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New TLDs Loaded with Fraudulent Registrations
Dan Tobias and others wrote in about the disaster unfolding during the new registrations of .biz and .info domains. Both TLD's are - by mandate of ICANN - employing sunrise registrations where trademark holders can pre-register or reserve domain names that coincide with their trademarks. However, neither registry plans to check the validity of the asserted trademarks. Guess what? Most of the reservations in .info thus far appear to involve fictional trademark claims on highly generic words - I checked ten common words for trademark validity and was able to verify two and confirm that seven were completely invalid (.biz is doing things slightly differently, and will probably have fewer problems). The challenge process costs $300, so it's doubtful that most bogus registrations of non-trademarks will ever be challenged - register yours today, or just amuse yourself by checking common names. As usual, I should point out that if the root were run properly, allowing any TLD to be added, this squabbling over an artificially-limited resource would be eliminated.
No mention of Dupont grabbing Science.info?
I notice more and more, especially on Slashdot, disgust and "I told you so" type attitudes when it comes to issues involving the interface between new world internet issues and old world rights such as copyright. The general feeling is that there is an equitable and efficient solution, the right solution, and because there are complications with one solution or another, the people who are instituting it are idiots or worse.
I know this feeling, it comes from programming too much.
When computers interfaces with our regular lives, things get messy. There is no efficient online check for copyright validity, so do we not do new registrations? No, we just go ahead and do it as best as can be done. It may take years to sort out the claims, and not every case will be fair to both parties, but such is the way with the law. Articles such as this continue to complain about situations with the feeling that there must be a better way, but meanwhile people are out there making mistakes and finding that better way.
Do I agree with the way ICANN runs things? Nope. However, I also don't agree with sideline punditry, which has reached epidemic proportions amongst the editorial crew of Slashdot.
Some registers such as directnic.com and others are allowing a lot of domains to go through the .info etc.
While checking a coworker managed to snag god.info, allah.info and a ton of others (muslim/hindu etc) Though you have to register for five years.
One of the reason that these guys are allowing the fradulent registrations is that info.info gets a certain percentage of the charges for the dispute, so they stand to make a huge amount of money from the fraudulent ones.
I saw some that had copyright information dated 0097 all the way to 2048.
This should be interesting to watch.
We can use P2P concepts for DNS as well as solve a lot of these other problems. My favorite alternative is DNS-over-freenet. This solution turns domainnames into a first-come, first-served free system, where unused domains are gradually removed from the system. That may not be what a lot of people want, but I think it sounds very fair. (i.e., you can cybersquat if you want, but your site had better be popular or you will lose the domain name.)
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
INFO WHOIS Lookup BETA This WHOIS contains official Queue 1 and Queue 2 results. You searched for: "microsoft" The domain name you searched is not in the registry, and may be available for registration. To register a domain name, contact an Afilias-authorized registrar.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Couldn't we add a boatload of root servers? This approach will open up another can of worms; namely synchronization of roots. With all the advances and brains going into P2P lately, couldn't a decent replication scheme be put into effect to minimize this?
Imagine, if you will, a root server with an "update" server handling all of the replication transactions. Bandwidth would go up, but the root server itself would be able to devote its processor to dealing with DNS lookups.
Maybe I'm just blowing smoke, but I'd love to find a way to dodge the ICANN bullet.
/tma
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Of course, that only applies to registered trademarks. That is, ®. There's lots of perfectly valid unregistered trademarks -- TM.
:)
More importantly, someone *could* actually trademark "movie" -- it wouldn't be a good trademark for motion pictures since it's already a generic term in that since, but might be a perfectly legitimate trademark for cosmetics. In fact, it is.
Sounds like what we need is not more top-level domains, but rather a law that says you may only own one domain. Period. If you're General Motors , you can have gm.com or generalmotors.com, but not both. then Pontiac cannot have pontiac.com, it must be www.gm.com/pontiac or something similar.
Now, this is just my personal prejudice showing, but I think it would solve the problem you raise as well. I support it because I don't think Kraft foods should be allowed to have www.kraft.com; they should be forced to use www.phillipmorris.com/kraft, so everyone knows they're a tobacco company, not a food company. And I'm not picking on Kraft; Nabisco is also a tobacco company, as is Chateau Ste. Michelle and many other companies most people have no idea are in the tobacco business. And I'm not just picking on tobacco; lots of businesses are really fronts for other owners, owners they'd rather their customers didn't know about. What's wrong with shining a little light on the cockroaches, especially if it frees up some domain names?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.