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UN wants to stop "cybersquatting"
Pugget
writes "The UN announced a plan
to stop the buying up of domain names buy people unrelated to the name. "
Basically they say they're gonna create a list of trademarks
that can't be registered. I'm more concerned about the
'misleadingly similiar' clause. That'll make parodies
a lot trickier.
Who care what the UN thinks...They have no authority and the last time I was in Europe...several weeks ago one of the big topics was how much money the UN claimed the US owed them and the threats that the US would be banned or lose voting priv's. If they have a problem the way I use my domain have them send a squad of Polish troops to my house and they can set up an AID station...lololol
-Not AC, at school, and /. doesn't like the passwd ! :)
...is this will never work!
And where the HELL do they get the right to make these decisions anyways? The UN is a joke in general, in case a few of you haven't noticed...
This is worse than the US Gov. trying to censor the net..
It's bigger than any country, It's bigger than any group of countries...
Like a previous poster mentioned, if you HAVE the copyright you have the right to enforce it anyways, which makes this pointless anyways...
And you know what? The Gov.s of the world would be happy to cooperate and earn brownie points with the UN, even if it means throwing a few people in jail, etc...
Thing is, no one owns the 'net...
Therefore, no one can control it...
Individual systems and pipes are owned, yes...
But that means little, as keeping the 'net alive and well is both in the interests of big buisness in the long run, and the interests of those who are otherwise involved with it, universities, etc.
-Sehnsucht
Hey, if the UN didn't meddle in things that were none of its business, it wouldn't have any reason to exist at all, since officially, it doesn't really have _any_ business... Hopefully this will at least open some more people's eyes to how bureaucracies create reasons to validate their own existences. If you don't have any real problems to solve, _make_ a problem and proclaim yourself the only one who can solve it...
Was anybody else bothered by the terminology? I thoght the language of the CNN article was pretty insulting...insulting both to squatters and to domain name speculators! For one thing, squatters don't legitimately own the property they use; domain name holders do. OTOH, squatters usually improve the property they use; domain name speculators don't.
:-P
And "pirating" is worse! CNN actually considers buying a domain name and then offering it for resale (the horror! the horror!) to be in the same vein as storming a ship and killing the crew? Guess we see where CNN's sympathies lie.
All the red-blooded free men of America better move to a country where the UN cannot take our freedoms!
America, love it or leave it!
They can have my www.hot-sluts-at-mcdonalds.com domain when they pry my COLD DEAD FINGERS from it!
Thomas Jefferson was a belligerently xenophobic working-class evangelical/pentecostal Christian who listened to country music and was bitterly opposed to miscegenation! So were George Washington, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin! I know the liberals claim that fundamentalist Christianity as I know it did not even exist at that time, but it's all lies! LIES!
Actually, in a more serious vein, I've been thinking about leaving the U.S. for a lot of reasons, and I'm starting to believe that one nice thing about competing national governments is that you can leave. With only one gov't to choose from, you're stuck. I don't know if this one nice feature is worth putting up with wars, belligerent nationalism, etc., but it is at the very least a consolation. With 400+ governments, a few are bound to be good, but with only one, the odds are pretty terrible. The militias are opposed to world government for insane reasons, but there are reasonable things to be said against it.
It's time to do away with the Americanized .com, .edu, etc domains and stick with country top levels.
Then any domain name legal issues are within a the country of origin.
Multinationals can bite it.
I thought that Reviewers stayed pretty tight. Is there dissent in the ranks? I can understand why you might be miffed by this, though. Perhaps, as an alternative, you could register a domain under the name of the Dartmouth Review's fraternity (soon to be co-ed fraternity): KKK.com... Actually, I just checked and I see that you already did. Cheers!
Any sort of regulation on the Internet is bad.
They got Congress to extend it for a few decades.
Unfortunately, while what you say should be the case, it isn't. International treaties take precedence over the U.S. Constitution in matters taken to international courts, and our government also has demonstrated in its own decisions that it believes that international treaties take precendence over the U.S. Constitution.
For example, certain sorts of U.N. resolutions that are clearly unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution have been implemented in the U.S. anyway, and our government claims they're bound to do it. (and gee, what a *shame* that they're being *forced* by the evil U.N. into doing what they wanted to do anyway but the Bill of Rights wouldn't allow) Current precedent is nothing really earth-shaking, but there are things going on that's pretty scary.
This is why there have been efforts to get the U.S. out of the U.N.
Because then they'll STILL want www.mega-corp.com and www.mega-corp.org and www.mega-corp.net to keep other people from using THEIR trademark. Defend it or lose it is the law.
International treaties take precedence over the U.S. Constitution in matters taken to international courts"
Of course it does!In cases about international issues, the only logical set of laws to use are international laws. I don't know how you can think enforcing American laws on the rest of the world would be a good thing. Other countries already hate us enough
"For example, certain sorts of U.N. resolutions that are clearly unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution have been implemented in the U.S. anyway. . ."
Care to be more specific, or (as I suspect) do you have no clue what you're talking about?
In matters regarding US Citizens on American soil, the constitution takes precidence. If you want to list some actual examples where you think the constitutional rights of American citizens on American soil were violated, I'd be happy to debate them. However if you're just going to spew anti-UN drivel, then take it somewhere else.
This is why there have been efforts to get the U.S. out of the U.N.
This is also why there have been efforts by small groups of people to break away from the United States and form their own republics. Groups of people who can't learn to think about the long term effects of their actions, and can be easily manipulated by people are a fact of life. Fortunatly most Americans are more rational than this.
SPAM? ;-)
That sounds like a fantastic idea. If a) The US gives up the root domains it's hogging (.com, .org, etc), goes to .com.us, .org.us and so on, and b) requires .com registrations to be registered companies with the same name, things would work nicely. .org.us extensions could still be open.
Back when people started registering www.*.com domain names for *projects* (For example, Ambrosia Software wrote a game called Avara, and used www.avara.com) I thought it was cute. Now, it's just annoying, and a waste of domain names. Companies could actually use subnames for once. Apple Computer is good about this. You have support.apple.com, etc. It'd be nice to see everyone doing this.
And I was siding with the people who argued that the squatters weren't really squatters -- instead, they had to pay for their domain names. Until, that is, I read that they can register for 6 months before they have to pay. That's stupid. You can buy things online with your credit card. Why can't the domain name registration services require money up front? That'd solve the problem of the vast majority of squatters, without making everyone else miserable.
Makes sense to me too...if my name was McDonald,
then it wouldn't be unreasonable for me to have
www.mcdonald.co.uk, if I lived in the US, www.mcdonald.com
In fact if it was my family's site then it would make sense
to have www.mcdonalds.co/.com.
The owners of McDonalds have nothing to do with the
name, I might, so who should win!
The International Criminal Court is already in place. Love your freedom while you still have it, because our "leaders" are submitting us to global government without even telling us.
http://jbs.org/un/icc/index.htm
Read all about the way Jews control our television and films and slashdot. Click HERE.
GET THE U.S.OUT OF THE U.N.AND THE U.N.OUT OF THE U.S. that building could be used for something important and helpful instead like housing the homeless.
it solves no problems, and creates new ones.
.jp, .is..) whether or not the countries wanted it to apply?
first off, why is the UN doing this? what right do they have to do this? what is up with this? and since the UN is doing it and not NSI, does this mean it would apply to other countries (.uk,
anyway this won't stop "squatting". I don't call registering "windows2000.com" squatting. i call registering hundreds of domains at once, using none of them, and trying to sell them to other people "squatting".
the only point of this is to prevent the usage of trademarks, and make things more difficult for people who for some reason might want to be using trademarks. But since there's already a system of laws set up to deal with this (especially dealing with selling people their own trademarks), what's the point? It just limits the freedom of information further.
i fear it.
--anonymous lazy person
what's my password again?
It's not "somebody else's trademark". Did you notice the bit that says "or misleadingly similar"? So who decides what's "misleadingly similar"? This would never be biased towards large companies with a lot of pull and the resources for a long court fight, nooo...
Presumably "yahhoo.com" would be out. Does this mean "yayoo.com", "yahho.com", "yaaho.com", (ad infinitum) are also out? What about "yahoo.sg"? What if "yahoo" is a word in Xybekistani, and someone tries to register "yahoo.xy"? What about "yahhoo.xy"? One can see how this might remove a lot of names from possible usage...
And how about this part: "The contract would also bar selling, renting or otherwise transferring the domain name to the owner of the trade or service mark". Apparently we're not even allowed to sell things that belong to us to people who really want them. The UN sucks.
If there's a dispute, the contract you sign makes you responsible for the legal bills.
What they don't seem to understand (Or maybe they do) is that they really don't have that much authority over the net. Due to the way the net was built, anyone can go off and do his own thing, all that's necessary is the time and the resources. Once the DNS crack side effects get bad enough, I expect that people will start up their own competing services. If those take off, there's not a hell of a lot the UN can do.
www.mega-corp.trademark
I like it. :-)
I've read about several people who register domain names for the purpose of denying others the use of the name. An example of this are the guys that registered names based on the 'Trench Coat Mafia' after the shootings in Colorado. I think the same thing was done with the KKK and other groups. Would this law cover things like this?
I always found it wierd how the simple existance of a name within a computer database becomes so important to everybody suddenly. For a span of 10-15 years nobody gave a damm about it. What if we created another dns type of thing (like the http2 thing I have seen) and it becomes popular and all of the sudden, companies feel they have the rights within that also. It is kind of like a kid who picks a toy from a pile and seeing that somebody else picks up another toy, wants that instead.
While nominally part of the UN organization, the WIPO is actually quite independent in funding and policies. As a matter of fact, they have immense backing from Western states, to the exclusion of underdeveloped nations that really don't have much to say in our global post-industrial economy.
I normally wouldn't quite bother pointing this out, but reading the messages talking about this being yet another attempt at subverting American democracy and freedom of speech by an evil global force made me do it. Face it, folks, the WIPO is the US/EU, not Malaysia, China or Russia.
AC
First of all, are some of the more fanatical anti-UN, anti-business posts in this thread from the same person? What you've got here is a situation where someone is registered on /. but still remains essentially an AC, and can post multiple times making it look like different people all having the same opinion.
Otherwise, the Cybersquatters, Domain Hoarders (as well as Spammers and Pornographers) are totally taking advantage of this network in ways which are hindering the rest of us. It's time the rest of us fought back. We do that through a thing called "our elected Government".
No one should have to pay a fee to someone who is squatting on a regular word for a potential domain name. (not using it for a legit purpose).
NSI should not allow domain names to go live until they are PAID FOR. These squatters are running scripts that re-register whole lists of names every 90 days. They essentially own the names without ever paying a cent.
As for those who do shell out the $70, they rarely have them available for sale for less than $2500. Perhaps we should use ticket scalping laws as a precedent to curb this.
I'm curious about one thing mentioned in the article: "The contract would also bar selling, renting or otherwise transferring the domain name to the owner of the trade or service mark..."
Uh, what is going on here? This can't mean that if I already own a trademarked domain name I am barred from transferring it to the trademark owner and am instead forced to enter arbitration.
What if I own one of the trademarks on the list? How would I go about acquiring from its owner a domain name that includes my trademarked name?
This is boggling.
They got Congress to extend the length of time a copyright is valid (retroactively, to boot). It's now life of the author plus 95 years in the case of copyright held by a corporation.
I think the point of the second part is to combat the practice of buying someone's name at NSI rates and scalping them for $K,000. See www.q3a.com.
I don't know for certain, but it's very likely that all UN members must obey resolutions passed by the UN as a whole. Break those and you'll be breaking the law in your country automatically.
I was impressed until I got to this part:
"Under the proposed rules, ICANN would establish a list of protected "famous or well-known marks" that would not be available for registration to the average Internet user."
I mean, is this really meant to stop squatters? I don't think so. Remember, this would also screw many websites that we've championned here in the past.
Look more like several corporations decided bullying Joe Public out of his domain name wasn't working as well as they had hoped. So they lobby the UN and ICANN to "pre-reserve" their domain names.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Oh damn there goes my plan to get unitednations.com and .org etc ;]
Posted by PasswdIs ScoreOne:
.com. That's what the TLD is for.
What business does microsoft have mucking around with microsoft.org? Companies should only have power in
I am also peeved at domain squatters -- I've had
many a good idea for a web site and jumped into
whois to check the domain name and lo' and behold
some "Domains For Sale" jack off is squatting on
it!!
...this is because anyone can squat on a domain
name for 6 months and not pay for it. When the 6
months is up, they let it go, then register it
again under another name. They can squat on
hundreds of names and their cost is almost
nothing. They hold the names hostage until some
poor dumbass coughs up thousands of dollars for
it!
Solution:
Make registrants pay the two year fee *before*
the domain is registered rather than giving
them a 6 month free ride.
True, some slimes will still find it worth their
while to squat on hot names and trademarks but
the larger issue these scumbags who hold half
of the dictionary of common words hostage would
quickly find another scam business to get into.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
In short, Froomkin says the plan is seriously flawed, and constitutes a radical subversion of existing legal checks and balances:
Froomkin gives a link to his detailed (50-page) analysis. I think this proposal needs to be sunk!
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
I buy real estate at lower prices and resell it for higher prices. There's a lot of us in this business. I fail to see how domain names are any different. When registering domains was a free service to the registrand, paid for by the gov't, I can see a "squatting issue". But the moment NSI started charging for domain names, the concept of a squatter became non-existant. He who pays for a domain gets it, and he can do whatever he likes with it, be it using it, reselling it, or just sitting on it for all eternity. He bought it. He PAID for it, with his own money. It's his. How much more simple can it be than that?
Of course I am wrong. :)
Evil is what I am. Death is what I bring.
You are fully entitled to set up your own domain name server and register whatever name you like on it. If pople point to it, that's the name you have, and what the UN thinks becomes moot.
But, if you work through a name server that is run by a government that has signed up to an international treaty, that name server is bound by that treaty. By choosing to work through it, you are effectively agreeing to those terms. That's YOUR choice.
(If you -really- wanted, you could set up a DNS on your Linux box and register an already-existing name. There's nothing to stop you. Mind you, unless your Linux box is in international waters, on a remote islansd, or in a country that hasn't signed up to the copyright treaties, you are likely to get nice letter asking you to visit the local magistrate, if you do. But, there is STILL nothing to stop you.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Telling the US President that the people run the country will be about as effective against the UN as swatting a fly in outer Mongolia. It's not relevent to them. It never has been and never will be. That's the problem in living on a world with more than one country - the others can choose to ignore you, and survive.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The absence of a constitutional guaranteur of free speech is not in itself demonstrative of an oppressive, censorious regime. The existance of a sedition law, or a requirement that press agencies be licensed on a yearly basis, often is.
I feel perfectly justified in pointing to Malaysia or Sinagapore to assert my points. The Anwar Ibrahim trial has shown the the current government of Malaysia does not have any tolerance for a free press.
Singapore's government has a relationship with the press that is widely considered to be to the detriment of "free speech." I know, I know -- it's a corrupt Western value.
Limiting "fair use" and strengthening copyright and trademark protections has not generally been a major focus of despots, autocrats, and statist regimes.The United States has proposed all kinds of draconian measures applying to databases. Many "rogue states," to use the American pejorative of the moment, have historically enjoyed the benefits of counterfeiting and media piracy.
But that is not to say that Intellectual Property laws are a hallmark of all that is good in government. I'm sure Malaysia and Singapore have used their laws on the subject to harrass and intimidate journalists.
What's the point? If you own a trademark that's important enough to be on the list, you already have the legal resources to defend / reclaim your domain name.
So the net benefit of this proposal is what, exactly?
no taxation without representation!
Since there is a lot of speculation on what the report is all about, why not look at the real thing?
See http://wipo2.wipo.int/process/e ng/final_report.html
Too late, too stupid...
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
(OK, OK... so Disney should have the $$$ to buy up most of the names that contain the word "disney", but they can't get ALL the combinations, and there are a lot more companies that don't have as much cash to throw around.)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Now, calm down, take a deep breath and try to engage one or two brain cells before you shoot off at the mouth. This is a Trademark issue. It has nothing to do with the content of your silly little Web page. You can still make fun of Company X, or say nasty things about them, you just can't use their Tradmark as your domain name!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
"Such a
proposition has no legal enforcing value by itself... it is a proposition. "
A proposition made by an entity that has a
standing army. When an army makes a gentle
suggestion, it generally expects to get its
way.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It doesn't take them very long to mobilize that
"security council" force, does it? I mean, they
don't have to go out and recruit soldiers and
setup infrastructure in order to operate in a
military capacity. QED
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
> They seem to be able to enforce things in Kosovo. Well, bomb stuff if not enforce things.
Watch CNN a little more. NATO is bombing. Not the UN.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Look out good freedom-loving citizens of Amerika, the black helicopters are coming. Not for your guns, or your money, they want *your domain names* ! Oh, its enough to make any patriot quake in his knee-high steel-toed combat boots. All the red-blooded free men of America better move to a country where the UN cannot take our freedoms! I suggest Yugoslavia, or else Sudan, or maybe Sri Lanka. All those countries are not UN members, and they have fine traditions of respecting free speech and personal freedoms.
*disclaimer! this is parody. If you don't like it, bite me (or moderate me)
0 1 - just my two bits
If the UN cannot even get the US to pay their dues, than how are they going to enforce this?
They seem to be able to enforce things in Kosovo. Well, bomb stuff if not enforce things.
Bomb domain squatters!
pooptruck
Whoops. My mistake.
I suppose if it were the UN, they'd just sit around in blue helmets and watch the domain squatters keep squatting.
pooptruck
Also brought to you by the smart people of WIPO:
the proposal that forbids reverse engineering or
circumvention of security in software.
They hid that particular piece in a very big proposal about copyright protection that was almost unanimously accepted by the European Union, (whose politicians wouldn't know a harddrive from a frisbee).
And wasn't in that same proposal the insane notion that caching was a breach of copyright and therefore illegal?
Unfortunately, yes, these dinosaurs are for real.
--Zarn
actually, its probably www.blackhelicopters.org
I don't know whether that's a troll or gross lack of knowledge.
Are you suggesting that the UN has a standing army? Where?
I think that some people here are overheating.
What we've got here is an international agency; mainly led by the US, EU, Japan, proposing a plan pertaining to domain names. Such a proposition has no legal enforcing value by itself... it is a proposition.
Furthermore, it does not propose the creation of any international body to oversee anything. So it would be as the current agreements on intellectual property, trademarks, and similar things.
If you don't agree with this, don't go potty mouth about the UN. You should rather ask yourself whether those you elected to the US congress are able to understand the issues involved, because it is them who will vote any enforceable statute on the topic.
I don't see how the U.N. has any rights to regulate the Internet, especially when one of the world's largest producers of computer components (namely the Republic of China [Taiwan]) is barred from membership.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
It doesn't surprise me at all that the UN membership would generally support censorship and restrictions on free speech. Of the member states of the UN, what perctentage of those governments do you suppose have a real permissive attitude towards parody and satire in general?
Would you put it at about the same percentage of countries that have a free press and a constitutionally or legally enshrined free speech protections? Or do you think there's some kind of UN High Committee for Increasing Freedom of Speech and Parody And Satire, co-chaired by China and Myanmar, with Afghanistan and Nigeria as contributers?
Considering that in most countries criticizing big business it tantamount to criticizing whatever jackbooted thugs happen to be in charge of the junta that week (since it's usually the leadership's relatives that get the mining/planatation/slave labor concessions anyway), it's hardly surprising that the UN members would want to restrict anything that might enable criticism.
Remember, in lots of these places a mimmeograph machine is considered a threat to the government. God only knows what kind of fears wide-open communications means to those people.
Just what we need. UN involvement in the domain name game. as if interNIC needs any help being more incompetent.
we now return you to the previously scheduled "peacekeeping" mission.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
My newspaper, the Dartmouth Review, bought our domain name several years ago. Unfortunately, it seems our ex-Internet guy at the time registered it to himself and now operates a business from that site. We're currently trying to legally compell him to hand over the address, but this takes time, patience, and money. It is quite a pain in the ass. And apparently, his site www.dartmouthreview.com gets over 5000 hits/month intended for our site, www.dartrevew.com.
I welcome this development.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
Do a web search for "alternic" to find info on this. It was tried, in a way.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
Nothing was wrong with this guys post, but it doesn't deserve a level 2 rating, much less 3! Whats up with that?
Dude, you're an AC, you posts always start at 0....
for domain sqwatting to end. It is extremely frustrating to look for a company's web site and some squatter has it.
I was pissed in January when I found that some mook in California had registered the domain I wanted :( including .org and .net .ca domain is still available, and it is currently free to register Canadian domains, .ca registrar, they're going to start charging soon. .ca domain.
Of course, the same
though according to the
Unfortunately, it costs C$300 to federally register a company in Canada to get a
No way to win this one: ya pays yer money and takes yer chances
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Here's the key part:
The World Intellectual Property Organization's Final Report on "The Management of Internet Names And Addresses: Intellectual Property Issues" is in all but one major respect a substantial improvement on the Interim Report.
- The attempt to define "abusive registrations" represents a good-faith effort to define cybersquatting. While this new definition will no doubt benefit from public comment and discussion, it seems to hew closely to the definitions evolving in the various courts that have considered the issue.
- Unfortunately, the Final Report leaves essentially unchanged the proposals in the Interim Report regarding the proposed treatment of globally famous trademarks. It proposes a baroque ad hoc quasi-judicial procedure based on vague (and in once case prejudicial) criteria to define when a trademark is sufficiently internationally famous to be granted special privileges on the Internet that the mark would not currently have under law. At present there is no agreed definition of a globally famous mark, although WIPO-sponsored panels have been seeking formulate a definition for years. Furthermore, the WIPO proposal rejects imposing any upper limit on the number of trademarks that may be declared "famous," perhaps because it is impossible to predict how many marks will qualify.
- As noted regarding the Interim Report, parties who lose their domain names under the proposed dispute resolution procedure and believe the arbitrator erred may find it difficult to find a court capable of hearing their claim. Because the Final Report restricts the dispute resolution procedure to a much narrower class of cases than did the Interim Report, one can expect that there will be many fewer such cases than initially feared - but not zero.
- In addition, there are a number of relatively minor ambiguities and possible errors relating to material which appears for the first time in the Final Report. This material will benefit from public review; and in some cases some of this material may need minor revision.
- While not strictly an intellectual property issue, and without wishing to minimize the complexity and importance of the real issues that remain to be determined, the Final Report's discussion of new gTLDs and especially the creation of a new privacy-enhanced gTLD for non-commercial uses, is a less ringing endorsement than one might have hoped.
-- Michael FroomkinA. Michael Froomkin
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
I have a blog.
OK, I have a question. Is this kind of thing going to be squished firmly for its chilling effect on the First Amendment? Or are we going to get sold out again by our pseudoelected pseudoleaders and abandon any claim we have to govern ourselves?
What used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave is rapidly becoming neither... and efforts like this aren't helping.
Those who would give up a little freedom for a little security will soon have neither. -- Poor Richard, more or less.
For every domain name that you could possibly think of someone else has already, and paid for it :( - They should have done this seven years ago. The only people who have any sort of control are the government based registrars e.g. '.ca' In Canada you cannot get a '.ca' registration uless you are federally incorporated under the name XXX.ca or you own the XXX trademark .
my $.02
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
Why are they now trying to regulate the internet ?
Don't they have some third-world countries to abuse these days ?
I just wish that sometime they'd stay out of our business. They didnt want to take care of it before, but now that it's become mainstream, they feel like they have to regulate all over it. The U.N. has no place here. What are we going to see next ? U.N. regulating communication charges ?
sigh.
Sun Tzu must have been running Linux...
- Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. (Sun Tzu, The art of war)
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
But these squatters didn't pay for anything... You don't have to pay for the domain immediately. They just hold the domain for 6 months, and when their time runs out, they release and register it under a different name...
This means they can register any number of domains at practicaly ZERO cost...
The UN has no jurisdiction over this matter. What's it going to do? Pass resolutions condemning me if i violate there little rules? Perhaps they'll send peacekeepers or white cars with UNSCOM license plates to my house?
Wouldn't it be nice if the internet referred to the "International Net"? I'm not even sure the US has the majority of the world's traffic anymore - or its margin has been cut down severely.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
So much freedom in the US. So little elsewhere. Explain to me again why I can't legally download SecureCRT from the States?
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I suppose the UN already registered www.blackhelicopters.com for itself.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
They've missed the point.. its not the fact that these 'squatters' (How cynically fitting, by the way) have REGISTERED the domains.. its the fact that they are charging a high-school kid's yearly salary for it! If someone gets it before a company decides to buy a ticket into the online world, then that's just the way it is. Unless they are claiming to be that company, there is no harm done.. True, most urls wouldn't exactly fit this..but just because someone has a company (large, small, or monopolized), does -not- entitle them to a domain name of the same name.
Life is not fair, use your time and resources for things that are halfway important. If they want to bust cybersquatters, make them put something constructive up, not "This is mine, pay me the equivalent of a small country to have it"...
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
I guess something else that would need to be considered is the enforcement issue. If the UN cannot even get the US to pay their dues, than how are they going to enforce this? Sure, ICANN might go with it, but, and correct me if I am wrong, doesn't NSI's contract run through 2000? And isn't there the possiblity it will be renewed? If yes, than mighten it be possible, as an American corporation, that they migh not adhere to this proposal (assuming it passes)? Then, you have to consider the US laws in the matter; Congress has several times specified that no foreign entity's laws and/or regulations shall superceed US law on US territory without express permission from Congress (actually, the Senate; it was ruled these regualtions where in effect treaties). So, what if Congress doesn't agree? Will the NSI directly conter ICANN? Gosh I hope NSI can renew their contract (and I believe that was the first time I have ever said that)...
-G.
Please read me out I will keep this short.
.xxx .yyy would not be so bad. The big thing would be getting people to make the change in there DNS setup. This could be done with a setup/script.
As I understand it a top level DNS is nothing special other than its size and it's listed
in the standard dns setup everyone uses.
Is there something to prevent an alternative. It would answere what requests it could and pass the rest on to the traditional top level. Of course the names could not be the same but a few new
It looks to me like the NSI is a hollow monopoly that only exists because we think it should.
This is JUST what we need... a bunch of overzealous beaurocrats with
delusions of gradeur who can't get their OWN affairs in order deciding
to poke their noses in other people's business...
They should just keep their 'contributions' to themselves until AFTER
the UN achieves global peace (which ain't gonna happen until long
after they've learned to stop squabbling amongst
themselves.)
It doesn't surprise me that WIPO is involved though...
Yes, let's put a stop to cyber-squatting. By golly, it's high time someone did something about this.
Oh, but wait. That list they're putting together probably isn't going to have the name of MY company on it, will it? It's going to have Coca-Cola, Pepsi, KFC, and all the other huge multinationals, plus whichever companies are most favored in the various nations sponsoring this initiative.
But, hey, those big, favored companies need protection from the little guy, by golly! McDonalds and Microsoft are in real danger from the little guys. Let's expend more resources on helping them out.
Gosh, I love how things always work out in the best interests of the most vulnerable of the world's constituencies.
-Joe
Remember, the UN were the ones who said "Oh sorry, we didn't realize, this is YOUR Suez Canal. We'll go home now; to hell with Israel".
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
It's not that they don't apply to INTERNATIONAL copyright regulations, but rather that they don't apply to ANY copyright regulations. Congress (Senate) cannot simply evade the constitution by enacting its unconstitutional legislation as a treaty. If the UN decided that countries should amputate the legs of all their citizens, it would still violate the 8th ammendment.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Who's going to stop useless, bloated beaurocracies
from interfering in things THEY are totally
unrelated to...
*cough*
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
I agree with the criticisms about the UN and WIPO overstepping their bounds. However, I disagree with the sense that they cannot do anything harmful, and should be ignored. WIPO policies have been widely adopted, and when adopted by domain name registries, they can become as effective as though they were the law.
The difference here is that these rules are being promulgated by people accountable to no constituency except, of course, the special interests that sponsored their international activism. (This translates about 95% to large multinationals seeking to end-run enforceability limitations of the U.S. trademark laws.)
Understanding that it is highly likely that WIPO policies can become domain name dispute resolution policies; and that these policies, if applied, can effectively create quasi-judicial rights in gross for these well-heeled interests that they could not obtain otherwise (often for which the loser probably has no meaningful legal recourse in the courts of any nation) something must be done.
A few brave souls have been active in fighting the good fight, and have been desperate to get someone, anyone, to get interested enough to chime in and comment. Michael Froomkin at the University of Miami has been one of the leaders. He writes about the details at:
http://www.law.tm/
I would advise anyone with an interest to get "active." Whatever your thoughts about the propriety of international government, the non-governmental nature of the internet makes it quite vulnerable to this kind of de-facto policy-making, which policy-making can in time become effective as though it were the law.
I fear that this idea is one that had been concocted by the usual politiciens that have no email address, yet alone used the internet. There are no sane reasons for just stopping people from registering domain names. For example, I own the, rather lame admittedly, atari.co.uk domain. I have a few hundred visitors a week, nothing much, *but* I do receive a fair amount of mail from strangers asking for help. If this domain was taken over by Hasbros (Who own the Atari trademark) then I doubt very much if this service would still be there. However, if the UN were going to put something through, I would like to see the general hoarding and unuse of domain names stopped. I've know several domain names which I could have made site with to be taken, and when looked up in the whois database, they have no DNS settings... no email then there.
What does anyone care what the UN thinks? Last time I checked we (earthlings) hadn't yet agreed to global governance.