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Victory for small business in domain disputes
A reader sent us the link-o-meter to the story about how Clue Computing beat toy giant Hasbro over a 3 year long legal dispute over clue.com (Hasbro owns the Clue board game). Some are hoping that this will mean small business have a precent to call in in the case of legal disputes over names trademarked by different folks-and in related news, Hasbro will be purchasing Wizards of the Coast, Magic:The Gathering card maker, and owner of TSR, Inc.
This largely makes sense. I don't know about statement 1, I don't think there *is* any absolute protection of a name. As many said, trademark law protects your use of the mark in your trade... not your right to use the word for anything you want.
2) I don't agree. "A" can have as many domains as he wants....
3&4) YES! Absolutely! Good idea! We should start doing this immediately.
The only problem I see with revoking domain names is the fact that people percieve having PAID for it. Even though they have just paid a fee for 'registration services' and not actually bought the domain..... this could get ugly.
If my domain was taken away, I would certainly feel that NSI had performed their duties as registrar fraudulently by letting me register in the first place.
It would be easy to show that the original guidelines, up until recently, for which TLD to use are still in place, and that NSI ignored them.
A company called RealNames is trying to do what you're describing. What's stunting RealNames is acceptance; obviously, companies have to pay them extra to sign up, and that doesn't sit well with them sometimes (they thought they took care of that in trademark registration).
The problem with InterNIC/RSI "impartially" (i.e, non-commercially) administering something like this (besides the fact that it's RSI) is the enormous overhead, plus it's what DNS was supposed to do. They didn't policy-build to account for cybersquatters and the like, and now it's coming back to bite them in the butt.
OTOH, Yahoo lists net presences by category; you could find your category, and then look for Clue (Entertainment:games:board:Hasbro) or Clue Computing (Companies:California:etc.).
I think the current DNS resolution policy would work, if it had more serious teeth. That's likely to be the best solution we'd get.
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
Hasbro buying out WotC is probably the worst thing which could happen for role-playing gamers.
Why? Because Hasbro is a huge company. And huge companies have this annoying habit of bowing to the twisted whims of the so-called Christian right (never mind that it's neither). Look at Warner's cop-out of releasing The Matrix only on DVD (which I hope they don't do in the end).
In other words, everyone's favorite band of immature zealots will now have a much easier time of getting a lot of the best role-playing and card games out there effectively banned by "forcing" Hasbro to stop making them (thanks to one incredibly annoying facet of the Christian right: it's so damn huge that a boycott, or even the threat of one, would be disastrous to any company, even Micro$oft).
Hey, I was wondering... Why is it THE American law ruling the Net, since the Net is somehow *not only* in the USA.
I'm European, and I'm sick and tired to see whatever's done on and to the Net is ruled by yankee law. I think there should be an Internet Law, signed by as many nations as possible that would only apply on the Net.
Waaahh, we might even GPL the law...
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Most domain name suits have no real legal basis. They aren't violating any trademarks or infringing on patents or diluting public perception. The approach that seems to be being used to fight over domain names is trademark. Some company has a trademark over a name and so they use the trademark to try and bully small companies or private individuals. The only problem is that the legal bullying usually has no grounding. You can only trademark a name for a particular purpose. So for instance Apple Computers is free to sell computers under the Apple brand name but they can't sell records since that would infringe on Apple Records trademark. There's still some room for litigation at times of course. Apple Records sued Apple Computer for QuickTime since it could record/play back music and hence from Apple Records point of view Apple Computer was in the music business. By sticking to strict interpretations of trademark law though most cases could be thrown out of court. This isn't happening though, common sense isn't prevailing.
In the Hasbro v.s. Clue Computing case the judge should very quickly throw the case out of court. Clue Computing isn't infringing on any of Hasbro's trademarks. Unfortunately it doesn't seem there are enough common sense judges out there. We need more Judge Judy's who aren't afraid to tell somebody their case is ridiculous. As soon as the concept of common sense is applied most of these lawsuits would stop: The plaintiff's case is dismissed, the defendant's countersuit for the amount of $XXX for legal fees and punitive damages is awarded.
Trademarks are there to protect both companies and consumers. Unfortunately too many companies are misusing trademarks. Unfortunately not enough judges have the scruples or guts to call a frivolous lawsuit what it is.
But, that argument is circular; 'R' Us only has value because a court is willing to enforce it as having value. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'd have to agree with you that it is questionable that a company could grab hold of a phrase and prevent even non-competitive uses of that phrase...
Write your Congressman.
Hey all,
Well I must admit that I don't have any problem with Hasbros... yet. I own the atari.co.uk domain and have a pretty tacky site on there, but in the year that I have owned it I have had no correspondance regarding it from Hasbros. Touch wood I won't in the future.
If someone could figure out quite why not please state... I would be interested in my legal position. I know for a fact that the owners of atari.de were contacted but other than that, who knows ?
Another site, diet-coke.net was bought by my company by accident... long story but it basically comes down to an internet domain-registering program.
Anyway, we got the invoice and then started trying to figure out who had registered the domain (never mind why) when two days later we received a letter from lawyers representing diet coke (or whoever owns them) demanding that we hand over the domain to them promptly *or else*.
Needless to say we gave it over to them - we're a small company and the publicity would not do us any good, even if ruled in our favour.
The point is, what gives the big companies the right to do this ? Fair enough if someone registered the simpson.com domain and then started selling off sub-domains eg bart.simpson.com but just for owning one for legit purposes must be fair enough... after all, "first come, first served.".
On a wider note, maybe Rob should add a billing page to slashdot.org where you could use a credit card to donate to a good cause.
Wizard's of the coast actually owns Game Keeper (the mall chain store) now too. It astonishes me that Wizards is allowing themselves to be bought out. But more importantly worries me that many games and game stores might be hurt irreparably in the transition. Wizards bought another Role Playing Game previously from White Wolf Games called "Ars Magica", which was in the same line as Vampire the Masquerade and other Storytelling rpgs. Ars Magica was very quickly dumped on Atlas Games which has since mired the production.
It would be a shame if Hasbro dumped D&D entirely or even put it on the back burner as many gaming stores could be hurt by this move.
For more info on the aquisition goto wizards site.
Joseph Elwell.
The entire whois database is still in the gigabyte range (read somewhere), which is no problem to copy between network level domain servers with todays datarates. The TLDs created for the proposed system would be short, probably no more than 10 bytes or so on average, so even a million of them would be less than a 100 megabyte database (name + 128 bit ipv6 name server reference).
That was definetly the best proposal I have heard on the subject.
-
Maybe some of you played this, but I doubt anyone with half a mind still does. I quit playing after they started releasing a new set every week. My god, there isn't much more they can do with the game now, so I doubt hasbro is gonna make any money off of that deal. Type 2 tournaments are simply a money making scheme. They don't allow older sets, WOTC doesn't sanction type 1, so you HAVE to buy the new cards if you want to play in the tours. Its friggin crazy. Richard Garfield HAD a great idea til it got all twisted around in an effort to make money.
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"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
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Wizards of the Coast is worse for card gaming competition than Microsoft is for fair computer OS competition. WotC uses strong arm tactics, high prices, and "extend and embrace" tactics to slowly take over the world of CCG's. (Collectible Card Games). I only hope that Hasbro will grab them and curb their craziness, allowing other, smaller CCG houses to spring up.
Dan Turk
op on undernet's Magic channel...#mtg
I won't give it "excellent," but "fair."
"Good" would be sanctioned issued (at least entirely covering the fees incurred in litigation.
"Excellent" would be a public bawling out by the judge, along with a formal referal to the bar association.
Well this case seems like the "first come, first serve" rule is still in effect. And I guess that's a good thing.
Though sometimes it's a pain. Did you ever try to find out about Nissan cars and trucks at Nissan.com? Well, you'll only see a cheesy frontpage site about a little computer store in North Carolina. Nissan the car company had the amazing foresight not to get Nissancars.com, or Nissan-cars.com, but Nissan-USA.
God I hate URLs with dashes in them...
While ICANN is far from perfect (it has allowed its focus on NSI to distract it from building truly representative governance structures), it is still a marked improvement over the present status quo. If ICANN were to fail, its replacement would be far worse - an international treaty organization along the lines of the ITU or WIPO. These organizations' track records suggest that individuals and small businesses would be even more badly disenfranchised under a successor regime than they purportedly are now.
I'd definately agree with this one, and there are quite a splits that actually might make sense (as opposed to .web, .biz, etc.)
.edu, which you actually had to prove. (and yet, a nursing school couldn't register as one, for some damned reason). .net is filling with non-isps. .org is filling with for-profit organizations. And .com is saturated with every stupid thing out there.
Take for instance, media sources-- there isn't much conflict in that one, as those that are broadcast media have 4 letter designations in the US. There aren't too many magazines willing to get mixed up with each other, and neither are the movies. (sure, there may be crossover between them, but those are the breaks).
As is stands presently, however, the TLDs are completely useless, except for
Unfortunately, unveiling new TLDs, without having some major limitations will result in people flooding the registrars to get them, and more TLDs will be more difficult on the people who have enough problems remembering two letters, much less three. There's some solution out there, I just don't know quite what it is, though.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
A couple I can think of offhand:
The Orchard Supply Harware chain wanted to open a store near San Jose. Turned out that there was already a store with the same name, older than registered trademark. They paid several times what the little mon'n'pop store was otherwise worth.
The Mirage, in Las Vegas. Turned out that there was already a little flea-bite motel with essentially the same name. They paid millions just to take the name off.
Disclaimer: IIAL, but this is not legal advice. See an attorney licenced in your area if you need some.
That said: litigating these for the little guy would be expensive. With a few years of hindsight, the approach I'd take (as a little guy) would be to find a fresh lawyer starting his practice, or who wants to start one. Cut a contingency deal with him, and possibly lend him office space as part of the deal. Supply him with clerical stuf.
***AND*** = don't miss this, lest disaster strike!
*pay* for a seasoned attorney to help him out. Generally, fresh lawywers takes space in suites with other lawyers, and knowledge freely flows (not like it used to; advertising killed that). But this kind of involvement is a lot more than the friendly exchange of ideas and advice. *do not* scrimp here. Nor should you expect the young lawyer to foot these fees (creates a major disincentive to ask the questions).
Yes, it will still cost a lot. But structuring this creatively can work out well for both you and the new attorney, who wouldn't have the experience (or resources) to handle a case like this without the old warhorse.
(But don't look at me to be that warhorse. I only do antitrust & other economic issues any more).
If sites had to rely on promoting their IP addresses rather than their domain name, any marketing advantage or disadvantage to domain names would be removed. The legal issues with domain names to do with trademark infringements and squatting would disappear and mom&pop companies could coexist with large corporations on the internet quite comfortably. (eg. Clue computing and Hasbro)
.com addresses...
Existing trademark laws would still apply, but the focus would be on content and product rather than location. Also p0rn sites and other parasites would not be able to latch on to variations of popular site names, and it would be extremely difficult for them to get similar IP addresses.
The only downside (though not for me) would be the loss of the monopoly by US companies on
Any thoughts on this?
M@T
'sapientia potestas est'
I thought there was, at one time, a rule that basically was "One Organization, one Domain."
That is, if Hasbro wanted clue.com, that would have to be their ONLY domain, so they would lose hasbro.com
If this rule were enforced, all these problems would go away! Each company would have one, and ONLY one domain, squatters could only claim one name, unless they made a front corporation for each one. For what purpose does a company really need more than one DNS address? if they have many sites they can subdomain, like clue.hasbro.com
This is only partially true. A trademark is limited in scope - usually to a particular area of trade. There can be no infringement outside of this area (with the exception of well-known marks). The classic example in the U.S. is "Delta". I can think of three right now - Delta Airlines, Delta Faucets, and Delta Dental (insurance). Despite the use of the same name, these three do NOT conflict as far as trademarks go.
Well-known marks would include something like McDonalds, which covers so much ground that McAnything is going to have a problem (yes, I know about the McDonalds in Scotland, and there have been court cases in the U.K. about this very issue.)
Hasbro is throwing its weight around. Based strictly on trademark law, I'd expect Hasbro to lose the appeals, since 'Clue' is not a well-known mark, and there's no significant cross-over between areas of trade. I just hope that Clue Computing can hang in there for the rest of the proceedings.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I'm never shopping *there* (which is made easier by the fact that there are no Fry's on the east coast.)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
This is almost certainly off-topic; those who don't want to hear about this particular subset of role-playing gaming history should move on. But I feel as if I have to set the record straight, both as a rabid Ars Magica fan (and player) and as an Atlas Games playtester.
First off: Ars Magica was developed originally by Mark Rein*Hagan and Jonathan Tweet when they were part of a start-up called Lion Rampant. ArM (as it's usually abbreviated) was kept by the company when - through a complex business morph - it became White Wolf. White Wolf later sold ArM to Wizards when their Storyteller line took off, and WotC provided some decent support for the game (even going so far as to hire Jonathan Tweet, who has since helped re-write D&D 3rd edition). Within about a year of their purchase, however, WotC decided to drop all their RPGs, concentrating on collectable card games (this was before they bought TSR, recall). Atlas Games jumped at the chance to buy the venerable ArM.
Now, Ars Magica was a testing ground of sorts for White Wolf, and many of the game designs that premiered in ArM evolved and became the bases for the Storyteller series. To be honest, ArM had - and has - one of the most elegant magic systems in any role-playing game, and moreover, they worked from a historical perspective.
In the Ars Magica community, few people have bad things to say about Atlas at all with their handling of the line. In fact, Ars Magica has become their primary cash cow, and they treat it with respect. Atlas has averaged three to four supplements a year since they purchased the game, and they have produced the 4th edition rulebook, which is widely considered the best edition ever, including the 2nd, which had long been called the One True Edition by Ars Magica diehards. With the money Atlas earned from Ars Magica, they bought the rights to several other games, including the flailing Feng Shui and the much talked-about Unknown Armies. To say that Atlas has buried the game is to do them a great disservice, as Ars Magica has been both a critical and a popular hit.
Returning to WotC, however, they have become something of the Microsoft of the RPG world. They are ruthless, business-savvy, and bent on domination of their chosen market. The only company to really hold a candle to them within the gaming industry was FASA, which has since been divided up and acquired by Microsoft and Decipher (the former to expand their games with the Battletech line of computer games and the latter to bolster their credibility and get a solid money-making product in the form of Shadowrun). I have several friends within the gaming industry who have been very nastily burned in their interactions with WotC.
Hasbro has also acquired not too long ago the strategy-gaming staple Avalon Hill, and although they claim that they will be reprinting about half of the former giant's catalogue, many hard-core gamers I know have despaired at the recent shake-ups in the industry and turned to more home-grown games. I seriously doubt that Hasbro will sink the D&D 3rd edition project, however, since WotC has a movie contract tie-in and at least one computer game tie-in in the works with third parties.
In summary, however:
Being in regular contact with the WotC/TSR guys (playtesting and whatnot), they are saying that for now it's business as usual, in web policy et al. I'm personally glad to hear that, having registered a domain relating to the new setting coming out for alternity, I would hate to lose it. More worrisome, though, is the Hasbro moral stance, as someone mentioned. If they start censoring D&D, Alternity, and other products based on the irate cries of ignorant parents, just because a product mentions a "devil", I'm going to be rather unhappy. According to the WotC website, Peter Adkison (founder, CEO) will be chatting on their chat server tomorrow at 11:00 AM Pacific time. I've never had much luck with their chat server, though :(
Communication is only possible between equals
Check out info here and here.
The merger should be completed by the end of the month.
I can't find any info on the merger at the Decipher website, as they don't seem to have any corporate press releases up that aren't related to their games.
The holding company that owns FASA (and is partially owned by Weismann and his father, mostly his father), has been partially owned by Microsoft for several years. They simply took a larger, now-visible stake in the company.
Right now Decipher hasn't bought FASA yet. They HAVE issued a letter of intent to buy. But all the details have to be hammered out yet. Speaking with Jill Lucas, and Bryan Nystul (of FASA) and several people over at Decipher, the deal looks pretty much done.
Also, it looks like, after the initial 6-8 months of integration (which will probably be "turbulent"), it'll produce nothing but Good Things for all the FASA and Decipher properties. Not much OUTWARDLY is going to change. FASA's offices on 1100 Cermak will remain. FASA gets more funding and project support, as well as a better distribution channel. Decipher gets a fairly seasoned RP/Miniatures gaming division with some fairly hot properties both in the RP and computer gaming world (Shadowrun, BattleTech, MechWarrior.
And I think it would be a mistake to call FASA an industry whipping-boy. They're fairly shrewd. How many companies in their industry have been bought and denatured by others like WotC? TSR, the 800 lb gorilla of the gaming world was bought by them. Now TSR-based products have all but made themselves irrelevant. Heck, they've taken to rehashing old projects to put new material on the shelves!
FASA has neatly avoided this. They don't change, get more money, a bit more clout, and great distribution.
The only part of FASA that Gates got was the FASA Interactive division (which also holds the old Virtual World properties). Currently they hold all licenses to computer games based on the FASA properties. MechWarrior4 (based off the Virtual World engine) will come from this division. And compared to the rather anemic, and bug-ridden Zipper Interactive offering (MechWarrior3), it's going to rock.
I will agree with you on one thing. I think a buyout by Hasbro is a Very Bad Thing.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Basically, while we all sit around and criticize these companies for throwing their weight around on smaller companies (don't get me wrong, I do it too), a company really has no other choice if they want to protect their trademark. According to corporate law, if someone can prove that you don't enforce your trademark, it becomes dilluted and your right to use it is weakened.
So a company with a trademark must use draconian measures of enforcement when defending their trademark -- they have no choice if they want to prove that to a court that they're enforcing it. And since cybersquatting has been a problem in the past, companies are probably advised by their lawyers that they MUST track down ANY potential use of their trademarked name, even in situations where it won't apply.
Of course, that means nothing to the poor small business owner (or private owner) who coincidentally is using a name that has been trademarked. It's certainly not fair to them at all -- and they don't really have the funds to defend against such matters, nine times out of ten.
It seems like a situation where no one can really win. If a company wants to retain the rights of their trademark, they have to crack down in every situation (which is why Red Hat is doing what they're doing these days). On the other hand, there's no reason why someone in a business completely unrelated to the trademark should ever have to be pushed around by a corporations legal teams.
The only way out of this is to either a) strengthen the rights of the people holding the trademark, so they don't have to enforce it all the time, or b) weaken the power of trademarks significantly, or even abolish it all together, so that no one can lay any kind of legal claim to a word or a phrase.
Either option has its problems, but I think that abolishing trademark would be better than strengthening it -- if it were strengthened, companies would probably find it more "convenient" to force people who had trademarked words in their domain names to hand them over, even if the domain names were used in a way completely unrelated to the trademark itself. If that were the case, sites like ajax.org would have been instantly overrun and they would have had no legal recourse whatsoever.
Hope that wasn't too disjointed...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
This is a side question that I would like to see discussion on someday.
I notice that a lot of folks here seem to hate so-called 'squatters' who reserve domains for money, presumably because some folks here work on that kind of thing in their day2day job. I also see some people ranting against overbearing big businesses that use piles of paperwork to overwhelm smaller registered owners for domains that they want (ie ajax.com and many others).
What should be the 'rights' reguarding names and domains? First come first served leads to squatters, but trying to discern honest holders from large pushy companies seems difficult at times. And what about "name-grabbers" like George Bush Jr., who tried to grab all the parody-type addresses he could think of before announcing candidacy. Many of you folks work within the DNS system for a living, how do _YOU_ feel it should work?
Random Speculation, pay no mind if you don't care...
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
Its good that someone finally has woke the heck up over in the Justice System. No one really defined _what_is legal to register and what isn't. But you can waste money doing a trademark search.
Lets quote NSI shall we
Revision 03 Effective February 25, 1998 1. Network Solutions, Inc. ("Network Solutions") is responsible for the registration of second-level Internet domain names in the top level COM, ORG, NET, and EDU domains. Network Solutions registers these second-level domain names on a "first come, first served" basis. By registering a domain name, Network Solutions does not determine the legality of the domain name registration, or otherwise evaluate whether that registration or use may infringe upon the rights of a third party.
This is solely written to deter themselves from suffering legal actions... point blank
2. The entity applying for a domain name ("registrant") is solely responsible for selecting its own domain name ("domain name") and maintaining for the continued accuracy of the registration record. The registrant, by completing and submitting the Domain Name Registration Agreement ("Registration Agreement"), represents that the statements in its application are true and that the registration of the selected domain name, to the best of the registrant's knowledge, does not interfere with or infringe upon the rights of any third party. The registrant also represents that the domain name is not being registered for any unlawful purpose.
Does this mean that if I registered "whatever.com" and three months down the line someone trademarked it, they can now sue me? Some of these laws are a joke... I can see whay they would make these laws being it would deter some moron from registering a site to make massive money, but there a Corporate entities who turn around and bastardize these laws as well
3. Network Solutions neither acts as arbiter nor provides resolution of disputes between registrants and third party complainants arising out of the registration or use of a domain name. This Domain Name Dispute Policy ("Policy") does not confer any rights, procedural or substantive, upon third party complainants. Likewise, complainants are not obligated to use this Policy.
More legal mumbo jumbo from a half assed registrar
http://www.netsol.com/rs/dispute-policy.html
6. Indemnity. The registrant hereby agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless (i) Network Solutions, its officers, directors, employees and agents, and (ii) the National Science Foundation ("NSF"), its officers, directors, and employees (collectively, the "Indemnified Parties"), for any loss or damages awarded by a court of competent jurisdiction resulting from any claim, action, or demand arising out of or related to the registration or use of the domain name. Such claims shall include, without limitation, those based upon trademark or service mark infringement, tradename infringement, dilution, tortious interference with contract or prospective business advantage, unfair competition, defamation or injury to business reputation. Each Indemnified Party shall send written notice to the registrant of any such claim, action, or demand against that party within a reasonable time. The failure of any Indemnified Party to give the appropriate notice shall not affect the rights of the other Indemnified Party. Network Solutions recognizes that certain educational and governmental entities may not be able to provide complete indemnification. If the registrant is (i) a governmental or non-profit educational entity, and (ii) not permitted by law or under its organizational documents to provide indemnification, the registrant must notify Network Solutions in writing and, upon receiving appropriate proof of such restriction, Network Solutions may provide an alternative provision for such a registrant.
In other words money talks...
What I wanna know is...
What is Network Solutions going to do in a cross-registrar dispute?
What if they weren't the registrars how are they going to handle things. And when just when are the court systems going to stop letting people twist laws?
oh well back to work...
Want Root?
"Clue" is a common word. An individual should be able to take any common word and make a domain out of it. It's the company's fault if they name their products single words that appear in /usr/dict/words or personal names (veronica.org dispute). It's the same with movies. If you want a domain for it, don't call it a single word. Make a creative name and your product would be more recognized.
t ogetformybirthday.com :)
Also, it's a user's fault if they type in "www.clue.com" and assume they are at Hasbro's site. I'm sure there's a card in the box that gives the address, or people can type the company's name. Sometimes I just guess the URL if I'm looking for something, but I look at content if the site comes up.
Are we to assume that if someone knows the name of a product, they should just be able to go to www..com and get there?
Surf on over to www.thatonethingisawinbobsofficelastyearandwanted
Nonsense. Utter and dismal nonsense.
Domains aren't "owned". They are registered and "leased". I think that the idea of "owning" a domain was the biggest mistake ever made. You register a domain and use it. When you are done with it, if you don't use it "forever", then it's unregistered and the next person to register for it starts paying for it. That's how the Domain naming system should work.
You shouldn't be assuming any risk, because the domain names aren't intended to be a salable goods. It's no better then scalping tickets. If you think that you own domain names, what else do you own? Phone numbers? Do you buy chuncks of phone numbers so that you can sell them to the highest bidder? 1-888-cooldude; 1-800-your4us; 1-615-iamnice? How about post-office boxes. PO Box 666 might be valuable. Do you stand in line and offer to step up of line to the highest bidder so they can get closer to the front of the line? What in the world makes domain names any different.
I think that whoever would "buy" the rights to a domain name from a third party is a fool. I will only get a domain name by registering it directly from a registrar, or legally getting rights to it through the court systm.
-Brent--
The trademark and copyright interests are lobbying ICANN very heavily (including big money Hollywood interests) for stronger protection, even beyond what the law currently gives them. They can't get Congress, or even the courts, to back them up, so they are lobbying hard within ICANN, and ICANN is listening, not wanting to have to fight big corporate interests who are the ones actually paying ICANN's bills right now (see Follow the Money).
Soon individuals and small businesses with find themselves in the position of having to do what Clue Computing did, be the plaintiff in a case suing to KEEP your domain name, since under these new policies Trademark holders won't be obligated to take you to court and prove infringement or dilution. You will have to prove you aren't infringing, thus shifting the burden of proof as well as the expense.(Clue Computing sued NSI to prevent implementation of the Dispute Policy)
Not a very promising outlook.
I've been advocating some sort of grass roots campaign to rally against these actions by ICANN, but some people just see that ICANN is fighting NSI and think that is a justification for them trampling our rights.
--
William X. Walsh - DSo Internet Services
Email: william@dso.net Fax:(209) 671-7934
Editor of http://www.dnspolicy.com/
In this freelance world of domain names, disputes such as the one with clue will continue to happen. This might be unpopular, but I would impose a rather draconian solution. Incorporated companies are given .com; in this case hasbro.com. Web sites associated with hasbro, such as clue, will be something like, clue.hasbro.com. The caveat to all of this is that hasbro can still register hasbro.net, or hasbro.org. However, they cannot force someone to give the name up if it was already registered. OTOH, with time, ppl will search check out .com sites if they are looking for corporate info.
I know that they are working on additional domain suffixes. However, unless drastic measures are taken to restrict and control which domain can be registered and for what purpose, things are going to be real ugly during the next decade. Otherwise, the only unregistered domain in ten years will be gpqidnzw.com, or the only way to navigate the web will be by use of portals.
Sorry, you're wrong. There's no problem in principle with lots of new TLDs being created. Indeed, new country TLDs come along every so often, and of course it is intended to create a whole new gamut of TLDs like .shop etc.
Every name server needs to know the address of a "root name server". If it doesn't know which server deals with a particular TLD, it asks a root server. That's how it works now. That's how it would work with lots more TLDs. No changes to the DNS protocols or servers needed.
The outcome is clearly correct. The question is whether Hasbro should be sanctioned for an abusive filing for initiating the frivolous litigation.
There are *many* categories of trademarks in the U.S. A trademark in one category does *not* in any way block the identical trademark from being used in another category. That Hasbro has registered "Clue" as a game would in no way stop Ford from building a car called "Clue."
Somehow, Hasbro has gotten the idea that trademarks reach *much* farther in domain names than they do anywhere else. This is simply fallacious, and worthy of sanctions.
hawk, esq., once again griping that judges in general are far too slow to use their authority to sanction frivolous filings.
Yes, I know that trademark law stinks too, and that in this particular case maybe it is what needs to go first: but the dns situation is just going to get worse and worse.
.com tld. I read on the original vision for the web (from CERN) the other day (it was linked here I believe) and it included critism for keyword systems, and yet what has DNS turned into: write "flowers.com" for flowers, "greetingcards.com" for Greeting Cards, "drugs.com" for drugs (not that kind, of course, that would not be fitting).
.org .com and .net, they will go ahead and buy them in .wtf as well.
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
There simply are not enough phrases around to give everyone a fair chance with a DNS system where no one cares about anything except the second level name in
The fact that DNS is controlled from the top down plays right into the hands of all kinds of abuse, everything from lawyer happy MN corporations, to NSI's constant monopolist practices, to the intervention of the American regime that is last thing we want on the Net.
Will adding more tlds help? Hell no, companies are already buying out there domains in
I can't say that I have a beautiful replacement in mind that solves all the problems, but we have to start looking for a decentralized, non-commericial, non-governmental naming system. The current domain name system is not, and will never be, anything but a bad compromise and a headache for the way the Internet has turned out.
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I'm not sure if this is technologically possible, but a mature solution would be:
The small business gets a domain name like clue-computing-boston.com, Hasbro gets clue-hasbro-game.com, and somewhere there is a single web page under www.clue.com that says for Clue Computing of Boston click here, for the Hasbro Clue game click here, etc.
Perhaps I'm dreaming, but let's say there was a mega-server somewhere. When you type www.name-used-by-many-people.com in your browser, you're shown a web page from this server that basically presents you with a set of links to all sites related to that name. Now all we have to do is find someone to maintain the mega-server and the lists (yeah that's the scary part).
Boys and girls, don't be so quick to conclude one way or the other about Hasbro's intentions toward WotC product. It's never that simple, and it's never that easy to predict.
From the view of the mainstream business media, the motivation for the buyout stems from WotC's year-round product strength. "Magic: The Gathering" (aka "Crack for Gamers") and "Pokemon" are the current strengths of WotC proper. TSR and Five Rings Publishing, two of WotC's subsidiaries, produce powerful product in their own rights: D&D (TSR), Alternity (TSR), Marvel Saga (TSR), Fifth Age/Dragonlance (TSR), Legend of the Five Rings (FRPG), and Legend of the Burning Sands (FRPG).
As you see, Hasbro has quite a lot of material for its branches to draw upon. It's more than places for new toys to come from. It's also a place for other media to raid for tie-in products. Hasbro, through Microprose, could make a Gamma World game for the PC using the Alternity RPG as a basis for a game engine. Hasbro can also use the Runequest name (and nothing else) with the upcoming 3rd Ed. of D&D as a new fantasy setting, and then turn around to sell toys of signature characters as well as computer or console games using the name and the rules.
Hasbro isn't stupid. They know that they've got a damn good buy with WotC, so they aren't going to upset that cart. What they might do is use some of its might to consolidate loose ends for what it does control. For example, the Star Wars RPG is a West End Game product. Their dire straits make new product impossible, so that licence is up in the air. You'd better believe that Hasbro would assist WotC in acquiring that licence. (TSR has Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft already; this is not impossible.) The same could occur with regard to the L5R RPG; the next edition could become a D&D setting, if Hasbro so desires.
Whatever happens, this will be very interesting and very important for the tabletop gaming world.
"A god outgrown immediately becomes a life-destroying demon."- Joseph Campbell, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces"
I run one of the larger AD&D sites on the web (I get about 100,000 hits/month, even though I haven't updated it in a year... :-(
Am I the only one that remembers the problems we (ie the gaming community) had with TSR over writing game extension and new rules? Thankfully, this sorted itself out, and WotC seems to have been content to abide by the TSR decision.
I'm really worried about Hasbro, though. Given that they seem to have a rather (shall we say) zealous approach to "protecting" their Intellectual Property, I'm really worried that they might try to revert to the old ways, and start trying to stop alot of the independent authors of D&D material.
I couldn't fight them if I got sued. I don't have the resources. This despite the fact that I've been EXTREMELY scrupulous about making sure none of the stuff on my site is lifted from TSR material. I'd have to close down, and that would be a shame.
Hopefully, Hasbro will Do The Right Thing, and continue with the current policy. People writing new material for the TSR games help sell "Official" material. And I'm well within my rights to create such stuff. I just can't afford to defend myself in court.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.