New Domain Arbitration Rules Get Results

Ed Adams wrote to us from the New York Law Journal which has the results of one of the first domain disputes resolved under the new arbitration procedures of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition to the results, the actual decision is online as well.

Comments

Perfectly reasonable decision given the facts...

[Masem]

The owner of the name "musicweb.com" was not using it in the interest of "music on the web", and thus is basically cybersquatting. Makes sense.

KEy thing is that cases like this need to be treated on a case-by-case basis. There are many things that going into the name of a domain that are not necessarily readily apparent. Let's say I took the name "coffeehaus.com" as a site for amateur poetry distribution. Given that many coffee houses in the area here are cultural centers, this name is reasonable. If, afterwards, a company that calls itself "Coffeehaus Coffees", which sells coffee, and tries to take the domain name from the poetry site, there's no justification for it, because the poetry site is using the name "coffeehaus" in good faith. As long as ICANN makes decisions like this, they should work out.

That said, given how big business want ICANN to open up more TLDs only if they have the opportunity to get trademarked names first, I would argue that registering a domain name automatically gives you the copyright on that name assuming that there is no copyright in existance for your service. In the example above "coffeehaus" would automatically become a copyright for the owners of that domain, such that if Coffeehaus coffees wanted to try to dispute it, it comes down to when coffeehaus.com was registered vs when "Coffeehaus Coffees" was trademarks. Of course, I see some problems with this, and given the stance of big businesses this will never go through, but it should be a goal.

And I still stand by my belief that the DNS system is totally messed up and needs a total overhaul that includes limitations on what TLD you can register in among other things. Also, I would argue that a single entity (person, business, whatever), can only register up to 3 domains without question. After the 3rd, additional domains are registered based on a case-by-case business. Reasons for getting 4 or more domain names should NOT include trying to cover all the TLDs with your name, or blocking spelling mistakes, or whatnot. There are legit reasons, but implementing limits on the number of TLDs will help purge the overly expanded namespace, force businesses to use the 3rd (or 4th) component of the site's address (the machine name) to subdivide their web presence instead of spreading thin, and to educate users on what the various parts of a domain name are and represent, as to use it to their advantage when surfing. This would also kill cybersquatters dead and make cases like the above unnecessary.

end rant :-P

Lots More ICANN Results

[Jim Tyre]

There have been many domain name matters which have been resolved. ICANN has them all here, listed by domain name, or here, by proceeding number, or even here, by commencement date.