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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.
...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
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.
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
I'm registering slashdot.biz and info as we speak.
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'?
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
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 reason land rushes "worked" is that it wasn't easy to stake off a huge amount of land. You had to be living on the land and using it -- you couldn't just declare "I own everything in the rectangle from San Diego to St. Louis."
If anyone could register these names, there would be a huge DoS attack on the registration servers on the first day, it would all be over in about an hour, and there would be no rhyme or reason on the net ("Gee, how do i get to CNN again? Oh yeah, it's fkenncsodrsdg.biz")
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
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**
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.
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.
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.
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