Slashdot Mirror
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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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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.
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
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...
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'
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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
But then who's going to be the judge of whether a "family organization" was really created for the family or not? Some families have very active groups, while others just have someone who organizes a family reunion every ten years. Hard to separate a "real" family organization from a simulation.
At least I'm not a McDonald and all the name complications that could have.
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.