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US House of Reps. Bans "Cybersquatting"
sredding writes "The House has voted to ban "cybersquatting", the pre-empting of Internet domain names with the aim of selling those names to companies or people with trademark associations to them. " Sounds nice right? Well, there maybe some downsides to the bill. The Clinton Administration, however, opposes the bill, saying courts are the best place to settle disputes.
Anyway, with the regular caveat that "I am not a lawyer (IANAL)... I think I am with the majority on the idea that "cybersquatting" is bad, however, I don't think that there is really an effective legal remedy to the problem. Here's why:
- Because the courts have generally held that parody is a protected form of free speech, some or all of this law may in fact be unconstitutional.
- Leaving it to the courts doesn't necessarily work either, because often, the side with the most legal $ wins.
- Calling a domain name "intellectual property" is deceptive as well, because in reality, a domain name is just an "advertising cover" for an IP address.
- This leaves the gray area of trademark infringement as the only valid area of law that I can think of which covers the problem.
The only thing that I can think of that might work is for the domain registrars to include a provision in their registration documents for binding arbitration in the event of a contested domain name. Please correct me if I am wrong, but this would mostly take the issue out of the courts, and seems like it would be a useful remedy for the majority of the "cybersquatting" problems which might come up in the future. (I don't know how this would apply to previously registered domains, unless it was made a requirement upon renewel of the registration)Comments anyone?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
1. Eliminate the 90 day grace period for payment. A lot of squatters are using scripts to re-register every 90 days to keep names without ever paying. Make it so it must be payable (by CC) up front at time of registration.
.inc, .sex, .usa, .etc, and at least 20 to 40 more) many of which are pretty catchy sounding and would water-down the value of .com making it less attractive to snap up in the first place. To grab exclusivity on a domain name would mean having to grab ALL the extensions which could be difficult and expensive. (especially if you have to pay up front like suggestion #1)
2. Create a FLOOD of easily available 3 letter extensions (.biz,
The bill's sponsors, Representatives James Rogan (R-California) and Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) say it will boost consumer confidence in legitimate e-commerce companies.
umm, what does that have to do with protecting consumers? Comsumer confidence?, WTF! If they were "a legitimate e-commerce company", they'd already own their domain. That's all this is, a way for government to protect slow-moving behemoth corporations that didn't realize that the Internet was a big deal. My guess would be that Rogan and Boucher met with a number of businessmen in their states who compained about somebody taking their god-given right to a domain name, regardless if someone else might have a use for it, after they (like the former CEO of my company) said "the Internet is a fad". There is no need for this type of legislation. We already have copyright/trademark law. Why make more laws? (oh, yeah, they are "lawmakers", harrumph)
+&x
Let's say you love white horses. Off you go with www.whitehorse.org. Is that too close to whitehouse.gov?
What I'm saying is, it's downright silly to do this, because it's unenforceable. You'll always stumble upon examples of domain names that closely resemble an official one, but only as a coincidence. That means it's a law that'll have to be debated over and over again before the media.
Secondly, what about fair use? Isn't it fair use to do a parody site? If it is, then what about a parody site with a parody domain name to go with it?
The truth of the matter is, the Government feels that people are going to the wrong domain names because they can't tell a Government site from a normal site. So what? The same happens if you dial a Government phone number and end up dialing Luigi's pizza by mistake. Should they ban phone numbers closely resembling Government numbers, too?
Third, why is the Government allowed to protect the integrity of their websites, whereas the user cannot? What says that the US Government can have precedence when it comes to choosing a DNS entry?
Imagine, for instance, that the Government launches a site called 'www.slashdot.gov'. Can they then, were that bill passed, claim that Slashdot.org is using an illegal DNS entry? Why can't it be the opposite?
Let's hope this law is shot down before it becomes a reality. Not that I worry too much: it's gonna be unenforceable anyway.
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
Assuming this passes...
Say Joe Schmoe from Finland has a 'great' idea, registers someproduct.com, and pisses off company X, cause they have a trademark with 'someproduct'?
Whos gonna handle this? The US? Does the US have jurisdicton in other countries like that? Does this bill only 'work' if both parties reside in the States?
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If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
Augh.
- A.P.
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"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?"
It's so frustrating to hear things like "The place for domain disputes is in the courtroom." I don't know about anyone else, but quite frankly I'm fed up with my tax dollars being wasted on useless lawsuits. I don't want to help pay a judge's salary so that he/she can preside over these frivilous suits. Personally I'm rather torn on the issue. If someone is truly just squatting for the cash that might be made, smack them. That's just abuse of the system of freedom all of us have found and fought to protect with the Internet. But if you're using the domain for a legitimate purpose, and some corporate bully wants to yank it, I draw the line. Like AJ Reznor, a man who has every right to keep his domain regardless of what Thomas & Betts says.
.com domain supposed to be for commercial use? Hence the "com"? Thus, it makes at least logical sense that, unless the site is being put to commercial use, a company should have prevalance over personal webspace. Is this the case? I honestly don't know the answer to that question. Is this becoming more fuel for the opening of other domain extensions?
On the other hand, isn't the
Hmm.. he's a lawyer.. his wife's a lawyer... most of his friends are lawyers... I wonder if there's a connection?
I hate to clue you in like this, but the fact is that 90+% of elected officials in the US are lawyers. It is not unique to the Clintons. Putting lawyers in charge of making the laws is like giving Doctors the power to make diseases. Republican or Democrat, there is no difference in this regard.
Huey Long gave a wonderful speech in the 30's where he describe the difference between the two political parties as two mule skinners working to skin the mule. One starts at the head and works down, the other starts at the feet and works up.
As a former and very insightful boss of mine once noted, the legal profession of the US has become an industry in it's own right. It is self-sustaining and self-perpetuating all on it's own. There is nothing that you or I can do to combat this without radically changing our society.
First go to Thomas. At the top there is a search for specific bills. You are looking today for either S. 1255 [the Senate version] or H.R. 3028. I found those numbers by going into the Congressional Record, selecting the most recent issue (i.e. yesterday when the deed was done), selecting the Daily Digest hyperlink, zipping down to the House of Representatives, and finding the bill entitled "Preventing the Misappropriation of Marks". Right there is all the information I needed: which bills and what action was taken. In fact, there are hyperlinks to the text of the bills right there. But I was interested in what the representatives actually said about them, so I chose the hyperlink where it says Pages. This led me to the official transcript of the action on the floor. That in itself was very interesting. Those pages also contained the text of the two bills as read by the Clerk.
Again I would like to urge all /.ers to learn how to use this free resource to keep an eye on the Congress. The initiative for Thomas was spearheaded by Newt Gingrich; in my eyes, that almost makes up for his cockamamie Contract On America.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
The House cannot "ban" anything. Any action in the United States requires that it pass both the House and the Senate then it must be signed by the Executive. The only exceptions to this are treaties and executive appointments which must be ratified by the Senate.
The name allocation rules for AFNIC (the NIC for *.fr) are located in English here (in PDF format). The naming convention starts on page 13. The original French is here.
.fr: asso.fr, presse.fr, prd.fr, nom.fr, tm.fr and the names of certain professions have been blocked for registration (e.g. barreau.fr, notaire.fr.) AFNIC rejects names that correspond to common first names, trades or commercial domains, names of towns and regions, any domain that starts with the letter 'd' followed by a number (because that's how departments are frequently abbreviated.) Also, they will reject domains like net.fr, internet.fr, http.fr and other common net abbreviations. There is a com.fr domain, which requires no justifying documents at all to register - but it seems to be a recent development.
.fr can only obtain a maximum of 3 domains, and those names have to appear on the organisation's Kbis (an official registration document required to do business in France). All associations have to register under asso.fr, and only companies with French trademarks can register under tm.fr.
.com, .org, .net rules) and for the most part make sense. It results in fewer domain registrations, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing, certainly it keeps the top level domain from getting cluttered. It does makes domain squatting nearly impossible.
/.'er prefer the free-for-all of the current system, but as someone currently trying to obtain a decent domain for a business venture under .com, I would certainly prefer the French rules.
.com is seen as the only respectable way to go. The system for three-letter domains has been bad for a long time, and I wonder if the only way to fix it would be to either phase out or eliminate altogether the .com, .net and .org domains.
In short, there are certain manditory subdomains in
Anyone registring directly under
The rules are really fairly straight forward (although much longer than the
I know, a lot of
Unfortunately, nothing will change so long as
Bah! The truth is that people are just now starting to realize that .com is big business, and they're (we're?) all kicking themselves for not having had the foresight to register food.com, pets.com, news.com, cbs.com, etc... six or seven years ago.
Waa! Waa! somebody was quicker and smarter than me and stole my god-given right to own $MY_COMPANY_NAME.com .
Waa! Waa! I want to live in Beverly Hills, but I can't afford it. Please, Mr. Government... make them lower the rent in Beverly Hills... I have a RIGHT to live there
Waa! Waa! Somebody beat me to San Francisco and found all of the gold that I was supposed to find. Please, Mr. Government, make them share the gold they found.
Waa! Waa! The DeBeers family owns all of the diamonds in the world, and keeps the prices artificially high. Please, Mr Government, take at least half of the diamonds away from the DeBeers family so that I can buy lots of cheap diamonds.
Waa! Waa! The US Land Grant Act gave all of the good Silicon Valley land away FOR FREE many years ago, and I didn't get any. Please, Mr Government, take away the land from the Big companies in the silicon valley and re-apportion it, and give some to me.
Waa! Waa! All of the 3 character domain combinations are already registered and I didn't get $MY_INITIALS.[com,org,net] . How can I continue living?
Waa! Waa! BBC wanted bbc.com really bad, so they paid a million dollars for it, and now they're happy
How much do you think I'd have to pay BBC to get BBC.com from them?
Are you starting to get the picture?
Trademark infringement is already illegal. The only real new thing here is that if a company can't find the infringer, they can still kill the registration. This may not stand up in court, as it seems to me that it denies due process (a constitutional guarantee).
But IANAL, so someone else may be able to point out that the above is a bunch of bull.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
So...
In my case, some person approached me for my domain (which I was using) to purchase it. I declined on the first try. He repeatedly emails me a couple more times, phones my house(! I guess since I have my resume online, he thinks he has a right to call me and annoy -- luckily I wasn't home), and I keep declining over email. I try to give him alternatives, but he sites other sales (download.com, etc) instead. Finally he says "final offer" and I am finally relieved that this guy is going to leave me alone.
Does this mean I'm not a "squatter" since I didn't sell and I have no intention whatsoever to sell ever?
Of course, if someone offered me $1,000,000 for it, would that make me a squatter since I would sell it?
I hate this bloody term ["squatting"]. The House of Reps should do something more productive like get re-do the out-of-whack welfare system in the US and stay the hell away from my computer.
-m
While some people are not going to like this, here's what i think to be a good solution for cybersquatting: a good heirarchy. .com, .net, and .org . there should be a .co.us and .net.us instead. .com?
first, scrap
the whole idea of a global domain pool is stupid, esp. when it coexists with a wide selection of TLDs.
what would be so wrong with com.us or net.us for us-only companies, instead of
now, if companies were allowed to register only in their respective heirarchy, wouldn't most problems be solved?
also, the attempt to divide domains into 4 or 5 major types is also rather silly. why not have lots of domain types?
there are so many reasons why one would want to register a domain, making the current division unsuitable.
this is also already being attempted: see the GTLD project and iDNS for such attempts.
the more domains available, the less options there are for squatting, and the more fair the sharing becomes.
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