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Trademark Cyberpiracy Prevention Act
The House will probably vote next week on HR3028, the
Trademark Cyberpiracy Prevention Act.
The intention is to prevent "bad faith" squatting on trademarked domain names; penalties go up to $100,000. This would definitely put an end to domain-name speculation. Isn't
ICANN
supposed to be deciding these issues?
I'm sure this will get moderated to flamebait, but I really believe it so...
While there is certainly a lot of problems with the US Congress, at least they are elected, unlikely the incompetent, power hungry bozos that run ICANN. Esther Dyson? You're killing me. To say nothing of the possible illegality of their working with the White House to lobby for more funds. I'd much rather have a democratic body running things than some nameless, faceless bureaucratic cabal.
Why is this such a big deal? If you don't want to pay how much the squatter is asking--don't!
Domain names (until now) have been a perfect example of hands-off capitalism (I hate trying to spell French words).
The only slightly annoying thing happening is that squatters can register a whole slew of names at once without paying. Easy fix for that: payment required at registration time.
---
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Can anyone point me to an online list of US trademarks so I can check if various domains are trademarked or not?
Thanks, GoodPint.
Granted, I've not read the bill yet, but with the hip buzzword "Cyber-" in the bill title, I already have serious doubts as to how in touch with reality this bill actually is.
If they can't avoid cliches like that, what faith can I have that they'll be any better off in the "business end" of the bill?
The Federal TM database can be searched in person at 2900 Crystal Drive, 2nd Floor, Arlington, Virginia. No online version is available yet. Many law offices keep updated copies on CDROM.
/cgi-bin/trade-marks/search_e.pl.
Canadian trademarks can be searched over the web at: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca
For other countries, I have no information. A web search might reveal more options.
As a European, yes, you can have your domain seized. Network Solutions is bound by US law, as per their agreement with the NSF.
IMHO the idea sounds great but alot of people who are crying foul over domain names vs. "trademark" names should remember: Most laws being passed on the internet are fairly new and since the beginning of the Inet, there was no authoritative source to govern actual disputes. Seems people have also forgotten that ICANN is running out of funding for their organization as well.
-----------snip to legalities--------------
This Paragraph sets forth the type of disputes for which you are required to submit to a mandatory
administrative proceeding. These proceedings will be conducted before one of the administrative dispute resolution service providers listed at (each, a "Provider").
a. Applicable Disputes. You are required to submit to a mandatory administrative proceeding in the
event that a third party (a "complainant") asserts to the applicable Provider, in compliance with the
Rules of Procedure, that
(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
(ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
(iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
So what exactly determines bad faith? Does this mean if I thought up the name personaljunk.com and registered it, it can be yanked if I didn't have the money to trademark it, and then some corporate bigwig went ahead and decided: "Golly gee Wally, I want that domain since I have money and personaljunk sounds like a moneymaker." hypothetical situation obviously
Who is going to determine this? Certainly not congress. They have enough issues chasing script kiddies defacing senate.org. Who's going to monitor corporate bullies? ICANN? What happens if/when ICANN runs out of money? The domain registrars? The ones who don't collaborate on issues such as NSI?
In the administrative proceeding, the complainant must prove that each of these three elements are
present.
b. Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith. For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present,shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith:
(i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or
(ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that a pattern of such conduct has been established on your part; or
(iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial
gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of
confusion with the Complainant?s mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.
Very general rules which once again brings me to this issue who will monitor corporate bullies... eg: clue.com
Want Root?
So Congress came up with the Internet in the 1930s? Why didn't they tell anyone about it?
It stands for "Crazy Young Burnouts Eating Rice".
Little known fact, it was origionally going to be "Computor Logistics In Trouble Or Regulating Information Systems"...
Killing spammers is too good for them.
The centralized, legalized, buerocratized, and generally screwed DNS system is the biggest problem with the Web at the moment. It is unbelievable that we have to put up with this stupidity, in what should be the most flexible and changeable of mediums.
DNS is great for email, at least when the address has to exchanged in meatspace, but other then for billboards, its doing nothing but strangling the web.
If you read Tim BL's original report for CERN on the Web, he notes that the real reason for creating it was to get away from inefficient centralized keyword systems. Well, here we are, ten years later, and the web has become a keyword based system, albeit with a rather odd syntax (www.keyword.com).
Domain napping is obviously not a good thing, and I don't think there is anyone here who isn't pissed off a the companies that buy up hundreds of domains to try to auction them off later: but having vague intention (goodwill or badwill) based laws enacted to govern over the web is so much worse.
As I see it there are two good options:
a) The unlimited, non-exclusive TLD (Top Level Doamain) system. This has been proposed on Slashdot before, and would mean allowing anybody to register a new TLD, but for nobody to own one. So microsoft could create
This would work for solving the immediate problem, but is still a centralized system, with all the problems of that (Micro~ suing anyone registering a microsoft.* domain for example). Which is why I advocate:
b) Toss DNS out altogether. OK, this won't happen, but as the transfer of addresses in meatspace becomes more rare, I think it makes sense. If you want to find a large webpage, services like Google work fine, and for everything else there is the good old link. The ultimate decentralized namespace has already been invented: its name is Hypertext.
-
Bad faith has a legal definition. And I quote "Blacks Law Dictionary 6th Ed"
Bad Faith. The opposite of "good faith", generally implying or involving actual or constructive fraud, or a design to mislead or deceive another, or a neglect or refusal to fulfill some duty or some contractual obligation, not prompted by an honest mistake as to one's rights or duties, but by some interested or sinister motive. The term "bad faith" is not simply bad judgement or negligence, but rather it implies the conscious doing of a wrong because of dishonest purpose or moral obliquity....
It continues with court cases and such detailing legal rulings on the meaning of bad faith.
--Mark
(Working at a Legal Publisher has it's advantages sometimes!)
Did you read the section regarding 'bad-faith intent'? The courts are to take into consideration a whole horde of factors, so this bill wouldn't suddenly render liable any but the most egregious of cases.
If you're already running unrelated services that are relatively innocent, you're fine. If you've got a business selling dragon miniatures at "dragon.com", then it's harder for TSR, er, WoTC, to come after you simply because they own the trademark -- as a *magazine* name.
If you're, say, running a hard-core porn site called "reddhat.com", featuring group sex clips which bizzarely happen to include a red felt hat in every frame, then RHAT is probably going to be able to nail you big-time for it. The same might happen if Nader went nuts, registered 'pinto.com', and used it to show footage of cars whose gas tanks explode because they've been conveniently rigged with small charges ala _Dateline:NBC-style_ (IIRC, it was them that did this, but my memory could be lying and it might have been ABC's _Prime Time Live_...).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
the canadian (.ca) domain registation process pretty much eliminates the issue of 'domain squatting & profitering' by requireing organizations to have a registered corporation.
.ca domain.
.com sillyness.
.ca (or province.ca domain, there is no charge for the registration of your domain name!
if you have a provincially registered comapany, you can get a geographic domain name in your province. ie: yourdomain.mb.ca
if you have a federally incorporated company, you can get a
since it costs a few hundred bucks (minimum) to crete a corporation in canada, it is (almost) impossible to get away with all of this
oh yeh. if you meet the requirements for a
pretty simple way of dealing with the issue before it becomes a problem no?
I'm not certain on this next point, but I seem to recall that you cannot infringe on existing trademarks when you register your domain name. can anyone confirm/deny this?
gunderwo@hotmail.com
The biggest problem people have with trying to sell information is that there is a limitless supply -- treating it like property just doesn't work (value=demand/supply, supply=infinity, value=0).
However, in the case of DNS entries, it actually *does* work as property (value=demand/supply, supply=some fixed amount, value!=0). The funniest part of this is that people suddenly don't *want* to treat it as property!
The whole concept of "squatting" as somehow Bad is very silly. If I "squat" on some land next to a city, someone that wants to build a business on that land must purchase it, even if I just let it sit there "unused" (although waiting for its value to rise is a perfectly legitimate use). This makes perfect sense and is seen as a very reputable trade.
However, in the case of DNS entries, which seems to me to be exactly the same, people don't like this anymore.
The problem isn't with people "squatting" on DNS entries, the problem is that people seem to think that they "own" the name. The idea of owning a name, owning a bit of information, is silly. It's completely fictional and requires extreme duct-tape to make sort of functional. For a long while we could sorta do it because duplication was kinda expensive and not many people wanted to do it so the makeshift legality wasn't too heinous. But those days are over. It never made sense to treat information as property, and now it doesn't even work a little bit.
As long as we have this fictional and totally unnecessary concept of Intellectual Property, there will always be cases like this. People will claim ownership over the technique of storing credit card information on their servers for "1 click" service, for the transfer of music files over the internet, for using the XOR function to blit and remove images to the screen. As long as IP exists, we'll be battered with one after another absurdity.
Intellectual Property was a bad idea to begin with, and it's only getting worse.
* Why, precisely, is it OK for *you* to pursue your own interests (registering *another* domain to get more traffic... unless the name is very relevant to your service, you're on extremely poor ethical ground already), but not somebody else?
* The law has no business giving "little guys" arbitrary preferences that supercede such things like trademark law and the idea of fair use.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Re: last names: READ the section on 'bad-faith intent', which is an absolute requirement of using this law to justify a suit.
The US itself has been bitten by trademarks and local names already overseas; if memory serves, 'Budweiser', for instance, cannot be marketed as 'Bud' in... Czechoslovakia, because of a small (comparatively...) brewery there that's already using that name. It's going to be interesting to see whether such issues can be resolved w/o necessarily ruling case-by-case.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You think they'd reserve a word like "Cybersipracy" to something a little less trivial...
Need to be taken out back and kicked in the laurels a few times.
.com,.net domains....is this supposed to happen? Ever since I can remember you're supposed to use the proper suffix, i.e. .co.uk, .com.au, etc. So far the .us suffix has been relegated to state governments here.
How many domain named are owned by somebody, even seemingly dumb ones, with absolutely no intent of them being used? Just start typing in random words as domain names into whois. Now take those and see who actually has a server at the other end with nslookup and/or ping. It's a little ridiculous. I recently did a bout of checking out possible domain names, and the numbers of domains like this astounded me.
There should be a clause in the NIC agreement:
Use it or lose it. 3 months to get *something* at that domain name (besides a 'coming soon' page from your registrar) or you lose it and your cash.
I don't care if it's a web site, a mail server, what have you. *Something* that operates in a useful capacity. (not just a 'ping server' either.)
As far as non-US companies/people registering in the
You can't go to the phone company and say 'I want to buy all the phone numbers from xxx-0012 through xxx-0102', can you? Well I suppose you could, but would they let you? Not unless you pay for the lines to go with it.
Blech. Signatures.
The analogy is flawed to begin with, but if we have to use it, it would be more akin to this:
All unused acres of land belong to the government, which sells that land at a fixed rate of $50 an acre. Company X owns 1 acre someplace, where their new corporate headquarters exists. An adjacent Acre Y lies between Company X and the nearest highway. There is a sign marked "Company X" on Acre Y. Squatter Z comes along and buys Acre Y between Company X's headquarters and the nearest highway at $50, before Company X had a chance to. Company X has little choice but to buy Acre Y from Squatter Z in order to efficiently reach the highway, and to keep people from being confused as they exit the highway seeing the sign marked "Company X" on the adjacent Acre Y. Squatter Z charges an obscenely high rate.
Do you think this is particularly fair? If Acre Y had been priced for what it was worth (what Company X had been willing to pay), or had been auctioned off, Squatter Z wouldn't have had a chance. Real estate today goes by market value. You cannot buy a piece of land and sell it next week for a 10000% profit.
If a domain name has little value when it is purchased, "speculating" is perfectly fine. Generic names like "business.com" and "shopping.com" I have no problem with people buying and trying to sell. When somebody takes the name of a KNOWN trademark, they are taking ADVANTAGE of the system by purchasing it for a value much less than what the domain is actually worth and re-selling it at that higher rate. It reeks of unethical business practice.
There's a big difference between buying a "crap plot of land" and registering a domain name that's another companie's registered trademark. Your analogy would be more accurate if you said: "In the 'real' world, I have every right to buy a piece of land on a street corner, construct a building that looked identical to all the McDonalds all over the world and put a big Mcdonalds sign on the front of it. I should be able to sell that plot of land and store for as much as I can get not what I originally paid" The problem is that it's not legal.
If you're really talking about buying some "crap plot of land" you're talking about a name that isn't already someone's registered trademark. If my understanding is correct and you register a name before it's a registered trademark you are entitled to keep the name...
I don't know, man, "cyber" is hip these days. In another 4 or 5 years, I won't be an American anymore. I'll be an eAmerican. I'll vote via ePolls, I'll be held accountable for my actions by the eLegal System. And don't forget all of the eScandals we can look forward to by ThePresident.com. Anyone remember the Simon and Garfunkel tune where they proclaim that they've been "Rolling Stoned and Beatle'd till I'm blind?" Well, I'm being "E'd and dot commed into fucking submission." Bahhh.- ----------------
-----------------------------------------
I would have no problem getting rid of generic TLD's entirely and moving everything into country codes.
.us TLD is 100% geopolitical. In order to register Microsoft, you would have to put it at microsoft.redmond.wa.us, which is rather unwieldy, especially for those that don't know where MS's headquarters are.
.us were created, say .tm. Items trademarked at the national level would have reserved domain names amounting like "microsoft.tm.us." Things at more local levels would be handled like "bobs-garage.tm.mytown.tx.us." (or just bobs-garage.mytown.tx.us in the absense of a local trademark, assuming such a thing exists).
Unfortunately the
What if an additional subdomain under
Unfortunately, this doesn't cover the possibility of "dual" trademarks. AFAIK, some construction company can be named "Microsoft Construction, Inc.", for example, and might be just as entitled to that microsoft.tm.us domain. At this point I suppose it's possible to stick with the "first come, first served" policy and force subsequent registrants to modify the name slightly (e.g. microsoft-construction.tm.us).
Just some ideas..
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I've got a project I'm working on called Jao.
It's been in the works for a couple of years, but we recently decided to rewrite it (previously neither the code nor the interface were very usable by people other than us) and open up the source under the GPL or something similar. (This should be at a releasable state before the year is out)
Although it's not really necessary, it would be EXTREMELY nice to have the domain jao.org as the homepage for the project.
Since it's a 3 letter domain, of course someone's squatting on it. Even if I had an extra $5k (what they're asking) that I couldn't think of anything better to do with, I wouldn't want to give it to a domain squatter, on principle.
My impression of the current situation is that I have two choices - pay up, or get a different address. Are there any other options? Will registering this name as a trademark make any difference, given that there are no hosts in the jao.org domain?
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Exactly, except the difference would be that .tm items would *have* to be registered as a trademark at the level they're registering. AFAIK, .co.uk is effectively the same as .com. This would have the benefit of more or less *forcing* companies to act within the scope of their market and no further. There would never be competition for domains between the Corner Store in Hickville (corner-store.hickville.tx.us) and the national Corner Store, Inc. chain (corner-store.tm.us).
.us domain, .co.us = Colorado. But yah, the general idea is the same.
Plus, since two-letter state abbreviations are already given priority under the
You should put the little TM next to Jao(tm) every time you use it. And, if you do actually register it, you'll need to use the little R-in-circle. The point of this is basically that you need to treat your name like a trademark (hence all the receipts above) and you need to further prove that you treat it like a trademark by telling the world that you consider it to be one, and you need to tell anyone else who comes along and uses it or anything similar that they may not.
The law requires that you make the effort to prove that you really do consider this name to be yours and that you closely identify it with your business, and that your customers do to.
[note: guess I need a disclaimer here? Jao(tm) is a trademark of Jao Software.]
Mal, your sig belies your leanings.
,,umm,,,malcontent.
.rec .comp .biz, whatever will make this issue even more important. .org .com
Do unto others what has been done to you
Which quickly leads to death and
Do under others as you would have them do you.a.k.a. the "Golden Rule"
I like cybersquatting, but I think that sometimes it crosses the line. Most of the cases I've seen so far have been pretty fair, IMHO. It's easy to raise a ruckus nowaways. Most of the good ones are taken. Of course the new addition of
try freshmeat.net
Should be interesting...
+&x
At one time, all unused acres of land DID belong to the government. Much of Michigan's...
*cough*Indians*cough*
Eventually, the people will buy up all the domain names.
hmmm...lets see 40?(chars)^26 = 4.503599627370496e+41 (calc)
* $35/year = $1.5762598695796736e+43/year. I don't think the species can make all the payments...
(+-1 Nitpick)
+&x
Doesn't bullshit like this go against the one of the most-celebrated "features" of the Internet (i.e., a vehicle for empowerment)?
"Yes, there is a thing called DNS that lets you go from www.yahoo.com to the Yahoo! website, but you are not allowed to use it! NO DNS FOR YOU!"
I thought another one of the Big Things about the Internet is that it was relatively de-centralized with the exception of things that are necessary (IANA doling out IP Addresses) and things that started as sundries but are now de facto necessary (Domain Name Registrars). Ever notice that DNS as a whole goes down extremely infrequently? That's because it's decentralized. There isn't only one big point of failure. There are lots of smaller ones.
No, I won't. It's totally unnecessary and has no technical merit.
People who deal with self-proclaimed computer "experts" on a daily basis will tell you that this will do very little good. If access to the location thing is so bad, why make it available with just a checkbox?
"See that porche? You're not good enough at driving cars to drive it--unless, of course, you think you are, in which case the keys are in the ignition. Have a nice day!"
There exists a minority of Slashdot readers that abuse the posting system. 99% of Slashdot readers should NOT have access to posting their own opinions. They should be merely given the option to type in a one-word response and submit that to a centralized opinion-generating computer. The opinions generated by this computer will then be placed on Slashdot. A second layer of opinion making, if you will.
Only power-users should have access to posting their own opinions--they can go into their preferences and check a checkbox.
Hmmmm. If you're making active use of it, and presuming that the other isn't also an ISP, you might be safe here. {shrug} (since, say, it wouldn't be "dilution of trademark").
.com first, right? So there's also that issue that's mostly gone.
.org and .net, it seems unlikely that many who want the .com would stumble across it. Now, if it were the other way 'round...
Hrrrrrrm. Particularly given the timing...
Most browsers that 'guess' will choose
Perhaps you should keep your logs for records; given that you've got
Only the dead have seen the end of war.