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California Supremes To Decide If Domains Are Property
Richard W.M. Jones writes "Are domain names property like plots of land? The California
Supreme Court has been
asked to rule in the case of
sex.com which was
transferred using a forged letter to Network
Solutions.
Wired news also has the story."
Umm... in that case you'd be buying a service from Verisign. I don't think the class action would get anywhere.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
First of all, the supreme court has not yet accepted the case. Don't hold your breath:
Attorneys said it typically takes the California Supreme Court about three months to decide whether to hear a case. A ruling could take more than a year.
Second, this is not an issue of whether domain names are property, but whether they're tangible property - the kind to which "traditional property conversion laws should apply".
The appeals court seems to be bouncing this to the CSC because they're afraid of laying down a precedent in this area. Too much of a hot-button issue, I suppose.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
A reminder to all DNS administrators to enforce the use of certificates to validate who they are before any changes are permitted.
There selling the service of linking the domain name to an ip address. (or a DNS server anyhow).
There not really selling a domain name, you can't take it away with you i.e. it's useless without a TLD entry.
I can run slashdot.org on my home inntranet and even provide alternade DNS services if I want, no-one 'owns' slashdot.org.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Can someone explain why this case goes the property route at all ?
As I understand it, the domain name was obtained using forgery and other fraudulent methods. Does it even matter whether the domain name is property?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You could count the users browsing to the website as the property.
By hoaxing a letter to transfer the domain, they aren't really stealing an untangible domain, because that matters very little. He is in fact stealing the people browisng to the site. Almost as if someone faked diversion signs to a shop that led to a different shop in the end.
When fraud is already illegal.
If they declare it to be property in California, what them figure out a way to asses it, tax it, ...annually. Ouch
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
I consider using a domain name consists of renting the use of a name from a TLD.
These rents are managed by organisations (companies in some countries though that could be non-profit orgs).
Now, you don't own a name, you just have rented its excusivity for some time.
If it's being hijacked, then your exclusivity has been infringed.
Now, the names are to be used on a first come first served basis which also includes the priority to renew an existing domain...
Finally, if domain names were properties, then they'd be bought forever, until then these rather seem to be licensed... or rented if you prefer.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
What happens, say, when the domain name isn't stolen, but is being held by someone, when another company wants it?
In the UK, I believe there was a case where someone had legitimately bought www.marks-and-spencer.co.uk (Marks & Spencer is a department store chain, for those who don't know). However, Marks & Spencer decided that they wanted the name, filed legal action and got the name.
The question is, though, was this legitimate? Arguably, if the initial owner of the site was attempting to profit from the name, or pass off as the real thing, then M&S should inherit the name. However, if they aren't doing such actions which are illegal under current law, there is no reason why the name should be transferred to M&S.
Slightly off-topic perhaps, but it raises a lot more interesting questions. In my opinion, standard law should cover this kind of situation - what would happen if someone managed to steal a profitable company's telephone number?
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
Since when did they started selling property? Last time I checked it looked mre like renting domains on a permanent first-refusal basis. If you miss one payment you don't own anything at all, and there is an infinite stream of payments that the registrar will want to (and will :) charge you.
unfinished: (adj.)
Do people have a right to their phone number ? As long as they pay the bills can another organisation grab hold of their phone number and start taking orders ?
This for me is a direct link with domain names. If previous cases have covered phone number theft or transfer then surely they will be taken into consideration. After all a phone number is associated with a person or company rather than a physical location, you move house and you can often take your number with you, move out of the same TLA or sub-domain (area code) and you have to get a new number.
As ever with the internet, this isn't actually new, but the lawyers will make money arguing that it is.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
This is the logical way to go, because people are building entire companies - on which the welfare and custom of many thousands of people depend (i.e. the employees and the customers).
Without legal recognition of your ownership of that domain name, you may as well build your business on quicksand.
I couldn't disagree more. There definately should be a grace period...there is a grace period if your mortgage is late, and believe me you get plenty of reminders in that case. In the case of doamin names I think a 30 day hold period is reasonable. During this 30 day period the domain is delisted from the root servers so its unreachable (which would be a big sign to the owner something is seriously wrong)...I had friend who nearly lost his domain because his registration expired...however all the information network solutions had in his record was out of date so they couldn't reach him...not an ideal situation...and admittedly soewhat his fault. The biggest problem is even if a domain does become abandoned Network Solutions sometimes doesn't release it for reregistration immediately which is in and of itself wrong.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
An analogy: if I lease a car for 3 years (off course I would not be that stupid :-) and it is stolen, I would call the police and complain that my car was stolen. I paid for the exclusive rights to use the car and someone stole/took away those rights.
-Mark
and what you have is no free market at all, just a have and have nots world where things are taken at will by those who abuse the system
Whereas what we have at present is a have and have nots world where things are taken at will by those with money to pay lawyers through the incentive of litigation for profit.
Both alternatives are bad, but the first is in general only taken up by "bad" people (in the sense of anti-social) and hence is generally frowned upon and hence is somewhat self-limiting.
In contrast, the second is painted as seeking justice despite going orders of magnitude too far in terms of financial redress, and since the benefit is obtained via the legal system, the practice is given a sheen of respectibility. The whole thing is inherently questionable (and often questioned), yet it continues to gain ground despite the distortions it creates in so many areas --- we tend to discuss mainly how the disease affects "intellectual property", patents and trademarks here on Slashdot, but of course the effect is vastly wider than that.
Without compensatory damages, there would be no downside to enagage in wrongdoing
And with that sledgehammer argument (which is valid) you justify seeking 65 million in damages for stealing a domain? There's the problem displayed in glowing neon lights.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Both alternatives are bad, but the first is in general only taken up by "bad" people (in the sense of anti-social) and hence is generally frowned upon and hence is somewhat self-limiting.
All meaningful experience to the contrary. Having dealt with businesses working in less law-centric nations, I can assure you that anti-social commercial conduct, at least, is not at all self-limiting. To the contrary, graft and worse simply becomes part of the culture. Moreover, modern products are, and have become, far safer in a world of negligence and products liability.
The whole thing is inherently questionable (and often questioned), yet it continues to gain ground despite the distortions it creates in so many areas --- we tend to discuss mainly how the disease affects "intellectual property", patents and trademarks here on Slashdot, but of course the effect is vastly wider than that.
This is probably because redress for meaningful harm is more important to society than the "questions" you raise. Commerce depends upon the enforceability of contracts, and if damages were not available, no meaningfully enforceable promises would exist. Likewise with real damages caused due to negligence -- the idea is to give incentive to do the right thing, and discincentive to fail. Your trust in avoiding public scrutiny for loss of face isn't terribly reliable -- even in nations where social face is considered tremendously important.
And with that sledgehammer argument (which is valid) you justify seeking 65 million in damages for stealing a domain? There's the problem displayed in glowing neon lights.
If you say so. It does seem like a lot of money to me, but I have several clients who would suffer millions of dollars of actual damage a day in lost revenues if they were torn from the internet. I don't know the facts of the case, but I do know that two fairly well-monied entities litigated (in this case a far bigger defendant than plaintiff) the question of damages, and that the verdict was also subject to post-trial review, which did not reduce the verdict. It might be more reasonable than you think.