Slashdot Mirror
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
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...
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.
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")
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again