Sex.com Settles Case Against VeriSign

netcentr writes "A press release on CircleID has announced that the owner of the Sex.com domain name today has got 'a final settlement with VeriSign (formerly Network Solutions, Inc.), concluding a six-year legal fight that set several important precedents for the future of the Internet. After the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted Sex.Com a sweeping victory that held VeriSign/Network Solutions, Inc. (collectively "VeriSign") strictly responsible for mishandling the famous domain name, Sex.Com and VeriSign have settled Sex.Com's lawsuit against VeriSign.' Gary Kremen was awarded a $65 million judgment against Cohen for stealing the domain name, which the U.S. Supreme Court declined to overturn on June 12, 2003."

Comments

Astounding

[Yi Ding]

Yeah, it completely astounds me how Verisign was unable to write a line of code which would have given the guy back his domain, which was clearly stolen from him.

Re:Astounding

[Ravensfire]

Hang on - you wanted them to ADMIT their mistake, without a court order? Right ....

Good grief - what hill have you been living under?!?

-- Ravensfire

Re:Astounding

[Daniel Dvorkin]

There was obviously no technical reason Verisign couldn't transfer the domain back to its rightful owner. They make have said there was, but they were, of course, lying. (And, on a tangential rant: the liars at Verisign, like all the other liars at big corporations who routinely lie to cover their fuckups, should go to prison. But they won't.) There is a pathological desire on the part of these corporate pricks to avoid admitting ever that they made a mistake, so they come up with bullshit excuses.

Good

[BoomerSooner]

Screw verisign, they suck. Without their monopoly they wouldn't have been able to extort people and give the shittiest service ever.

I hope it's for the full $65 Million.

Re:One in a million

[corbettw]

Well, if anything that just proves the validity of any judgement. Back when the domain was first hijacked, there weren't a bazillion different porn sites. Imagine how much more money the guy could've earned being one of the first out the gate, if Verisign/Network Solutions hadn't screwed the pooch?

Re:One in a million

[tbase]

So, by that logic, is it ok for me to illegally hijack the expedia.com domain and make millions from it because there's no shortage of travel sites? Have you been too busy looking at pr0n to realize that Network Solutions handed over this multi-million dollar domain name without verifying the authenticity of the request? The victim (yeah, you heard me) will likely never see a dime of the $65 million settlement against the guy who stole it - shouldn't he have some recourse against the company that handed him the keys?

Finally.

[7Ghent]

Well, it's great that the good guys finally won and defeated the spectre of Verisign's vast incompentence and utter lack of responsibility, but SIX YEARS? I don't even want to think about the legal fees. There's definitely something wrong with our justice system when a stright-forward case of theft takes SIX years and millions of dollars to successfully prosecute.

Re:Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's great that the good guys finally won and defeated the spectre of Verisign's vast incompentence and utter lack of responsibility, but SIX YEARS?

That is not so surprising when you consider that the very core of (then)Verisign's domain name registration service was being questioned in court. If the registrant can't trust that the registrar will protect their name, what rightful-thinking registrant would use that registrar?

There's definitely something wrong with our justice system when a stright-forward case of theft takes SIX years and millions of dollars to successfully prosecute.

According to the press release, the case against Verisign was not for theft but for conversion, which is (basically) the unauthorized assumption and exercise of the rights of ownership over property belonging to someone else. The case reaches well past Verisign and the particular domain name owner; it stands for the proposition that a domain name registrant has the legal right of ownership in their domain name and that interference with that right by another (including the domain name registrar) is legally actionable.

The thief made much more money

[billstewart]

Kremen _was_ first out of the gate, and had the domain to himself for most of a year before it got ripped off. He hadn't done anything particularly profitable with it, which was part of how Cohen was able to rip it off without being noticed for a while. Cohen was the one who built it into a valuable property, though much of that was lucky timing on his part, stealing it before the web boom really took off, but it wasn't likely to ever be worth $40M if Kremen had kept owning it.

But still Netsol not only shouldn't have let themselves get fooled, they should have fixed the problem promptly when they were notified about it.

More people these days have sex into their 70s,

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard a report about this recently. Just because you aren't getting any doesn't mean noone else should. Besides, the article was about a precedent setting internet law case, Slashdot is not pushing porn in any way.

Re:Offended

[LordKazan]

My girlfriend and I are both technically feminists - it's actually illogical for a feminist to condemn porn. Why? Sure some porn is negative, but saying ALL porn is, is saying that it's impossible for a woman to enjoy her sexuality. You are perpetuating the very double standards you are trying to destroy.

Re:GPLed pr0n

[PitaBred]

Damn, can't that guy hire a spell checker? At least most of the other posts on /. are readable without having to figure things out phonetically.

State Action + Converstion = takings

[pdcryan]

Very interesting.

Not all of the pieces of the puzzle are in place yet but it looks like VeriSign is finally being pegged as a state actor. What does that mean? Well, all of those annoying parts of the constitution that apply to governments, but not to private parties... might apply to them (little things... like... due process maybe?).

Further - if domain names are property (which is contrary to some lot of previous court precedent - partially based on the idea that domain names are only protected in so much as they are trademarks, which generally cannot be transferred without transferring the good will of the company behind the trademark) VeriSign has some further problems. When they bumble these things, not only are they violating the domain owners due process rights - but it might be a constitutional "taking" - requiring compensation.

Hopefully finding that VeriSign is a state actor, and that there is a property interest in a domain name - will be the final nail in SiteFinder's coffin (which essentially would be conversion of all of the unregistered domain names).

Anybody interested in being the .net and .com domain registry? I have a feeling ICANN might be looking to fill some positions soon.