Re:Intellectual Property
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
(Background: I have worked for NASA contractors for about ten years)
The way work is done at NASA is that there are separate pots of money. If something is purchased with corporate money ("overhead" or "capital equipment"), it is corporate property and is not subject to the usual Government regulations on procurement, standards, etc.
But if something is purchased using Government money, or software is developed using a budget provided with the contract work order, it belongs to the taxpayers.
So it looks to me that NSI has no leg to stand on.
It's hard to say from the quotes in the article what NSI's actual position is (do they claim to own the database or the data itself?), but the way this usually works is the way you've described your situation. IOW, NSI can possibly own the database of domain information, but the data itself is public domain.
I think this is analogous to online phone directories. Courts have ruled that you can create an online database, then fill it with information from someone else's database without infringing on their intellectual property. However, you cannot simply put their database up.
If NSI claims that they own the database, they may or may not have a case. I suppose it depends on whether the gov't decides that since it helped NSI create it, it should be public (and whether the courts in the ensuing lawsuit agree). If NSI claims they own the data in the database, I think they're probably going to lose that argument.
NSI's position is that owns the database containing the registrants.
Then they at least have a case. As you've noted, there is plenty of precedent for the government paying for a database's creation then letting the company that did it have ownership of it.
Honestly, if the extent of their ownership claim is the database itself, I'm not sure their is much the government can do about it. As much as I may dislike NSI's approach, I think they're probably on fairly solid ground here.
Sure, it's public property... but I don't think I want to be listed... where do I apply? I especially don't want every company who pays a small fee to get my home address phone number aswell as my email... they can do it by looking me up, but I don't want it to be easier than it already is.
Re:Intellectual Property
by
Frater+219
·
· Score: 3
The whois data *is* intellectual property. Specifically, it is the property of the registrants. My employer owns the information regarding its registration; this is why we are allowed to edit or destroy it.
If NSI owned our whois entry, then they could sue us if we changed our contact addresses to false or nonexistent ones, because we would thereby be damaging their property. However, since the entry is in fact ours, we are allowed to.
Furthermore, if NSI owned that information, then we would have to agree to surrender our registry information to their ownership. Obviously we didn't do that.
That's not a customer list; it's a database of other people's information. It was so before NSI maintained it, and it will remain so after they no longer maintain it.
The reason "nothing" has been happening in the Microsoft case is that the judge had to take a break to work on another case. The Microsoft case is going to be starting back up real soon now, and it's looking worse and worse for Microsoft (more evidence in the Caldera case, which will almost certainly affect the Microsoft case, along with other stuff). The discussion about Microsoft isn't whether they're going to lose, but how much is going to happen to them when they do lose...
Monopolies are not against the law; as you state, NSI has a government-created monopoly. It is abuse of monopoly power which is against the law, just as it should be.
If market forces can no longer act properly, because there is a monopoly, then the economy suffers. It is only right (if you believe free markets are a good thing, a view I suspect is held by the vast majority of/.ers) that there should be some power to redress the balance.
More importantly, this power should not rest with the government, but with the courts, which is the solution the United States has found. Anti-trust law should not be about addressing unjust enrichment, but about protecting the market.
Modern markets are much more complex that those which existed two centuries ago. If I buy an apple from one vendor, I can still buy bananas and food processors from whomsoever I chose. If I purchase a computer, however, I am often causing what should be my choices of an OS, an OE, a Word processing paradigm, etc, to be made for me. It need not and should not be this way.
NSI's position is that owns the database containing the registrants. They further claim that their contract with NSF granted them rights to any IP created by their registration business. Contrary to what some ppl believe, just because the gov paid for something, doesn't mean that they automatically own it. For instance, if the gov contracts out for services to be rendered, it may waive rights to *how* the services are rendered.
As for the phonebook directory analogy, NSI's position is that entries in their "phonebook" are publically available. However, they'll dish it out one entry (WhoIs) at a time. Hence, the central issue is whether others should be granted bulk access to the entries in NSI's database.
The DOJ is starting to worry me. First they target microsoft (don't get me wrong - I think they needed to too), then Intel (well, maybe..), now Network Solutions.
I'm starting to suspect the government is stepping on it's own toes here. It creates a monopoly power in the domain area, and then launches probes when it becomes a monopoly. Well.. Duh. Whacha expect?
Not that these cases don't have merit - most of them do.. but the technology sector should be able to solve the problem on it's *own*. Let IANA and company boot Network Solutions -> They'll do a faster, and more efficient job of dispatching any would-be domain monopoly faster than the DOJ can. And as a bonus - IANA will take feedback from the community. Thus far, the DOJ has shown little inclination to listen to *our* suggestions for dealing with Microsoft.
--
Re:Anti-trust comes in groups.
by
Signal+11
·
· Score: 3
This, as far as I can tell, is the second big wave of anti-trust action by the government. The first was when industrialization happened faster than the government could act. The result? An oil monopoly. A steel monopoly. A meat monopoly. Etc. When growth goes that fast, some lucky people will end up with monopolies. This is not fair.
I'd like to add that NSI's monopoly may well dissolve without any government intervention. Here again, the IANA is working diligently to create a competitive market here. NSI will be unable to maintain a monopoly. They will be forced to become competitive.
I'm concerned that this sets a dangerous precident - anti-trust law was meant to be used as a weapon of LAST resort. The market should be left alone, unless the problem is incurable -and- causing problems to the consumer.
It is simply foolhardy for Janet Reno and company to waste more of MY taxpayer money on something that may well be over before their case gets off the ground.
--
Doesn't this mean something?
by
eebly
·
· Score: 2
Maybe I'm missing it, but why was NSI given this plumb deal in the first place? Domain registration seems like exactly the sort of thing Government SHOULD do. It's part of the infrastructure, like the roads (private roads have had a terrible history in this country). The advantage would be that we wouldn't have all this squabbling over the distribution of names (I've been getting junk-mail through my registration, BTW), and this bullshit attempt to keep the database private. Granted, government-run has other problems, but it might be a better option than the mire we're in now. (And why does ICANA get to make these decision? Who the hell ARE they!?) ---------
Re:Doesn't this mean something?
by
jason_aw
·
· Score: 3
No, it certainly should *not* be handled by the US government... it should be kept as far away from them as possible.
For one thing, remember that America isn't the whole world. I think occasionaly some of you need reminding of that:-)
But the more we allow governments in general to handle internet infrastructure the more they are going to try to restrict it... and that would be disastrous.
Of course, nothing will stop them placing their restrictions, but surely we should do all we can to keep their hands off our internet?
You've only got to look at some of the European guidlines being introduced to show that we should do our best to keep politicians as far away as we can possibly manage.
Re:Intellectual Property
by
sammy+baby
·
· Score: 2
So, it appears to me that the public who is NSI's collective customer 'owns' the information in WHOIS. Do they have a legitimate legal claim of intellectual property?
Arguably, yes. Let's say I run a market research firm, and I publish a report on the buying habits of consumers between the ages of 15 and 30. All of the consumers whose statistics are used to form the report own their own spending behavior, but they don't own the content of the report.
To bring the case closer to home: if I'm Time magazine, no company can simply compel me to turn over my list of subscriber information. It's a valuable commodity, and I can sell it to (and for however much) I choose/can get away with.
NSI could easily argue that "the public" isn't really their customer at all: it's the domain name registrants. Since all the people in the WHOIS database are their clients, they're likely to argue that they shouldn't be compelled to turn over the nature of the business relationship to anyone who wants to know. In any other context, it'd be entirely reasonable, but the public nature of the Internet has turned this issue sticky.
To take this a bit farther...maybe to an extreme...but extremes seem to be good thought experiments to figure out concepts.
What if a new registration database started up (to my knowledge, ICANN/IANA and crew are *not* setting up a seperate database, just ensuring that other companies can register in to the already existing database), and my company put the same information in this new database? If NSI is claiming that they own the information in their database, can they then sue my company for putting our contact information (identical to what's in NSI's whois) in another database? Theoretically, if they own that data, then they could conceivably sue over that.
Like I said...perhaps its extreme...but perhaps not...if there's anything I've learned in my dealings with NSI, is don't assume anything is extreme with them.
It is the perfect way for them to make money. Then they won't go around leeching off countries as much. Let them register the domain names and get some money from it. And then we have the only relatively independent group having a monopoly.
Maybe they could keep stuff private. I filter most of it into my trash, but it still is hard.
-- "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - F. Voltaire.
It is IP in the sense that Trade Secrets are IP. It is not IP in the sense of copyrightable information. There was a Supreme Court case that held that the information in an ordinary phone book is not copyrightable.
I wonder if it matters in the long run. Whois queries will eventually drain the database of this information. What is troublesome is that there won't be a universal Whois database anymore. We may have to query several whois servers to find the information unless there is some cooperation between the registrants.
-- I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Anti-trust comes in groups.
by
Fizgig
·
· Score: 3
This, as far as I can tell, is the second big wave of anti-trust action by the government. The first was when industrialization happened faster than the government could act. The result? An oil monopoly. A steel monopoly. A meat monopoly. Etc. When growth goes that fast, some lucky people will end up with monopolies. This is not fair.
Here we see again growth far too rapid for government regulation to prevent monopolies from forming. Again, we see the monopolies have formed (NSI with the help of the government, no less!) Anti-trust laws help the government because it can't have perfect foresight. Free market ecomonies work pretty well usually. But when monopolies come into the picture, someone has to clean it up.
I guess the other ripple of anti-trust stuff would be the breakup of CAB (airline deregulation) and AT&T, but that was much smaller.
NSI's defense seems to be that the WHOIS data is 'intellectual property'.
>NSI argues that it has an exclusive right to the database because >the company's original agreement with the National Science >Foundation specified that it would own any "intellectual >property" created by the address-registration business. "It's very >clear that we have the rights to this data,"
I guess my concept of intellectual property is flawed. I always think of it as an idea or invention or some other unique creation. Ok, their process, code, etc for accumulating this data and the way it is stored and communicated seem like obvious intellectual property, but this just seems like this is public information that they want to hold hostage?
My basis for this line of thinking comes from my own experience at work. We run a data processing service bureau, with some in-house applications that our clients use to run their business. Our system is proprietary and we guard our 'intellectual property' jealously. But, the data belongs to the client, who created it. We won't disclose interals of how we collect, store and distribute the data, but we have no ownership of the data and we are obligated to allow the customer access in any way they want (granted, we may charge a fee to deliver it in a way which is not already supported).
So, it appears to me that the public who is NSI's collective customer 'owns' the information in WHOIS. Do they have a legitimate legal claim of intellectual property?
Re:Intellectual Property
by
markos1-1
·
· Score: 2
The problem I forsee is that if NSI claims to have rights to the DATABASE and not the DATA then they will probably win any case brought against them BECAUSE the NSF guaranteed them the rights.
The US gov't doesn't mind stepping on it's own toes, but I guarantee they hate invalidating their own contracts. It sets a bad precedent for a government, any government.
Having a monopoly isn't illegal, using that monopoly to enter into a new business field, however, is. Don't get me wrong, there should be compition(sp?) in this field but if NSI is only protecting a monopoly the DOJ may not have a case.
Slashdot Mirror
(Background: I have worked for NASA contractors for about ten years)
The way work is done at NASA is that there are separate pots of money. If something is purchased with corporate money ("overhead" or "capital equipment"), it is corporate property and is not subject to the usual Government regulations on procurement, standards, etc.
But if something is purchased using Government money, or software is developed using a budget provided with the contract work order, it belongs to the taxpayers.
So it looks to me that NSI has no leg to stand on.
I think this is analogous to online phone directories. Courts have ruled that you can create an online database, then fill it with information from someone else's database without infringing on their intellectual property. However, you cannot simply put their database up.
If NSI claims that they own the database, they may or may not have a case. I suppose it depends on whether the gov't decides that since it helped NSI create it, it should be public (and whether the courts in the ensuing lawsuit agree). If NSI claims they own the data in the database, I think they're probably going to lose that argument.
Then they at least have a case. As you've noted, there is plenty of precedent for the government paying for a database's creation then letting the company that did it have ownership of it.
Honestly, if the extent of their ownership claim is the database itself, I'm not sure their is much the government can do about it. As much as I may dislike NSI's approach, I think they're probably on fairly solid ground here.
Posted by Hungry Joe:
Sure, it's public property... but I don't think I want to be listed... where do I apply? I especially don't want every company who pays a small fee to get my home address phone number aswell as my email... they can do it by looking me up, but I don't want it to be easier than it already is.
The whois data *is* intellectual property. Specifically, it is the property of the registrants. My employer owns the information regarding its registration; this is why we are allowed to edit or destroy it.
If NSI owned our whois entry, then they could sue us if we changed our contact addresses to false or nonexistent ones, because we would thereby be damaging their property. However, since the entry is in fact ours, we are allowed to.
Furthermore, if NSI owned that information, then we would have to agree to surrender our registry information to their ownership. Obviously we didn't do that.
That's not a customer list; it's a database of other people's information. It was so before NSI maintained it, and it will remain so after they no longer maintain it.
The reason "nothing" has been happening in the Microsoft case is that the judge had to take a break to work on another case. The Microsoft case is going to be starting back up real soon now, and it's looking worse and worse for Microsoft (more evidence in the Caldera case, which will almost certainly affect the Microsoft case, along with other stuff). The discussion about Microsoft isn't whether they're going to lose, but how much is going to happen to them when they do lose...
If market forces can no longer act properly, because there is a monopoly, then the economy suffers. It is only right (if you believe free markets are a good thing, a view I suspect is held by the vast majority of /.ers) that there should be some power to redress the balance.
More importantly, this power should not rest with the government, but with the courts, which is the solution the United States has found. Anti-trust law should not be about addressing unjust enrichment, but about protecting the market.
Modern markets are much more complex that those which existed two centuries ago. If I buy an apple from one vendor, I can still buy bananas and food processors from whomsoever I chose. If I purchase a computer, however, I am often causing what should be my choices of an OS, an OE, a Word processing paradigm, etc, to be made for me. It need not and should not be this way.
NSI's position is that owns the database containing the registrants. They further claim that their contract with NSF granted them rights to any IP created by their registration business. Contrary to what some ppl believe, just because the gov paid for something, doesn't mean that they automatically own it. For instance, if the gov contracts out for services to be rendered, it may waive rights to *how* the services are rendered.
As for the phonebook directory analogy, NSI's position is that entries in their "phonebook" are publically available. However, they'll dish it out one entry (WhoIs) at a time. Hence, the central issue is whether others should be granted bulk access to the entries in NSI's database.
The DOJ is starting to worry me. First they target microsoft (don't get me wrong - I think they needed to too), then Intel (well, maybe..), now Network Solutions.
I'm starting to suspect the government is stepping on it's own toes here. It creates a monopoly power in the domain area, and then launches probes when it becomes a monopoly. Well.. Duh. Whacha expect?
Not that these cases don't have merit - most of them do.. but the technology sector should be able to solve the problem on it's *own*. Let IANA and company boot Network Solutions -> They'll do a faster, and more efficient job of dispatching any would-be domain monopoly faster than the DOJ can. And as a bonus - IANA will take feedback from the community. Thus far, the DOJ has shown little inclination to listen to *our* suggestions for dealing with Microsoft.
--
This, as far as I can tell, is the second big wave of anti-trust action by the government. The first was when industrialization happened faster than the government could act. The result? An oil monopoly. A steel monopoly. A meat monopoly. Etc. When growth goes that fast, some lucky people will end up with monopolies. This is not fair.
I'd like to add that NSI's monopoly may well dissolve without any government intervention. Here again, the IANA is working diligently to create a competitive market here. NSI will be unable to maintain a monopoly. They will be forced to become competitive.
I'm concerned that this sets a dangerous precident - anti-trust law was meant to be used as a weapon of LAST resort. The market should be left alone, unless the problem is incurable -and- causing problems to the consumer.
It is simply foolhardy for Janet Reno and company to waste more of MY taxpayer money on something that may well be over before their case gets off the ground.
--
Maybe I'm missing it, but why was NSI given this plumb deal in the first place? Domain registration seems like exactly the sort of thing Government SHOULD do. It's part of the infrastructure, like the roads (private roads have had a terrible history in this country). The advantage would be that we wouldn't have all this squabbling over the distribution of names (I've been getting junk-mail through my registration, BTW), and this bullshit attempt to keep the database private. Granted, government-run has other problems, but it might be a better option than the mire we're in now. (And why does ICANA get to make these decision? Who the hell ARE they!?)
---------
Arguably, yes. Let's say I run a market research firm, and I publish a report on the buying habits of consumers between the ages of 15 and 30. All of the consumers whose statistics are used to form the report own their own spending behavior, but they don't own the content of the report.
To bring the case closer to home: if I'm Time magazine, no company can simply compel me to turn over my list of subscriber information. It's a valuable commodity, and I can sell it to (and for however much) I choose/can get away with.
NSI could easily argue that "the public" isn't really their customer at all: it's the domain name registrants. Since all the people in the WHOIS database are their clients, they're likely to argue that they shouldn't be compelled to turn over the nature of the business relationship to anyone who wants to know. In any other context, it'd be entirely reasonable, but the public nature of the Internet has turned this issue sticky.
To take this a bit farther...maybe to an extreme...but extremes seem to be good thought experiments to figure out concepts.
What if a new registration database started up (to my knowledge, ICANN/IANA and crew are *not* setting up a seperate database, just ensuring that other companies can register in to the already existing database), and my company put the same information in this new database? If NSI is claiming that they own the information in their database, can they then sue my company for putting our contact information (identical to what's in NSI's whois) in another database? Theoretically, if they own that data, then they could conceivably sue over that.
Like I said...perhaps its extreme...but perhaps not...if there's anything I've learned in my dealings with NSI, is don't assume anything is extreme with them.
Jeff
It is the perfect way for them to make money. Then they won't go around leeching off countries as much. Let them register the domain names and get some money from it. And then we have the only relatively independent group having a monopoly.
Maybe they could keep stuff private. I filter most of it into my trash, but it still is hard.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - F. Voltaire.
It is IP in the sense that Trade Secrets are IP. It is not IP in the sense of copyrightable information. There was a Supreme Court case that held that the information in an ordinary phone book is not copyrightable.
I wonder if it matters in the long run. Whois queries will eventually drain the database of this information. What is troublesome is that there won't be a universal Whois database anymore. We may have to query several whois servers to find the information unless there is some cooperation between the registrants.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
This, as far as I can tell, is the second big wave of anti-trust action by the government. The first was when industrialization happened faster than the government could act. The result? An oil monopoly. A steel monopoly. A meat monopoly. Etc. When growth goes that fast, some lucky people will end up with monopolies. This is not fair.
Here we see again growth far too rapid for government regulation to prevent monopolies from forming. Again, we see the monopolies have formed (NSI with the help of the government, no less!) Anti-trust laws help the government because it can't have perfect foresight. Free market ecomonies work pretty well usually. But when monopolies come into the picture, someone has to clean it up.
I guess the other ripple of anti-trust stuff would be the breakup of CAB (airline deregulation) and AT&T, but that was much smaller.
NSI's defense seems to be that the WHOIS data is 'intellectual property'.
>NSI argues that it has an exclusive right to the database because
>the company's original agreement with the National Science
>Foundation specified that it would own any "intellectual
>property" created by the address-registration business. "It's very
>clear that we have the rights to this data,"
I guess my concept of intellectual property is flawed. I always think of it as an idea or invention or some other unique creation. Ok, their process, code, etc for accumulating this data and the way it is stored and communicated seem like obvious intellectual property, but this just seems like this is public information that they want to hold hostage?
My basis for this line of thinking comes from my own experience at work. We run a data processing service bureau, with some in-house applications that our clients use to run their business. Our system is proprietary and we guard our 'intellectual property' jealously. But, the data belongs to the client, who created it. We won't disclose interals of how we collect, store and distribute the data, but we have no ownership of the data and we are obligated to allow the customer access in any way they want (granted, we may charge a fee to deliver it in a way which is not already supported).
So, it appears to me that the public who is NSI's collective customer 'owns' the information in WHOIS. Do they have a legitimate legal claim of intellectual property?