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Canadian Judge Rules Domain Names Are Property
farrellj writes "A recent decision in the Ontario Appeals court has ruled in favour of Tucows, saying that domain names are considered property, rather than being a license. This has major ramifications for a people both inside and outside Canada, doubly so since Tucows is a major domain registrar. This ruling comes from a very high court, which means that any appeal must go to the Supreme Court of Canada. So there is a good chance this ruling will stand."
No, you do not have it right. You have made the common error of imagining that it is the copyrighted work that is "intellectual property", the thing that is owned by the copyright owner. Actually, what is owned is the copyright itself, that is, the exclusive right to authorize copying of the work.
The analog of car theft would be not infringement, but the act of assuming the ownership of a copyright without the consent of the rightful owner. This could happen if a person were to fraudulently convince the state agency that administers copyrights that the owner of the copyright has assigned it to him.
Infringement is more like a trespass -- like someone finding your car unlocked and sitting in it. The copyright owner is still recognized as owner and is still for the most part enjoying the state's enforcement of his monopoly.
Please do not misread me as a defender of the justice of copyright law. That is a question for another time.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
This is Canadian. Canadian and UK law don't have as much baggage attached to the concept of "property" as the US does. Through an accident of legal history, that Blackstone's commentaries were more available in America than other writings on law, American law and the American constitution attaches undue weight to property rights. The "due process" clause in the U.S. Constitution limits due process to "life, liberty, and property", which is part of why it matters so much whether something is "property". A leasehold, for example, is not property.
The US never had feudalism, where the lords owned all the property, and thus never had to get rid of feudalism. In the European countries that did, when feudalism went down, so did the emphasis on property rights. This remains quite real today. In Britain, (but not Scotland) there is a "right to ramble", to walk over undeveloped, uncultivated private land. Squatters in abandoned buildings have rights. Penalties for trespass are very low by US standards. Conversely, the rights of renters are stronger in England than in the US.
Canada generally follows English precedent in this area. "Properly" is not an absolute; it's a bundle of rights established by law and precedent. So that domains are "property" means less than it would in the US.