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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?
Looks like microsoft.biz and microsoft.info are available if anybody has time on their hands.
TechNoir
Yeah, and alt.* is now a wasteland of porn spammers.
Having said that, the managed heirarchies are still usable so it's maybe not a bad idea.
Deleted
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.
It probably *is* a trademarked name. Back in the '60s or '70s that was the name of a particular brand of surfboard wax. Still is for all that I know.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...How is it fraudulent, if you bought it?
You can register mcdonalds.com and list Harry Balzac as your contact person as far as I'm concerned.. If you're the first in line to grab the domain, it should be yours. Thats what the whole appeals process is for. Suppose your company is McDonald's Heating & Air Conditioning, and you got your name on the dotted line before The Evil Clown did.. Too bad for Clownburger, the domain is yours, and if they still have a problem with it, there are plenty of avenues of recourse.
This whole post is pretty much pointless. There is no such thing as a "bogus registration".
Bowie J. Poag
A managed naming heirarchy.
http://www.yelm.freeserve.co.uk/dns/
Deleted
The most valuable commodity I know of is information. - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street
No. The DNS protocol imposes a limit of 255 bytes on the list of root server names and addresses, which seems to mean that there can only be 13 of them.
Trivially, if at all. Looking up NS for 'ford.com.', charitably assuming NS for 'com.' has been cached, is one query. Likewise looking up NS for hypothetical TLD 'ford.' would be one query. The labor just shifts from the gTLD servers to the root servers. Same amount of work.
See above.
Do tell. A bigger cache preload file shipped with resolvers? Going from 250 bytes to 500? Heavens. We'll all have to sell our gold fillings to buy larger hard drives.
First of all, that's a separate issue. Secondly, who cares? If they're poorly managed, they're poorly managed. Why is that a problem for anyone except those who depend on that particular TLD - just like people who now depend on a particular ISP or other service provider?
Huh? .com + .net + .org is as about as flat as it could possibly be - how many zillion 2LDs does .com have again? Oh, you say that .museum solved all that and now we've reached the optimal level of hierarchy? I see.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Worst. TLD. Ever.
When companies shell out hard cash (business.com sold for $3.2 million) for a domain someone else got for $30, what do you expect? With this knowledge, if you could get your hands on business.biz for $30, wouldn't you bite? I sure as hell would. Someone will pay at least a few hundred grand for it...
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
As another example to manufacturing scarcity (albeit an entirely legal one), consider Ty Beanie Babies: This is a company that developed a specific expertise in creating an artificial scarcity, and making sure that supply was always just a step behind demand.
For a more sinister example, consider the coal mining and oil industries which have been funding the anti-nuclear movement behind the scenes for years, and scuttling space-based power sattelite plans to maintain the energy scarcity that keeps people using fossil fuels.
Or General Motors, which bought up the Los Angeles Red-Line trolley system, only in order to dismantle it, thereby creating a transportation scarcity in Los Angeles, which their cars helped fill.
I'm sure you can think of other examples, both historical and recent.
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
then the DNS architecture would turn out flat. Maybe this is a difficult concept for you but the DNS was designed to be a heirarchical naming system.
Deleted
So much for the Internet.. Remember the good ole days when web addresses were http://www.server3.umystate.edu/~dude/web/computer .html
.root..
.root? Just have one person register one domain name (www.generic-domain.com or something) and then give everyone ~directories under it.
Maybe we should just forget ICANN, and start our own
If you want to go back to those days, what's the need for a new
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm registering slashdot.biz and info as we speak.
Wow. Insight of the day. Thanks. And an avalanche of other legal and administrative initiatives intended to accomplish this. Imma hava think on one.
illegitimii non ingravare
If the root were completely open, then they would just squabble over who has the trademark rights for gTLDs rather than second level domains. You're only substituting one limited resource for another...
Domain name registrations are crooked! Why, I hear Amarni didn't even get to register Armani.com!
Seriously, tho... remember when Xerox and Kleenex got their panties in a bunch insisting their names weren't generic? Has anyone tried registering one or the other and arguing that it's a generic term? ie, 'Hand me a kleenex' or 'go Xerox my arse'?
Perhaps the reason we have so much trouble with domain names is that we have the wrong economic metaphor (or none at all). Why not treat domain names as real estate? If you're the first to stake a claim to coke.biz, congratulations. Coke can get into a bidding war with Pepsi to buy it. Same as if you were the first to stake a claim to a piece of swamp loaded with oil, or whatever. OTOH, if you use coke.biz to put up a site that is confusingly similar to the Coke website, then and only then could you be sued for trademark infringement.
This whole WIPO/ICANN deal doesn't seem so hot. Time for something new?
Alternatively, I do like the idea of opening the TLDs to everyone, but it might get confusing for Lusers ("coke.biz? Don't you mean coke.biz.com? Argh! I'll just go back to AOL...")
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.
The September that never ended will be replaced by the one that never started.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I think Nympho.info would be a great name for a web site. It was available as of 5 minutes ago. I don't want to bother with it, but one of you guys might. Go for it.
-B
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?
Who is eligible to register a domain during the Open Registration period?
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
It is becomming increasingly apparent to me that as we move from a scarcity economy to one of abundance, attention is shifting from control of scarce resources to control of the means of creating scarcity.
In other words, in an abundance economy, the only thing that is scarce is scarcity itself.
Therefore, ICANN can be viewed as nothing more than a tool for manufacturing and maintaining scarcity, and after that scarcity has been created, a tool for controlling it.
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
You searched for:
"icann.info"
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.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
The ones that need to be challenged will be challenged, and the ones where nobody at the trademark holder cares enough to do so will not be challenged... this is not hard.
OTOH, I wonder if in a legal battle over trademark dilutions (not necessarily involving domains), would the fact that the trademark holder did not register $WHATEVER.biz and $WHATEVER.info be held against them?
Also, Mr. Andrews of the United Kingdom, I spit in the face of your alleged trademark of the word "the". THE THE THE THE THE. Nyah.
If they did this the "right way" as noted in earlier comments, I'd gain ownership of *.jonkatz and make a mint off of disgruntled Slashdotters...
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
1. I just posted elsewhere on this.... basically, as michael says, any TLD could be *added*, but that doesn't mean any one group could *have* that TLD. (Anyone could create second-level domains within any TLD.)
2. On the contrary -- it would spread the load more evenly. Each TLD would get its own set of servers. It's a hierarchical system and this is exactly the kind of scaling that would be no problem.
This sounds like a recipe for mass confusion to me. Let me see, is that web site I want to go to called:
The result would be that anyone trying to maintain any kind of brand identity (or just prevent porn sites from snapping up similar names) would have to employ a full time person just to continually register names. Sounds like a jobs program combined with a revenue creation mechanizm for the name registrars. The lawyers would like it too - lots of new opportunities for copyright infringement lawsuits.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Why bother with TLDs anyway? These days the big companies just register them all.
If Microsoft registers microsoft.com, microsoft.biz, and microsoft.info, how is that any better than if we had just one TLD called microsoft.com? The more TLDs you add, the more they'll buy. Only the registrars win.
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
----
This is all so bogus. If all the trademark owners who already have .com domains grab all the .biz domains, then A) what's the point of .biz? and B) what's the problem with .com?
It's all just a scam to sell virtual addresses to people who don't understand the internet. Really, if someone clicks on Slashdot do they really care if the link takes them to "slashdot.org" or "slashdot.com" or "slashdot.biz" or "www.reallycoolwebhost.com/slashdot"? As long as some plug-in doesn't redirect them here, what's the problem? I.e., what's the need for .biz?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
The United States Government offered land lotteries, where interested parties obtained land for free, based on a first come, first serve basis. Fair and agreeable terms were initiated, and the squabbles were quite a bit less than the domain squabbles that exist today.
The same lottery should exist today. I rarely sponsor government interference in ANYTHING, but this seems an applicable reason for government: to protect private property 'squatters' from getting a ride they didn't wait for like everyone else. Domain names should be free and first come, first serve. If I want ford.biz, and ford hasn't asked for it, then I get it. Companies need to get over this "company misrepresentation" crap. And the government should give away the domains for free, not form some 'good ole boy' network like the FCC is.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Regardless of weather this is a good idea or not, it can't/won't happen because it would put the folks at ICANN out of work, and it's amazing what people will do to justify their job. There would be lobying right left and center to maintain the status quo. Domain registrars will suddenly be put in the same position ads companies in the music industry foolishly put themselves, with regard to having a business model inconsistant with changing technology. I have to admit though, it is an interesting suggestion.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Because the baboons seem to have screwed the whole thing up...
Yes, the word MOVIE was TRADEMARKED back in 1890 with a registration of 000000000.
pulheeze!
My genitalia was trademarked in 1965 as micro-soft for obvious reasons by my family. Can I have microsoft.biz now?
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.
Unofficial TLD's are out there. I use a few myself for my internal networks. What's to stop a motivated group of enthusiasts from creating .kids on their own? Register dotkids.info or something to tell partents to encourage their ISP's to add their root servers to the ISP's bind configs. Wasn't one of the new TLD suggestions rejected because there was a group who was doing exactly that, running their own root servers? So many groups want a kid friendly zone, but they don't have the balls to make and enforce one? (enforcement is the real tricky part...)
If I sould half assed, your wrong. Quarter assed would be a better assesment of what I know about TLDs and the root name servers...
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Move the squabbling up a notch. Instead of fighting over "business.com" and "computer.com", people will start fighting over ".computer" and ".business".
.com to the TLDs.
.org, .net), there are 6000 economically valuable domains based on English words. If domains cost, say, $20/yr, a person or organization could own 10% of the valuable domains for a mere $12,000. This would be worth a private person to attempt, on the high liklihood that a "business.com" scenario would be hidden there. With ownable, unlimited TLDs, the situation is worsened: the cost would be only $4,000/yr to own 10% of the valuable domains. If TLDs are unlimited and unownable, then the set of valuable domains would be the product of the the valuable TLD words and valuable second level domain wordes -- in other words 4 million. To own 10% of the valuable domains you would have to purchase 400,000 domains; again using our theoretical price of $20/yr, this would amount to 8 million dollars -- beyond the reach of most people and impractical for most companies.
Actually, I'd thought of this problem. The writer is on the right track but needs to add one more thing.
I think that any well formed TLD should be accepted but belong to no one. For one thing, without this provision, we are just moving the cybersquatting problem from
Under this scheme, Microsoft would be able to register "support.microsoft". I as somebody who is not connected with Microsoft at all would also register under the "microsoft" TLD, subject to legal restrictions about trademark confusion. Thus, I could register "i-hate.microsoft", or "monopoly-watch.microsoft" since nobody would think that these are official sites of the Microsoft corporation. However if I registered "seattle.microsoft" or "newyork.microsoft", then this could be confused by consumers as regional offices of Microsoft and I could be sued.
The trademark issue would remain under fairly generic TLDs like ".computer" (e.g. "friendly.computers" would be OK for anyone, but "ibm.computers" would likely arouse the ire of lawyers in Armonk).
Unlimited, unownable TLDs would greatly reduce cybersquatting. Suppose there are 2000 economically valuable common English words that could be used in a domain name. Given three TLDs (.com,
I actually think that the minimum anual cost for a domain should be higher -- say $100. This would discourage attempting to stake out most of the territory under a particular TLD, such as ".computers".
Increase the strain on the root servers. The entire DNS system is centralized around root servers and TLD servers. The ".com" TLD servers are pretty heavily stressed as it is. Add in all the traffic from ".net", ".edu", ".org", and all the country codes, and dump that level of load on the root servers, and you have the situation that would develop if any TLD was legal.
I'd be willing to bet that better than 90% of the DNS traffic is in requests for ".com" domains. Thus running unlimited TLDs wouldn't be that much harder than running the ".com" registry alone. There are also tricks that could be used to partition the load. For example, packets coming into the root servers would be highly redudant. A router could be programmed to mask enough of the packet to forward all the domain requests for the starting with the letter "M" to a particular network, to be handled by the "M" server.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
oh, for the days when you either memorized or wrote down IP addy's and the 'net wasn't clogged with aol'ers and lawyers.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Freedom and Liberty are apparently trademarked.
One company, YesNIC has registered trademark, food and Life.
Government is also registered. I suppose next they'll be confiscating the Declaration of Independence.
Erik
"You," Bite me.
"Each and every one of you." Bite me.
I mean, seriously. The way to end all this domain squatting is simple.
.TLD domain. Coca Cola gets .coke, .cocacola, .dietcoke, and all those. If it's a word -- in any language, then someone can lay claim to it.
.dietcoke domain.
Anyone who has a trademark gets that
Thus if Coca Cola Corporation wants people to go to http://I.Love.Dietcoke, then they have to run a DNS server that serves up the
I don't think it's impossible. I think that the root servers would wind up being a big dictionary, with the IPs of the various DNS servers for the various words. It could easily be extended to be mulitlingual (beyond what Unicode would allow), and it'd make everyone happy.
It would also simplify claims. It would be legal for me to use http://I.hate.dietcoke.mydomain because that's fair use. International trademarks, etc., would be decided in whatever legal forum it is that those sort of fuzzy property rights are decided in.
The gist of the problem with unlimited TLD's is dissolution and confusion, the former being the worst. Why should small business owners have their unique business names dissolved by a mountain of competing dot-whatever's when they got theirname.com first? It's already a significant cost to purchase "theirname" in .com, .net, .org and the other common TLD's. Taking the limits off TLD's dissolves the value of the existing ones to the point of "what's the point of having a web presence or even a company?". This all goes beyond trademarks... it's the value of a _brand_ that's at stake!
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
People really don't understand how the process that the Internet is going through with regards to new TLD additions. This is a TESTBED phase - the whole concept being that they try adding several new tlds with varied scope and purposes to see what the implications and results are. This is the same process that was done when Network Solutions was the only domain name registrar. 5 testbed registrars were chosen to see what would happen when the market was opened to competition - one year later, the market was opened up as a whole and today there are several hundred accredited registrars, and one of the top 3 registrars (Tucows/OpenSRS) was not even one of the testbed registrars.
.com. Come and get 'em
The reason the testbed phase is important is because of exactly the reasons people are complaining about the new TLDs. Now that people have noticed that there's a problem with trademark holder verification, perhaps when the process is opened up (which ICANN has said it will, assuming the testbed phase works) that will be remedied. You have to look at this as a feasibility experiment. Look at the new TLDs:
-.pro - restricted use, but unique in that it provides identity/professional proof of id (for lawyers, etc)
-.info - unrestricted tld, just like
-.biz - for businesses only, iirc. Semi-restricted TLD
-.museum - very specific restricted TLD
-.coop - for non-profits, etc.
This is a textbook example of what should do for a feasibility study - select examples of each type and put them into production. See what happens. Make note of what works and what doesn't and use that to formulate an overall policy.
The idea that ICANN is somehow for limiting the number of TLDs is ludicrous - everyone, from the internet populace at large up to domain name registrars, want new top-level domain names. Everyone would win. But ICANN cannot simply open up the field without understanding and learning about what the implications are. People are looking almost entirely at the technical issues with adding new TLDs, while completely ignoring policy and procedural issues. Issues like false trademark submissions only prove how necessary this process is.
Thanks,
me@mzi.to
If people are going to be turning to .info to find out actual information about companies and services, shouldn't those companies be excluded from registering that name? In fact, isn't it our moral imperative to register microsoft.info to let people know the actual information about shoddy software and trust violations? I personally see this registering of other companies trademarks as the exact sort of thing which should be encouraged (except for squatting purposes).
If aolsucks.com violates some sort of trademark law against saying anything that could possibly reduce the stock options of the directors, wouldn't a reasoned aol.info site with reasoned news about system outages, social acceptability, and technology lockdowns pass a legal test?
The ______ Agenda
The biggest problem is that Domain names are just BS anyways. If you can sucessfully run a server at 205.138.137.216/index.html and it get's indexed at google, lookie you got traffic! Sure it's not as easy to remember as www.hot-fat-babes.com but except for a few (as in 5-10) sites you remember, most everything else you visit is as a link or a "favorite" where you dont even care what the domain name is. Now, Dynamic DNS is useable for those damned dynamic IP addresses some people are forced to use.
I say someone put together a GNUDNS system and we all flip ICANN the bird... Make it open, make it controlled by a board of 20 people who are the pinnicale of Internet tech (not management) and only allow those people to be on the board for a period of 2 years and then they are gone. (also no more than 2 employees from any one company)
Oh, and make RMS the head of the board just to make things fun.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
.museum
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
I am familiar with the notion of manipulating scarcity to drive demand. GM played the same games in several major cities, including my own. I hadn't considered the idea of manufacturing scarcity of digital resources, or I had, but hadn't named it. DMCA is the canonical example, of course.
illegitimii non ingravare