a bit more professionally than their current business. With my domain name, I had to put in MULTIPLE change forms over a period of SIX MONTHS before the damnable domain name finally moved.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Otherwise its basically sound. Let's just hope that they follow their own rules. I don't like all aspects of the domain name rules, but .com stands for commersial, and therefore we will have to accept commercial rules there.
Very high on my wish list is a top domain not ruled by the needs and greeds of big coropration.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I think that a better way to resolve domain name disputes would be an online voting booth with the bandwidth of kernel.org.
We could even have a new slashdot section called 'Domain Jihad', where every article would be about some domain, somewhere that needs our help.
(Did I mention that the online voting booth wouldn't require cookies?)
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
so, the advantage, i guess, is, to keep it out of the costly court systems... but, there are still some strangeties: it appears that the complaintant gets to choose which arbitration board they want to handle the dispute... also, there are many grey areas in the ICANN policy that complaintants can exploit: "bad faith," "confusingly similar,"... think etoy/etoys here....
Joel Reidenberg would be proud (he wrote the article Lex Informatica, that before we go legislating solutions, someone ought to pay attention to the fact that we can code solutions...)
This still doesn't solve the fundamental problem: domain names are unique, while you can have multiple identical trademarks, assuming varying locations or products. Acme auto vs. Acme fishing tackle, but only one acme dot com.
A start, but not a good enough one.
I tried to reg a domain 4 years ago and it was alredy taken. I have yet to see anything on that domain. I could have had my e-business set by now and making millions.
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Well, there's always bartending.
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ASCII art?? I thought it was a REGULAR expression
For those who don't want to sift thru legalese, under their new policy you lose a domain to someone if:
(1) you have it only to sell it back to them;
(2) you have it only to stop them from using it;
(3) they're your business competitor and you're using it to "disrupt" their business; or
(4) you're impersonating them or faking their sponsorship for commercial gain.
1 and 2 are reasonable, 3 would be a problem if it applied to just anyone (people satirizing or criticizing the trademark owner a la gwbush.com) but is OK restricted to business competitors, and 4 is alright in spirit but could be misused by broad interpretation ("That guy whose last name matches our paint company's trademark is using the disputed domain name to attract customers to his tax consulting business", etc.)
Mostly seems a pretty fair set of rules against both cybersquatting and domain bullying. Exception is that vague 4 may still allow some bullying.
Section 2d smacks similars of etoy versus etoys...
The new Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy allows the complainant to include any domain name that is confusingly similar to their trademark as well as identical to their trademark.
/snip
I wonder if the motivation for the new policy is to actually help resolve disputes, or to give some leverage to big money companies. Commerce on the Intenet is good, but the commercialization of it isn't.
Looking at their critereon for "Applicable Dispute", one wonders why they couldn't have used this as a basis for determining whether or not to get involved in the eToy case, yanking their domain from them for no good reason. It was pretty clear that II and III did not apply to eToy, and they say that all 3 elements must be proven to exist before they step in and get involved.
a.Applicable Disputes. You are required to submit to a mandatory administrative proceeding in the event that a third party (a "complainant") asserts to the applicable Provider, in compliance with the Rules of Procedure, that
i.your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
ii.you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
iii.your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
In the administrative proceeding, the complainant must prove that each of these three elements are present.
While this is an interesting PR move, it doesn't solve the underlying problem of domain squaters, and their practice of scalping a name.
Actually, I'm curious why more states haven't tried enforcing their scalping laws (i.e. some laws allow for no more than ~10% over the retail price). Scalpers are an interesting breed. They make money off of someone elses (often short lived) brand name. When a record company hears someone scalping a ticket, they often don't take action because it's good PR in that the person hearing story thinks "wow, they payed X to see Y?, they *must* be good). Similarly, this is often the case in domain squating (i.e. ~X million for blahblahblah.com? wow..e-commerce must be hot).
Now allow me to be clear here, I'm not talking obvios domain names without brand name investment, I'm talking about names that people (companies) have spent a lot of money to build brand awarness. Scalping this well built up name is wrong and more states should use the scalping laws already on the books.
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If you tried to start an "e-business" with nothing but a cool domain name, you certanly don't deserve any millions.
"amazon.com" was worth exactly zero bucks until that book$tore moved in. Slashdot would still be slashdot even if I had to type "http://209.207.224.42" before bookmarking.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
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I'll admit that I'm a purist - I think that .com should be reserved for buisness purposes, .net for internet buisness, and .org for organazations (sp). So what we need is .web and .per (personal). The .per is really important as the internet grows. The .per could be reserved for familes and individuals who just want a page. It isn't commercial, it isn't an organazation, it's simply their "home" on the web.
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
I know altavista's was pretty high, but wasn't there something that topped it?
At this point, due to netsol's track record along these matters, I'm too skeptical not to believe that things will continue to go the way of anyone who has a bigger wallet, and this is simply eye candy that's designed to merely put an air of legitimacy on this whole thing.
If someone doesn't want his domain to be yanked out from under him, the only way to assure that is to take his business to a different registrar that has much more sane dispute resolution policies.
This brings up a related point: I just happen to notice that aol.com is now registered by AOL's own domain registrar. Of course, there's no way in hell that anyone would permit aol.com to be reregistered in such a way as to make the domain vulnerable even for a split second, like what happened to races.com.
Which begs the following question: how can Joe Shmoe have his domain moved to a competing registrar without any chance of losing it due to netsol's usual fuckage, or is this a privilege that's only reserved for huge corporations with a fleet of lawyers?
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Haven't you learned the lesson from DEC? They used the "appropriate" name altavista.digital.com for their search engine, and then had to spend 3 million dollars to buy the "inappropriate" domain name altavista.com. Plus, who can type domainmagistrate.networksolutions.com without making a typo?
Slashdot sucks
Considering the multi-million dollar monopoly that Network Solutions was provided, it seems really offensive that they are just *now* getting around to providing this. It has been their own brain-dead policies that has cause this problem to reach the degree it has. I am not going to praise them for getting around to actually move forward in really addressing this issue. They should have considered it part of their job long ago.
Jan 4th, 2000-
Following the lead of several other companies, NSI announced today that it was patenting it's "flagship product", domain names.
"It was a logical move in today's patent-centric world", said the CEO of NSI. "We will be requiring that each person who acquires a domain name from us agree to the new license and pay a new fee; starting rates are $100,000."
On mention that this seemed steep, he replied, "Hey, nobody is _forced_ to purchase a domain name. "
The new license requires, among other new terms, that the domain can not be used to publish information about internet domain names-- unless authorized by NSI.
What came before the Big Bang? Hum, it must have outside of time...
Right...but "Joe Sixpack" is much more likely to remember amazon.com on a 10 second radio ad than i2wantchermonee.com
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And even when I hear these "clever" names it doesn't spark my interest because it seems cheesy. I would actually prefer 209.207.224.42
I s'pose I could use the news media for free advertising...then my name would be all over the search engines. But that's a tricky game.
Gone are the days of just hanging a sign on the door.
Troll?
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ASCII art?? I thought it was a REGULAR expression
How whould http://www.toys-r-us.co.uk do under these rules? This has to be one of the best examples of very similar domanin names - it is polite, to the point and is useful. I would not like to see the people running this site changed.
While it wasn't always the case... you can't register a .com.au domain unless the domain is directly related to your business name or a trade-mark registered to your business.
This doesn't change the fact that all of my preferred domains are already gone but it does make cyber-squatting that much harder.
It also doesn't do anything to help situations where multiple tradmarks exist across different industries, but I don't think DNS can ever fix that.
FWIW, even if you banned the registration of trademarks as top-level domains, there would still be conflicts on name similarities, and the larger corporations would start dummy companies just to get the domains anyway...
M@T
'sapientia potestas est'
Question One. Do we believe him?
Question Two. What were his parents thinking of? Or, why hasn't he changed his name?!
They can't even be trusted to have services available that they have had for a long time, let alone new services. And then when you ask for technical assistance, the reply is, "it worked for us, try again later." It seems to me, in my experience, that the technical ability there is somewhat lacking, for what they attempt to do. Beside the fact that the whole name dispute bull shit is absurd. I really doubt www.cocacola.com, that has stupid flash cartoons, or some other parody could really cause market dilusion. If they aren't selling soda pop, let them be. First come, first serve.
Isn't it funny that the same NSI that gives special priority to customers who buy loads of domain names should now set up to resolve cybersquatting disputes? Hmm.
Anyway, I'm more than a little leery of this, given NSI's track record. It took me three hours on the phone, long distance, and five phone calls, to get my NAMESERVERS changed. And I'm supposed to trust these people to resolve a domain name dispute for me? I don't think so. Also, NSI is a corporate entity. Their contracts essentially say that they have no liability to provide you with the service you're paying for. Why would I want a commercial company to decide whether or not I get/keep my domain name? *Particularly* a company that registered that domain name in the first place?
Or, particularly, a company that *didn't* register that domain name in the first place. What if you got your domain name through, say, register.com instead? Would they be more likely to say you were a cybersquatter?
I haven't had time to carefully read the document where they outline the policies, just glanced at it briefly (got to get to work). But I don't trust NSI as far as I can throw 'em.
slashdot.web
freshmeat.web
userfriendly.web
google.web
gnu.web
Well I can wish can't I ?
They first make sure they're the only dispute resolution forum around and then they set up Email accounts with passwords that are the same as the usernames - they do this for all disputing parties - and the first party to be driven to insanity and register with another accredited registrar wins.
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Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
Quote from slashdot story
Those rules are ICANN's Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. This policy ensures that the conditions under which a domain name can be disputed are strictly limited. For such a dispute even to proceed, a complainant must assert that each of three things is true:
- and your domain name is being used "in bad faith."
As long as you're operating in good faith, or you have any legitimate interest in your domain, there is not even cause to bring up a dispute over a domain. Clearly this puts etoy.com on firm ground, because regardless of the trademark issue (which should be resolved once their mark registration is granted) they win on the other two points. This doesn't stop clueless judges from issuing injuctions, of course. But having these rules codified as official policy will give the legal system better guidelines to operate by.These rules went into effect for some domain name registries on Wednesday, but will not apply to the most popular registry, Network Solutions, until January.
If it's anything like NSI's other sites...
(1) Click on a link from the front page navigation.
(2) The next page won't tell you anything, so click on the FAQ link they provide.
(3) Click on the question that seems most relevant.
(4) Click on the link in the answer. This will get you to a page with six nearly identical login forms.
(5) Try entering the info they sent you when you registered your domain in each of the forms. All combinations will be rejected.
(6) Click on the help link at the bottom of the page and send them email. You will be assigned a personal pet idiot to not help you.
(7) Repeat 6.
(8) Repeat 6. This time someone will mail you a form you can fill out using information you probably have (or should have).
(9) Fill out the form and send it in by email.
(10) Submit an article to SlashDot in hopes of pressuring the company disputing your domain.
(11) Wait.
NSI has 2 "good" rules here, 1 "okay" one, and a elastic #4 of which they might as well have sent up a flare to the critics of their system as it so blatantly screams "Hey look, we've changed! We just rewrote the rules to keep doing what we're doing!"
In related news, the NSI captured the Enterprise (NCC-1701D), flagship for the Federation of Planets. This move comes shortly after the intergalactic DNS conference at Kitamir. Apparently, the use of lawyers was outlawed... however NSI simply decloaked and shot the sh*t out of the Enterprise claiming it was not respecting it's authority.. oh yeah, and there was some mention of a trademark violation...
Let me explain...
From the ICANN Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy , where NSI got their rules, it states that applicable disputes occur when
- (iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
The points 1 thru 4 you mentioned in your post are paragraph 4b of ICANN's policy, this paragraph is described as definitions of what bad faith from point (iii) in my post are. Therefore not only should there be bad faith but also the complainant needs to also prove that the violator has no legitimate interest in the website as well as is in violation of a trademark. This is slightly more than just proving either of the 4 points you mentioned.Secondly a clarification, you said
you lose a domain to someone if...
(2) you have it only to stop them from using it;
the ICANN rule is actually you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct ;
PS: NSI's policy is identical to the one on the ICANN page.
Let me get this straight:
*Network Solutions* would declare itself the arbiter of a dispute about wrongly assigned domain names, and possibly expose itself to a lawsuit? Suuuure.
They're so whingingly corrupt that domain name searches aren't safe from piracy. Example: my step-brother used their database to check whether a name he wanted to use was taken. Lo and behold, it was free. He got the cheque ready, but the very next day, as if by magic, the name had been bought up by a speculator with no obvious connection to NSI. I've since heard this is a common story: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action.
These shenanigans, along with NSI's well-documented tendency to resolve in favour of the big bucks, shows their allegedly impartial dispute resolution mechanism would really be a legal smokescreen to cover their corrupt processes from public scrutiny, since after all the argument would have been "resolved".
NSI doesn't run stuff with a .co.uk suffix, so I don't think they would be able to do anything about it. Just one of those safe things about being outside the US.
Having good Lawyers solved my dispute. A company decided late last year that they wanted all the domain names even remotely related to their company name and filed disputes with NSI for all of them. Four I think. I decided they could kiss my ass!! My domain name matched my registered corporate name and I wasn't giving it up to these losers.
Something that isn't well know is the first thing that happens when a domain dispute hits the courts is NSI is sued. So they were named in almost every domain name lawsuit ever filed. I'm guessing they spent a forutne defending the previous stupid dispute policy. This probably forced the new policy to be released. When we started to file suit against NSI they decided it would be easier to cancel the dispute against us and have it refiled under the new policy. Never heard about it again. I win, they suck!!
Hopefully now that it costs more than a $.33 stamp to file a dispute most of these nonsense disputes will stop. Trademark infringement is one thing, stealing someones domain name through a poorly written policy is another.
All they did was put a web site that describes the ICANN dispute policy. the same policy that governs register.com, CORE, Name secure, AOL, an a whole bunch of companies wo register domains (listed at Internic.net). Their site is a FAQ about this policy and nothing more.
What happens if I go to another one, like Register.com??? I can still disrupt somebody else's business. This idea would be fine as long as Network Solutions had a monopoly on the domain name registration process. Now that it doesn't, some Internet authority (ICANN maybe?) should be setting up a web site for this kind of conflicts, instead of letting Network Solutions establish its own (and somewhat arbitrary) rules.
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
The problem really isn't the greed of corporations; it's their litigiousness. Network Solutions Inc. has been the proverbial jellyfish in response to domain name challenges in the past, but that's mostly because it has no motivation to challenge court orders sought by corporations - really, it has no desire to even stand up to the threat of a court order. If you want to change the system, make it a lot harder for a corporation to get a cease and desist order on the use of a domain name. The courts should consider an active domain name to be a de facto business address, which it is, rather than a promotional widget, which it isn't.
(If it sounds like I have no patience for gold-digging cybersquatters, you'd be entirely correct).
I wrote a slashdot post recently on the foolishness of letting NSI arbitrate valuable domain names with no legislative muscle behind it. Click on my user info and look at the article entitled "Capital Wins, News at 11" if you'd like to read it.
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
So where do I go if I want to dispute the registration of http://www.domainmagistrate.com?
Anybody realize that networksolutions.com and register.com both censor domain names? Niether will register supposedly offensive domain names. In fact, register.com won't even tell you they're censoring unless you call their support number () and give them hell. Read more on my site. Corporate censorship must be stopped!
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Anybody realize that networksolutions.com and register.com both censor domain names? Niether will register supposedly offensive domain names. In fact, register.com won't even tell you they're censoring unless you call their support number and give them hell. Read more on my site. Corporate censorship must be stopped!
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Today, as it happens, marks the opening of the Disputes.org/eResolution.ca Consortium. We'll be providing the first wholly online domain name dispute resolution system, and we have a very distinguished panel of arbitrators. It's all explained in our press release or you can go straight to either the eResolution or Disputes.org homepages.
The Consortium is accredited by ICANN, which means you will be able to use our services for all gTLD-related disputes in the legacy root, including domains registered by NSI. I expect we will be listed on the NSI "Domain Magistrate" page soon (as I understand it, that page is really just a front end for the ICANN-mandated dispute process).
I'm a founding member of disputes.org, so I'm biased, but I think our international panel of arbitrators is pretty impressive and the online complaint forms are handsome and functional. What do you think?
P.S. For this purpose, ignore my automatic .sig below. My participation in disputes.org is not connected with my day job....
A. Michael Froomkin,
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
I have a blog.
Once there was a young man, full of Vim and Vigor (Not to Mention Extremely High Percentages of Caffienated Beverages). His name was say, oh, Slashdot. One day, after seeing THE MATRIX and feeling rather clever that he saw the "Hidden Theology" of Neo being Jesus, he walked into the street, where he promptly was hit by a big, red truck. Happily, however, His palm V survived in its nifty A-Bomb proof case. Slashdot didn't.
Would anyone object if there were simply a prohibition on registering a domain name exclusively for resale purposes?
I should think you have to demonstrate a legitimate interest in the domain (i.e., be using it, and not put up a squat site) - and should it be demonstrated that you are a squatter, the domain name is revoked. This is conceptually simple, since the distinction between legitimate use and a squat is pretty clear...
Of course the chances of this happening are slim, since it means less money/more work for whatever registrar takes up this policy. I fear only a legislative solution will repair this... if only Clinton wasn't such a dumb shit about this.
SA
There are six billion people in the world that all want one of maybe 100,000 "good" .com domain names. Face it, everyone in the world wants $NAME.com , not $NAME.kr or $NAME.BIZ or $NAME.WHATEVER
... only *ONE* per last name.
What's going to happen? Maybe 10,000+ people are all sad about not getting a SINGLE domain name.
Think of how *FEW* people can _own_ $LASTNAME.com
TIP TO DOMAIN NAME REGISTRARS: Register your name outside of the US, and claim that NSI rules aren't enforceable in your country of incorporation.
When will people finally realize that $100 domain names was like the US land grant? It's almost over. Domain names will *Never* be $100 again. If you're upset AT YOURSELF for not registering names for $100, don't expect NSI to step in and MAKE RULES that somehow allow you to have "your" domainname for only $100!
What really gets me PO'd is the fact that someone went through the phone book and registered every family name. YOU KNOW that if it was a company name that was being squatted on there would be a trademark infringement lawsuit in a second, but individuals are not protected at all in this arena . I think that you should be only able to register/own a family name domain if you are registering your own. The only exemption I can see is that perhaps a family name is the same as the state registerd buisiness name.
Would Slashdot still be Slashdot if people had to remember/bookmark an IP address? I doubt it very much. For example, if you wanted to go to the (hopefully not) former etoy.com right now, could you? Not likely. Unless you have it bookmarked, you would have to search through a search engine (or more likely the /. articles archive) and find the IP address there. The entire point of DNS is to make server addresses easier to remember.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Here's how the new Policy differs from the old:
"State and common law" trademarks? What if my .com trademark is registered in another country?
"Nationally registered trademarks" is an interesting notion. Are we to automatically assume that they're referring to the US? Is the US the only "nation" in the world, or is if the only thing to be associated with .com?
"confusingly similar" is what started this whole etoy/Etoys thing. I find this unbelievable. Can I sue someone that has a "confusingly similar" telephone number?
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Yes, year2000.com has lost most of its value for Y2K Bug issues. But maybe the buyer has a really nifty calendar business or a company called "Year 2000" which is worth a lot. We don't know...but we know where to look soon to find out.
If you who think that etoy would win in court against eToys would do well to examine some of the prior cases of this kind. Take the ucla.com case, for example. In this case, someone registered ucla.com and put up a bunch of links to porn sites. The University of California Los Angeles (ucla.edu) sued them and won, based on the fact that the ucla.com site was taking advantage of the name confusion.
Now, I know what you're thinking: etoy registered their domain name sooner, so this doesn't apply to them. The thing is, etoy did some things that certainly look like taking advantage of name confusion. For example, they put pictures of toys on their front page, and their selling of "shares" looks like it was prompted by the eToys IPO. That makes it much harder for them to claim there is no confusion or dillution of the eToys trademark, which is what the suit was about.
I think that who would win the court case is very unclear, but it's also unclear what would happen if etoy lost. The judge might simply tell them to stop putting pictures of toys on their site, put up a link to eToys, and go about their business. Taking the site off-line was just a temporary measure until the case was heard.
2)
3) Use it or lose it. I would like to own, or even be able to purchase moc.com from Marathon Oil Company, especially since they do all their business through marathon.com. Other great unused domains? Think.com and toys.com are growiing dust. toy.com is considered so invaluable that it's owners are taking the much more popular etoy.com to court.
On another note. I'm wishing I was fast enough to purchase passport.com when it wasn't renewed. I would have used it and loved it. (That's a joke. Laugh.)
No Zen is good zen
Whether this is a good idea remains to be seen. The arbitration system used is unusual (compare the American Arbitration Association), and the laws under which disputes are to be decided is unclear. Major disputes will probably still lead to litigation. We'll have to see how this works in practice. But don't blame NSI for this one. Esther Dyson, maybe.
IMHO, what I suggested in a previous post would go a long way towards solving the first-come-first-serve problem.
Why not a BNS (Business Name Server) to translate a plain old business name or trademark to a number (not unlike yellow pages)? Business names are (in the US anyway) typically registered at least in the home state of the business. This process already has rules and procedures in place for resolving name conflicts. Likewise with trademarks and "service marks."
To reflect the geographic hierarchy, and allow otherwise duplicate names in a BURL, one could postfix an ID for the local BNS in square brackets, e.g. "VA Linux Systems [CAUS]". CAUS would be looked up in a top level BNS directory if it wasn't already cached. "CAUS" might be California, USA, but postalcode+countrycode might be better, e.g. [94089.US] for VA Linux. (I just used public info from their web site as an example, no other connection).
Multi-department, multi-ip businesses would have multiple entries in their BNS.
We can already do string-ipaddress translation manually in several steps (e.g., use search engine to get URL, ping URL to get IP address). And browsers/ISPs already play best-guess tricks if you type a partial URL, so maybe it's not so unthinkable to integrate ordinary business names into an alternative URL format.
NSI appears to have simply repackaged the ICANN material and branded it as "domainmagistrate.com." Every other ICANN accredited registrar has the same policy. It is required by their accreditation agreements with ICANN. Give the NSI marketing department credit though for getting all the press on this one.