Latest UDRP Stupidity: Unix.org, Canadian.biz

The Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure, an expedited process for allowing corporations to steal domain names, continues to be abused as arbitrators stretch the definitions of "cyber-squatting" to any length in order to find for the corporate complainants. Lunenburg writes "Unix.Org, a site that was apparently used for noncommercial discussion of Unix(tm) operating systems, has been ruled a "cybersquatter" by a WIPO panel and given to the X/Open group. In spite of not actually matching any cybersquatting criteria, a WIPO panelist felt that by providing links to commercial sites, Unix.ORG was acting in "bad faith" and thus should be given over to the Open group." And WEFUNK writes "Exploiting an obvious technical error to help build their case, Molson Inc. has been awarded the seemingly generic canadian.biz domain from the original owner who "registered this name because I am Canadian and want to develop a Canadian business directory" and is now appealing to the courts." John Gilmore has a bit of commentary.

Comments

It makes me sick.....

[Lord_Slepnir]

...That this is declared cybersquating, but when someone grabbed our robotics team website there wasn't a thing done about it. We really need to clean this stuff up.

Re:It makes me sick.....

[monkeydo]

You are either a troll or a fool. The site you linked to is obviously one of those that these less than scrupulous registrars scoop up when the registration lapses and then tries to sell back to the owner.

Either you never owned this name, or you owned it and let it lapse long enough to become available again. It doesn't really matter though, at the bottom of the page it states that the name is for sale. Have you contacted them to see how much they want for it? Can't be much since a Google for "moerobotics" returns that site and exactly one other hit.

If you actually have a legitamate claim to the name you will have no problem yanking it away from those squatters based on the fact that tehy are obviously trying to sell it. Have you tried filing a dispute yet?

BTW only the .org domain is taken. Not .com or .net. Is there some reason that you haven't just moved to moerobotics.com?

Ah, the old %2d%2d legal loophole!

[bahtama]

Forget the twinkie defense or any other legal silliness, now we have the case of Molson Canada v. %2d%2d! I might cybersquat domain names just to get a court case named Big Company vs L33t Hax0r!

My two Canadian cents...

[dmarien]

The .biz tld was meant for businesses to be able to get domains for their Registered(R) Trademarks(TM), wasn't it?

Molson corporation makes the 2nd most popular beer in canada which is called 'Canadian', don't they?

Mr. Black had "thought" of starting a business that was basically a glorrified yellow pages, right?

His corralation to why he thinks his business idea (nothing registered, started, or operating as of the ICANN decision) deserves the domain canadian.biz is that the country he lives in just happens to be Canada.

Yeah, I think cyber squatting is completely shitty -- but this d00d didn't even have a functioning business, or even content on his website. Molson owns the freakin' copyright, and registered trademark on the word for christ sakes! It a top level domain that's geared towards owners of copyrighted trademarks, so this is one case where I gotta be reasonable and say Mr. Black -- you don't have a case.

Jurisdiction?

[DesScorp]

Out of curiosity, what is the process involved in appealing these disputes? I see that some have taken ICANN to court, but doesn't ICANN have international authority in assigning these names? If I was a citizen of, oh, say Egypt, how much authority would Egyptian courts have over ICANN? Ultimately, what legal recourse does one really have when getting an unfavorable ruling from this body?

What we need

[FreeUser]

What we need is to dump ICANN. However, it isn't feasable to do this in one fell swoop, at least not yet.

So, instead, we need DNS resolution in our libraries (glibc, etc.) and our internet applications (browsers, ftp & ssh clients, etc.) that include the concept of multiple root authorities, with easilly settable defaults.

Need to go to ICANN's unix.org? Fine, click a pulldown tab in your Mozilla 2.0 browser and select ICANN, or better yet, type http://icann//unix.org/ . Otherwise, stick with http://freenic//unix.org/ or (if opennic ever decides to dump ICANN peering) http://opennic//unix.org/

Obviously, old nomenclature would remain in place, using the system default for root authority (presumably Opennic and not ICANN).

It is only this approach, that will default to freedom but allow those of us who need to access ICANN-managed sites (most of the web today) to cross the line at will, that will enable us to free ourselves from ICANN's grip while still being able to make sensible use of the web.

Whether the alternative becomes Opennic, or some new entity ('freenic' anyone?) it needs to be constructed with a solid, equitable constitution that preserves freedom of speech above everything else, and does not favor large corporate or government interests over the rights of individuals, with an open, public, and fair judicial process for resolving name disputes. Ideally it would also include a .tm domain for trademarked names, to which trademark disputes would be confined (ie. anyone can register mtv.com, but only the owner of the MTV trademark can register mtv.tm).

Re:What we need

[dun0s]

"A trade mark is any sign which can distinguish the goods and services of one trader from those of another. A sign includes, for example, words, logos, pictures, or a combination of these." - http://www.patent.gov.uk/tm/definition.htm - "distinctive for the goods/services for which registration is sought".

Therefore MegaSoft can be used by both a company selling rather limp plastic and also a company selling computer software. Not only that but you could have a company in France called MegaSoft selling computer software and a totally different company in Japan also called MegaSoft selling computer software. There are exceptions, under UK law, for example you couldn't register Pepsi if you are a carpet salesman because Pepsi is already, in the eyes of the public, associated with a specific product.

I guess that a solution would be to have a .tm top level and then have specialisation under that for specific countries, and then within a country if someone already had your name registered for a different product or service then tough luck!

Microsoft would have microsoft.*.tm because they are pretty much globally known, where * is any country code.

boots.uk.tm because, as far as i know, everyone in the uk will associate boots with the chemist company but i don't think they have much of a global presence.

and so on.

Any other solutions?

Re:What we need

[Papineau]

The problem is, more than one entity can detain the same trademark in different juridictions, or even in the same juridiction if the markets are sufficiently different. Remember that small library called Amazon (sorry, don't recall in which state)? They were established before amazon.com, and tried to get the amazon.com domain, but obviously amazon.com is still the one we know.

So who do you give (or rather, sell) mtv.tm to? The MTV from the US, the MTV from Italy, or the MTV from Brazil? A generic homepage with a link to each and every such trademark registered, along with a small description of the company (location, market)? Actually, that's an idea. But then how do you order the links? More money gets you on top?

Maybe you remember a few years back, altavista.com wasn't the correct link for the search engine of the same name. The company operating altavista.com had a link on the top saying "The AltaVista search engine can be found here". After that they must have sold the domain, because altavista.com was the correct link for a couple years.

Amazon's squatting php.org

[Anonymous Coward]

How do y'all feel about the fact that www.php.org points to Amazon?

Re:Government challenge?

[mbauser2]

Possibly a poor choice of examples. Anheuser-Busch actually does claim to have exclusive rights to use the word words "king" and "kings" when referring to beer in the United States. They smacked-down a beer store in Oregon this year for using the phrase "Beer of Kings" in a advertisement. As the market owner puts it in the article, "Basically, she [AB's rep] told me that anything to do with beer and kings, they owned".

(In Europe, "Beer of Kings" is actually the centuries-old slogan of Budjovick Budvar N.P, the Czech brewery that Anheuser-Busch stole the name from in 1876. Budvar didn't officially give AB permission until 1911, meaning Anheuser-Busch built its empire on trademark infringement. It's a small irony, but a painful one.)

Re:The unix.org case makes a good point

[mattdm]

Why the hell should it matter if the domain name is trademarked? Every letter of the alphabet is a registered trademark -- are those invalid in domain names? If the unix.org page says at the bottom "UNIX is a trademark of the Open Group (or whoever owns it today), who are not affliated with this site." that *ought* to be totally sufficient, in a sane world.

Re:The unix.org case makes a good point

[Jobe_br]

Entirely - so much for corporate sponsorship of charities and such. Guess its open season now.

There should be a very, very simple way to decide on cybersquatting: if the page you get when going to the URL is "This domain is taken, contact us if you'd like to purchase it", then its cybersquatting. If its anything else (e.g. someone's actually *using* it for something already) then first-come, first-serve should rule.

I recently purchased a domain for a client (Gourmet Pantry) of my company with a ".net" extension, even though the client was just a company that we were setting up an e-commerce site for. However, they couldn't get their company's name with .com, because it was being squatted upon and the site you get when you go to it says that at a MINIMUM, getting the domain will cost $600!! That's ridiculous. There's no need for that kind of crap on the 'Net.

I could see a few exceptions to "first-come, first serve" - at least at the inception of the Internet. e.g. McDonald's Corp. should get mcdonalds.com, regardless of who's using it - their brand is internationally recognized (and this can be measured). At this point in the 'Net's life, however, first-come, first-serve should be fine since no company will come up with a "new" name that is magically nationally or internationally recognized. Even if an existing multi-national company creates a new product, most product marketing specialists know to look for a URL as soon as a list of potential product names is proposed, so that the microsite can launch under an appropriate URL.

And their logo?

[wirefarm]

Next, Molson will be going after people using a red maple leaf on their flags - clearly an infringement upon their brand...

I mean, as a Canadian, aren't you just a bit offended that a word so closely tied to your identity has been usurped by a corporation for its own gains?

One of their slogans seems to be I am Canadian. (Forgive me for being unfamiliar with their marketing - we don't drink much Molson here...)
Can you legally even say that aloud anymore without infringing upon their trademarks?

Not being Canadian, I won't try to tell you how you should feel, but I'm just a bit curious.
(Maybe it's such a good beer that Canadians don't mind - I honestly don't know...)

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

Re:Uh

[juuri]

The wayback machine is often inaccurate. I was the original holder of unix.org (may 95) and had it for a couple of years before I let it lapse. When I had the domain was running with a set of links to various unix resources and included some great one-off qoutes by people like jkh. You will notice that none of these pages appear in the way back machine.

Then again I also helped contribute to something very evil as I had a link to an online survey which paid me. The results of that survey helped form one of the evil internet marketing companies.