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Molson Slapped in Domain Hijacking Attempt
Lew Pitcher writes "Well, it took a Canadian court to find that a Canadian citizen can own the domain name canadian.biz without being a beer (or a beer company). The Toronto Star is reporting
that the Ontario Superiour Court has overruled ICANN's decision to take domain canadian.biz from its current owner and give it to Molson's Breweries (makers of "Canadian" brand beer). A spokesperson for Molsons gave the obligatory statement about disappointment in the decision, and indicated that it was too early to determine if Molsons would appeal the decision. Score one against the bad guys."
If I understand this right, and I'd like to think I do, it's a lot more simple than that..
ICANN is just a holding company -- you can think of them like a Record Label or soemthing -- where their job is simply to overview distribution of the product, domain names.
ICANN is an international orgainization and so it could be considered, by a stretch of the imagination, to be outside Canadian law.
The ruling here (again, if I'm understanding this issue correctly) is no that they overturned ICANNS decision as much as they simply made their own. They're not saying ICANN can't give Molson the domain as they are saying that Molson, as a Canadian company, is not allowed to own it.
This is a pretty big deal because A) it show that sometimes the small guy wins and B) that nations can express independant views from ICANN.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
The ICANN rules state that you can always appeal against their decisions to a civil court. From their policy:
...)"
"If an Administrative Panel decides that your domain name registration should be canceled or transferred, we will wait ten (10) business days (as observed in the location of our principal office) after we are informed by the applicable Provider of the Administrative Panel's decision before implementing that decision. We will then implement the decision unless we have received from you during that ten (10) business day period official documentation (such as a copy of a complaint, file-stamped by the clerk of the court) that you have commenced a lawsuit against the complainant in a jurisdiction to which the complainant has submitted under Paragraph 3(b)(xiii) of the Rules of Procedure. (In general, that jurisdiction is either the location of our principal office or of your address as shown in our Whois database
So there is no issue about a court having jurisdiction over ICANN, since ICANN explicitly agrees to having another court hear the dispute.