Ruling the Root

Overcoat writes "Interesting review on Salon of the recently published book by Milton Mueller entitled Ruling The Root. The review claims that ICANN's dominance of the Domain Name System will lead to the end of free speech the the internet: 'But what is surprising, and disturbing, is the process by which control over the domain name system has been used to extend intellectual property rights to new heights. Ultimately, the free-speech utopia of cyberspace is evolving into a domain where corporate interests have more power to control speech than they have had in other arenas.' Not sure if trademarking "yahooo.com" constitutes a really big threat to free speech, but it's still a thought-provoking article."

Comments

WHOIS Surveillance

[DaveWood]

At first I thought this was a BS article bemoaning the special treatment the rich get when arbitrating domain name disputes. But they save a very big surprise for the end.

"Copyright interests now view expanded WHOIS functionality as a way to identify and serve process upon the owners of allegedly infringing Web sites," writes Mueller. "That is, 'technical coordination' of the domain name system is already being leveraged to police the content of Web sites as well as their domain names. Moreover, public law enforcement agencies, notably the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, have become deeply interested in the use of WHOIS to supplement their law enforcement activities. Ultimately, the intent seems to be to make a domain name the cyberspace equivalent of a driver's license. Only, unlike the driver's licenses database, this one would be publicly accessible to anyone and everyone to rummage through as they pleased."

People will draw different conclusions from this. But it's certainly not just about trademarks.

Trademarks on misspelling? Good!

[peterdaly]

When is the last time you wanted to go to burger king, called it buger king, and ended up at some other resturant trying to sell you a "buger king" burger? That doesn't happen in the physical world, it is isolated to places where a businesses physical address is how it spells it's name. There is nothing wrong with registering misspellings.

I have gone to slashdot in the past, mispelled it, and gotten an X10 popup ad...with slashdot's content. It took me a couple visits to realize why it was happening, as everything else seemed normal. Web sites have a right to try and protect themselves from domain hi-jacking like that. Another example is the paypal knock-off site, which says, or used to say how auwful paypal was. I don't know the adress, or whether is is still in opperation, but I am sure paypal wasn't happy about that.

It's one thing when some has a site "slashdotsucks.org", and quite another when someone has a site "salshdot.org" which is obviously intending (based on the content) to get "slashdot.org" visitors. A website should be able to register all the trademarks they want for both of these types of cases.

-Pete

Re:Well when...

[Saint Aardvark]

Absolutely. And each of those, IMHO, are of far greater import than control of the root domain. (My sense from your comment is that you would agree with that, so this isn't meant as a dig or contradiction.)

Control of the root domain is important, but not as important as this book would suggest, because a) most Internet users aren't sophisticated enough to change their nameservers to, say, those of Alternic, and b) there are (I'm guessing) a lot more domain names than IP addresses.

For instance: I run a server that hosts five websites -- five different domains. If I decide that it's time to Screw the Man (tm), and that I'm not going to be able to get the really rebel domain name that I want 'cos of InterNic, and therefore I'm going to have to just pass around a link to the IP address, that leaves less namespace usable on that server.

I've lost a convenient label for this site, one that can be easily remembered. While that's a setback, and not a small one, it's not a showstopper. (God almighty...first namespace, now showstopper...somebody stop me!) If my task is Educating The Masses (also tm), all I need is to convince someone to put up a link on a website that does have a memorable domain name; at that point, Joe User can click it, or make a bookmark, or email it, or be emailed it, or remember the path of links it took to get there. Less convenient, but not a killer. And in any case, a link from a memorable site would be half the battle anyway in getting the word out; I'm sure print/spoken advertising isn't everything in getting people to go to a site.

What is a showstopper is, as you say, explicit censorship of the contents for reasons of copyright, or security, or litigation. This worries me a lot more than whether or not I can register yahhooo.com.

Domain names are a dead issue

[Animats]

This reads like an article someone had lying around from the dot-com era and revived to make a little extra money. The domain name thing is over. The number of registered domains drops every month, as all those people who registered domains but didn't have content behind them let them expire. The actual offers on GreatDomains are tiny, unless it's a really good name ("swap.com" just went for $25K). Outside of ".com", most domain names can be purchased for less than a bag of groceries.

There is pressure to crack down on phony Whois data, but that problem is associated more with spam than with law enforcement.

As far as I know, no one has ever had their domain name taken away because of a content issue. So far, names haven't been used as a regulatory system.

More interesting is that Verisign is re-architecting the root server system to allow much faster changes and integration with Signalling System 7 for telephony. BIND is going away in the root servers. The new system will be closed-source, and will be more centrally controlled than the existing system.