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

So?

[ceejayoz]

For example, Yahoo gets to trademark not only its own name, but at least 30 misspellings of its name. And it can prevent other groups from registering domain names with the word Yahoo in them, even if they are not competing in any way with Yahoo's business. In both cases, Internet practice goes beyond established legal precedent.

So what? Those misspellings are obvious attempts at getting money (from popup circle jerks for porn sites, usually) off Yahoo!'s brandname - shouldn't they have the right to stop that? It'd be like naming a product CocaCola instead of Coca-Cola - the intent is obvious.

Re:So?

[darkonc]

Those misspellings are obvious attempts at getting money ... off Yahoo!'s brandname

In some cases, that may be the case -- but sites like yahoo-sucks.com or fuck-yahoo.org might be legitimate criticism or satire sites. The name, itself is a statement. It's clear that the site has no direct relationship to yahoo (other than being critical of it), and the site owner would probably be very happy to increase that logical separation. Network users would be very unlikely to type it in by mistake.

In cases like those, handing over the domain is little more than an attempt (successful, at that!) at censorship.

Well when...

[Husaria]

When scientologists can get slashdot to remove comments from the site because they violate copyright laws, or ms bitches that slashdot comments violate the dmca, or when corporations think that everyone should be identifiable on the internet, or that web pages with criticism should be sued into oblivion, or when someone makes a secnario on kuro5hin about the vice president, you get the secret service knocking at your door, we should be worried about free speech on the internet

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.

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.

DNS needs to be replaced

[Fastolfe]

I'm interested in reading the book's take on this, but it seems to me that DNS was never meant to be twisted into what it's being used for today.

DNS's primary purpose was to allow someone to lookup a numerical address from a hierarchial alphanumeric one. It was never meant to be a search mechanism for people to find an organization. That's what directories like X.500 and LDAP, or search engines are for. The very fact that there can be multiple commercial entities primarily identified with the same word makes DNS wholly unsuitable for this.

I think we need to scrap DNS and start over from scratch. Hand out names as needed for technological reasons, and set up a directory for users to provide an organizational name and get back links to that organization's web site(s). Regulate that directory with all of the intellectual property and trademark crap that you want, but do it in such a way that local IP and trademark law can be respected. Hide DNS (and maybe URL's entirely for that matter) from the user through their browsers, and utilize certificates for establishing identity, instead of the basic assumption that if the domain name in the URL "looks right", then it must be them. I might even go so far as to suggest that when an organizational's DNS domain is created, they automatically get a certificate that allows them to sign for SSL sites within that domain, keeping the organizational identifier the same.

Re:DNS needs to be replaced

[ddstreet]

DNS was never meant to be twisted into what it's being used for today.

No, it wasn't. But there's a long history of this type of thing. Social Security Numbers were not originally intended to be used as tracking numbers for every citizen of the United States. Driver's Licenses were not originally intended to be used as identification cards for every citizen in the United States.

To make it worse, pretty soon the United State's Social Security funds will run out and the only use for Social Security Numbers will be to track people. They'll no longer have their original "legitimate" use. And, it looks like the government is going to change the Driver's License into a national ID card (due to Sept 11).

The problem is that creating something else to fill those needs (the US govt's needs, that is) would be very expensive; and since there already is a solution in place, why not just use it?

The issue with DNS is not whether it's technically capable of filling the need - that is, the need of the large corporations (which are essentially in political power via their lobbyists and contributions) to enforce their "intellectual property" over the internet. DNS is quite capable of filling this need. The issue is whether this is a legitimate need that should be filled. Those whose interests it serves (those with IP) think it should be. Those whose interests it harms (the general population) are against it (if they are informed of the issue). The corporations (who have the power) are most likely going to win.

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:Trademarks on misspelling? Good!

[hij]

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?

If you accidentally end up in a booger king whatever you do... DO NOT ACCEPT ANYTHING!

America...

[User 956]

What is indisputable, whether you blame the courts, the legislators, or the lawyers, is the fact that our system of governance can't figure out how to ban what everyone knows should be banned. This should be shocking for people of common sense. And it should be embarrassing to us as citizens.

Look: I understand that censorship is the sugar in the gas tank of our political culture, it makes everything stutter and shimmy and eventually grind to a halt.

But, it seems to me, this also reveals the prissy, cowardly, and -- most of all -- spoiled nature of our political leaders. Most arguments about government control have a certain logic to them. We allow the most stuff, the stuff out on the periphery of social and legal behavior for the simple reason that if we allow the stuff on the fringe, the freedoms at the core of our constitutional order will be preserved. For people who zealously defend our Second Amendment rights, this means arguing about the right to carry concealed weapons into churches, schools, airports, wherever.

Abortion rights and pro-life activists follow the same logic. Not long ago the NARAL crowd wouldn't even concede that killing a live baby -- after the umbilical cord was cut! -- constituted murder. Pro-lifers argue that a tiny clump of cells has rights.

Whether you agree with the substance of their positions, the logic is generally consistent. Indeed, even if you believe -- as I do -- that the Founding Fathers would have burst into laughter at the idea that a school couldn't have a nondenominational prayer before graduation, these slippery-slope arguments still have to be taken seriously.

But this overly mechanistic logic careens into wild, self-serving hypocrisy when it comes to the issue of censorship. For some reason the editorial pages, Congress, hordes of academics, and, of course, Hollywood types, honestly, truly believe that the state cannot proscribe images of women getting it on with horses in public libraries for fear we'll skid down the slippery slope to tyranny. At the same time, however, they fervently believe that the federal government can regulate the content of political ads leading up to an election.

This throws out the whole doctrine of protecting the fringe to safeguard our essential freedoms. If you think some talentless boob who defecates in a tuna can and calls it art is the canary in the coalmine of our free-speech rights, fine. Or if you feel that some hacked-out code from a bearded linux hippie that lives in his parents' basement is speech, wonderful. But, if you believe that, I am at a loss as to how you can tolerate a federal government that attaches all sorts of strings to the fundamental liberties the Founders considered essential to a free society.

Lamar Alexander noted a long time ago that if our current laws existed at America's Founding, Tom Paine would have been required to register "Common Sense" with the FEC.

For examle, in its decision overturning the federal anti-child-porn law, the Court answered critics that some images of pedophilia might entice or encourage would-be pedophiles or child pornographers, the Court replied, "the prospect of a crime...by itself does not justify laws suppressing protected speech."

This is the same Court that regularly holds that "the appearance of corruption" is sufficient justification for draconian regulations of political speech at the heart of our republic. The "appearance of corruption" is a standard which acknowledges no crime has been committed at all. Things just look corrupt because some people are too stupid or too lazy to discern the truth or too cynical to believe the truth when they see it. Don't get me wrong, of course there's corruption in politics -- though vastly less than at any other time in American history -- but saying that citizens spending money on speech creates the "appearance of corruption" -- and therefore it's worth regulating -- is an insult to our collective intelligence.

Consequences...

[Cirkit]

It is interesting just how broadly some companies want to define their trademarks, and the scare tactics they'll use to try to enforce them. For instance:

From: Pub-Enforcement [enforcement@ebay.com]
Dear Domain Name Registrant:

It recently has come to our attention that you have registered a domain name that mimics the famous eBay name and trademark. As you are likely aware, the coined term "eBay" is one of the most famous names on the Internet. eBay owns several registrations for the eBay trademark in the United States and internationally. Accordingly, eBay enjoys broad trademark rights in its name. For your information, in a decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a third party trademark application to register the trademark "ebaysecurities" was denied due to the USPTO recognizing the eBay trademark as a famous trademark, and thus entitled to broad protection. We are concerned that your domain name infringes and/or dilutes the famous eBay trademark. Infringement occurs when a third party's use a company's trademark (or a confusingly similar variation thereof) is likely to confuse consumers as to the affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement of the third party's services. Trademark dilution occurs when a third party's use of a variation of a company's trademark is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the company's famous trademark. In this case, your use of the suffix "bay" in your domain name is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the famous eBay brand. "eBay" is an arbitrary and fanciful trademark; neither "eBay" nor "Bay" describe online trading or e-commerce in any way. Therefore, it is likely that you chose your domain name to evoke eBay's famous brand. We take these matters quite seriously. As you may know, we settled a dispute similar to this one against a company using the name www.bidbay.com . BidBay has agreed to change its domain name, company name, and to pay eBay an undisclosed sum of money. Attached for your information is a news account of the settlement.

More information on trademark law may be found at http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/aVoid.htm. Federal and state laws, including the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 () provide for serious penalties (up to $100,000) against persons who, without authorization, use, sell, or offer for sale a domain name that infringes or dilutes another's trademark. Infringers who have been notified of such infringing activity, but do not cease their infringements, may also be considered "willful" and could be subject to additional money damages and liability for attorney's fees. Having received this e-mail, you are on such notice. Trademark protection is very important to eBay. In addition to the Bidbay.com case, we have filed several successful federal court actions against cybersquatters. We have also filed more than six proceedings before the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's arbitration panel; all cases order the transfer of the domain names at issue to eBay.

While eBay respects your right of expression and your desire to conduct business on the World Wide Web, eBay must enforce its own rights in order to protect its valuable and famous name. We appreciate that you may have registered the above-mentioned domain with the best of intentions and without full knowledge of the law in this area. Nonetheless, under the circumstances, we must insist that you stop using the domain name, do not sell, transfer or offer to sell the domain name to any other person, and simply let the domain name registration expire. Please confirm by replying to this email that you will comply as requested. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Edith
eBay Legal Department

As far as I can tell, this is a FORM LETTER, triggered a scan of new domain registrations. Anyone got a similar one?

So what was the site? It was a fan-site for A Tale in the Desert, called www.egyptbay.com.

p.s. A tale in the desert is in open beta - check it out - VERY cool.

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.

Netanyahu sued by Yahoo! for Netanyahu.com

[dh003i]

In other news today, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, was sued today by Yahoo! for trademark infringement. Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu had the audacity -- despite being a well-known public figure -- to violate Yahoo!'s trademarks by registering his own personal website, Netanyahu.com. Apparently, Yahoo! is suing Netanyahu for taking advantage of the Yahoo! sound that Yahoo! worked so hard to market. Yahoo! claims that the sound of Netanyahu.com inherently takes advantage of Yahoo!'s trademarks.