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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.
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.
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.
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!"
There's nothing to stop you from running your own name server and putting whatever name you like there. So long as other name servers point to it, it'll be just as recognised as anything placed on one of the major name servers. The UN can say what it likes, but if you have your own DNS, they have very little power on what you put on it.
(If you wanted to be really sure, just have it in international waters, on a remote island or in a country which has not signed any of the copyright treaties.)
It never ceases to amaze me that these kinds of arguments occur. Freedom is a two-edged sword. Whatever freedoms you have, everyone else has, too. And that includes those everyone's that are in companies, governments and international bodies.
If you've the freedom to decide what goes on your computer, so do they. If you've the freedom to decide what goes through your computer, so do they. The internet IS international and the same basic freedoms that apply to you apply to every other user, including admins for top-level domain name servers.
If you don't like what they're doing, you've the same freedoms they have. Run your own servers. You have NO more authority to tell them how to use the Internet than they have over 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)
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
"Under the proposed rules, ICANN would stablish a list of protected "famous or well-known marks" that would not be available for registration to the average Internet user."
I too had to take a long hard look at this sentence. I don't like the phrase "average Internet user" at all, and such a proposal would only serve to create more of a rift between the corporate entities intent on turning this communications medium into Glorified Television and the "average user" who just wants to be able to communicate freely and get their ideas across.
"Register what?! I'm sorry, you're not a company, you can't do that on the Internet."
Of course, from what I've gathered, the "average" Internet user only wants to see stock quotes 'n tits nowadays, so they're safe from all this. But I don't want to feel like a prole in this medium. Not when the devices are in place to allow me to make what I want of it.
Grah.
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.
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
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
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.
What does anyone care what the UN thinks? Last time I checked we (earthlings) hadn't yet agreed to global governance.