While this is a good site for many issues, it's too tailored to those in the ecommerce field. In the domain name and trademark article, for example, they only talk about cases where the disputed domain was for-profit, and generally run by someone looking to make money. There's very little about non-profit, individual sites that have a legit reason to exist.
Also, here's a snippet that made me blink twice in the article about securing and defending your domain name:
Odds are, however, someone prior in time had a similar idea and the domain name you want is already registered by that person. Under these circumstances, three options exist: (1) try to handle the matter amicably and directly with the registrant; (2) file a law suit; or (3) arbitrate.
Um, where's option number 4: Find another domain name? The rest of the article talks about all the legal hassles that you have to do to get the domain you want, but alludes to nothing more on searching for alternate domains. This is NOT the way that domain names were supposed to work, and given that this journal is proporting the 'new' way, I raise a few doubts about it.
In your case, you're using apple.com for a true legitimate purpose, so assuming that you got the domain name due to apple's deficiency, they would have a hard time of getting it back from you. In the PETA case, the person was using the domain name to harm the trademark for an argueably non-legitimate purpose, and the cybersquatting law is quite clean on that.
Weird Al pays large sums of moneys to aquires rights to parody songs (of course, most of that money going to the record companies, but that's not the issue), and such that he will not face legal charges for using those parodies (one of the reason, I believe, that the Amish Paradise issue never went to court). Once he's paid that, then he's ok to make money off the parody, but do realize that some of that money he makes goes back into the original owner's record company's pocket.
"peta.org" without further knowledge, tells me that the site is owned by a group named "peta" which is a non-profit organization. This is probably the first site that most people go to when they want to visit PETA's website, knowing that it's a npo. They don't need to trademark "peta.org", much like MS does with microsoft.com (though I'd be surprised), as the full domain name itself is not trademarkable, only the part before the.com,.org. or whatever.
Yes, there is something about domain names and trademarks that we all need to be worried about. If this was PETA vs "Portland Entertainment Teamsters Associates" who had registered peta.org for their own legitamate purpose, I would expect that PETA would lose the case, as there's no bad intent on that.
But in this case, the owner of peta.org was doing two things wrong:
Using a trademark in a derrogatory manner
Profiting on that.
Combined, these both give the impression that peta.org was being used maliciously againsts the lawful trademark owners, PETA, and PETA had every right to sue and reclaim their name.
If instead they had used petasucks.org, I doubt that the case would have turned out the same way. Parody would be protected, and it's hard to claim trademark disputes since the whole domain name is not trademarked. However, the fact that peta.org is probably the first place that people will look when finding info on PETA, and such parody would hurt PETA's image.
Trademark disputes are not all cut and dried. Etoys vs Etoy, Mattle's and Archie Comic's attempts to swap trademarks have failed or are still in the works, but in those cases, the conflicting site is legit and does not dilute or harm the image of the company that questions the trademark. But here is a different case, and I believe I agree with the decision.
I do want to see this appealed however, up to the Supreme Court, such that some national precident is set; hopefully not in the judges words, but to the point that the cybersquatting/trademark laws are more strongly set. Why this case? Neither side is a large company with lots of money to blow, so this won't be a battle of resources, but of true intent.
I remember that one of the biggest issues of my American history/government classes is that during the industrial revolution, "laisse faire" (sp?) has always been taken as the rule of thumb; as long as the companies were not endangering anyone, the gov't kept their hands off of it.
That principle is certainly not dead today; gov't groups like the FTC and DOJ only step in when a company pushes the bounds. While there are always people screaming that the gov't has too much control on businesses, I would argue that businesses are free to do nearly everything they want, as long as they pay their taxes and don't hurt citizens or the environment.
However, I would also think that laisse faire works both ways; while the gov't cannot regulate an industry unless it's required, the gov't should not also favor industry unless required (such as during the S&L crisis). However, laws like the DMCA actually benefit companies and do not benefit the average citizen in any real regard. If the founding fathers had a bill like the DMCA to review, they would have probably trashed it, not only for the copyright extentions, but the fact there is no obvious benefit that non-corporations can get from it.
But unfortunately, our democratatic system as it stands is flawed, allowed corporations to buy votes to get such bills enacted. Grassroot campaigns are great, but they rarely have money or media attention to get any votes whatsoever, and many have come to rely on a higher court (which can't be bought) to overturn a law.
What suprises me is that given how fast the two CDA bills were fought and successfully overturned, nothing save for deCSS and Napster has been really pushed forward for anti-DCMA. (IMO, even without the DCMA in effect, both cases would be before courts right now). And to be truthful, I rather not have the DCMA challenged with these cases, because if one of them loses, it sets a dangerous precident that some later case that challenges the DCMA with more legit concerns would have to overcome. A win for the copyright holders might also toughen up some other copyright holders and cause a strong death grip for many sites on the web.
And to come back to the case in point, in the case of copyrights, the time a copyright should be granted should be related to the number of people that would be interested in said product, and the time of delievery to said product. In 1800, say with a million Americans and a lack of rapid communications between the various states, 14 years is reasonable. In 1950, 200 million Americans, and with an interstate system, fast printing presses, and the proliforation of tv and radio, 14 years is overkill, because the large amount of information there and the speed to get it to everyone. Today, with 300 million and the internet, the amount of data has probably exponentally grown the number of citizens, and thus, the time for copyrights should be much much smaller.
Nearly every game that comes out today is like this; approxately 9"x12" box with the jewel case, a reg card, and lots of cardboard. Obviously a waste of space to you and me.
I'm sure that the game makers know that they waste space like this, and if they could, they would reduce it, but no one will take the initiative. If you're the only company putting out games in a box that actually fits the stuff you're selling, you won't take up as much shelf space (though you may have the same number of copies), and it's easier to overlook the package for something that's bloated. Unless all the major software publishers switch at the same time, this won't happen.
At *least* the bulk of the packaging is cardboard which can be recycled in most cases. I generally do that and keep the colored printed part of the package for UPS symbol and whatnot.
(Of course at the same time, it makes me think of interesting software product boxes that have been used; the Marathon series were always a challenge...)
IIRC, Descent wasn't even fully 3d (although as close as possible): you could not build a map that had a floating block disconnected from everything in it.
Quake is definitely the first true 3d game, in that you could have bridges, floating blocks, etc. I've tried enough map making in HL to know that floating blocks are quite possible which I misjudge the height of an object:D
I would still say though that there's a bit more to go to get 3D complete; Quake, HL, Unreal all are based on a free x-y movement with limited Z movement because of gravity. For 90% of the games out there, sure, this makes sense, but what if I really wanted to make a Matrix- like game, walking sideways on a wall? Or create a map based of Escher's designs? That Z dimension is still optimized away, to make the games faster, sure, but now that CPU and video boards of today can definitely meet the challenge, someone should add the completely free x-y-z type of movement for enclosed map games (In games like Homeworld, the free x-y-z is already there, but it's not in enclosed areas which make line of sight calculations harder.
I recently learned that the person or company that issues a patent can 'indefinitely' extend the finalization of the patent process (that is, the move of the patent from being applied for to being accepted), by 'forgetting' to apply for some form to the USPTO, thus having a fine of $500 to be paid to the USPTO, and thus holding the patent in limbo for another year. $500/yr is NOTHING compared to some of the benefits that come from just holding the patent.
Rumor has it that Gibson was involved though not as strongly as with N with "Johnny Mnemonic". Makes you wonder how that could have been bastardized that badly.
On another note, Douglas Adams is also keeping a very tight rein on the production of Hitchhiker's Guide , so that's another positive note to look foward too.
Ok, so there are cute furry creatures in it. But it is Sci-Fi. The animation, for it's time, was well done, and there's real character development. Yes, the movie has it's flaws (too much of the Dom Deluis character), but it's very strong by itself. (And this was also a Bluth production).
Also, you can try "Balto", while not sci-fi, the story and characters are rather deep, and only suffers from improperly placed comic relief. But there *are* moments in that film that are quite moving emotionally.
Marathon wasn't 3D; you could not create a true bridge (much less an object unconnected to any other wall), most people call it 2.5D, in that height was simulated with Z-coords from the polys. I'd even call it 2.5+D; you had the ability to overlap polys in the same X-Y space unlike Doom, thus allowing one to create 'floors' at various heights. You could even have these polys overlap at the same Z space, to allow effects where you could have players think they are in the same spot but were actually in separate parts of the map (they won't see each other, however, save by radar positioning. One of the network maps that came with the first Marathon was 5-D space that used this aspect well.)
I read this article and the one at News.com carefully, and while it suggests that Halo may only be X-box only, I really can't see that happening. MS is trying to aim the Xbox at people that can't afford a full home computer, and thus compete with the game consoles like Dreamcast which come with limited internet access. The way I'm reading it, but obviously may not be right, is that Halo will be release first for the Xbox to allow it to be one of the first games you can get for it (possiblibly even shipping it), but at some point after the Xbox release, you'll see the PC and Mac (and Linux, maybe) releases. Especially with Halo's huge kudos at E3, *NOT* releasing this for PC platforms would be stupid. However, the article does use the word "proprietary" in here, so it may be that Halo is completely gone for the PC, which would really suck.
Er, are you sure ComEd is the best example? The AC season started recently in the Chicago land area, and reports state that ComEd's already worried about the load they will have to handle during the summer. Most are expecting brownouts at some point, given the 'reliability' of ComEd.
I don't think the article was to explicitly talk about internation domain name conflicts, but just the general use of cybersquatting rules in recent months.
The problem with what this article brings up is the issue of trademarking one's name. The specific case in question was Julie Roberts. Now, my understanding is that the original owner of the domain reg'd it and did nothing with it. He was approached by Robert's lawyers before the squatting rules were strongly in place; he offered to sell the domain for a few good bucks but they refused. After that approached, he turned the site into a fan site for Roberts, and then the squatting rules hit. The lawyers swooped in again, and claimed that his earlier offer was evidence of squatting and he lost the domain.
Ok, some of what he did was on the poor side, but let's take the case a bit further. Say I register (joking) www.patricksteward.com, and make it a fan site praising Patrick for his Shakespearing work and Trek years, etc. The site is in good nature, and no money is made off the site. Does Patrick Steward, in this case, have the ability to ask WIPO to nab the domain from the original register? Cases like the above *suggest* yes, but certainly not there yet.
Of course, I'd insert my standard rant about the need for expanded TLDs with strictly enforced rules for registering them , as such problems as the above will be limited. But I've said it before...
At least with Pro pinball, you can nudge the machine in 'four' directions and you can incur a tilt mechanism. You *can* hit the ball off the glass, as well as jump certain barriers.
The good thing about digital pinball -- it ends up costing a hell of a lot less than all those quarters:D
The physical pinball table is getting big and clunky; it takes up a lot of space, and it is one where the newer boards require less skill and more luck; too many flashy lights can also be a problem.
However, I suggest that for those with win-enabled machines to check out the series of pinball games from Pro Pinball (Empire games). The series is "The Web", "Timeshock!", "Big Race USA" and most recent, "Fantastic Journey". The boards are very similar to today's tables with lots of overhead ramps, more 'mechanical' features, and generally play as well as many of the recent physical tables. In addition, the physics and gameplay of the Pro Pinball series is super enhanced compared to anything else, with very tight gameplay and nearly bug free.
Pinball the physical game will be phasing out soon, but pinball is certainly not dead.
Question: Non OEM machines
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Copyrant
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· Score: 4
What if you build up your system from scratch, no OEM involved?
I'm guessing that you have to plunk down the $170-$200 full retail price for the non-OEM, full install, non-upgrade CD, as you have been able to do in the past, but the article doesn't say that.
first, always check whatever paperwork that you signed with the ISP to see if they are in their right to do this; if so, you may want to find a new ISP, as this is rather draconian in approach.
Secondly, the solution that the ISP took is not fully spelled out; I can understand for a short time removing access to the victim's site to get the DOS attacks to die down and free up conjestion on their network. But they should inistate the person's access after they have been able to locate the IPs used to DOS the victim and block them before entering the ISP's pipe. Sure, it might take some work, but if a script kiddie goes after one user's site, what's them to stop them from going after another site under that ISP? A malevolent script kiddie could theorhetically close off all user accounts at this ISP with only a small amount of work. ISPs that aren't prepared to deal with such should not be in business and customers should know this.
This case is very familar to one that happened in my hometown of Westlake, OH (though not while I was around). A student used a web site to post libelious comments (certainly not as high a level as the ones in this case) about his band teached; the school suspended him from classes for 10 days, but the student sued back for $500k; the system and student settled for $30k with the suspension removed from the student's record. More info here.
Unfortunately, this case was settled at the local level, and no national precident is there. However, this case should help the defence of the student as it argues *for* his rights outside of school grounds.
Ok, I strongly feel that we have the right to link to anything that we want. The DeCSS case includes this, the MP3 issue includes this; a recent bill proposed on illegal drugs will try to limit this, but I expect the bill to either die quickly or get challenged in courts as it's free speech issues.
However, this comes back to the Napster deal. I don't know if it was Lars' statement or a general statement, but 99.9% of the Napster traffic is copyrighted stuff; yes, Napster has legal uses as well for those public domain mp3's, but we all know that it's primary use is for pirating music.
I don't know about this mp3board's site, but it sounds like it's Napster in a different form; inside of being an application, it's a web page. Sure, there's probably legit uses for it to point to public domain mp3's, but I would expect that 99.9% of the links that are followed are for pirated music.
If the intent is there to help find illegal mp3s, I can't feel strongly for this case, as it's just the same arguement that Napster's falling back on. Yes, a link or two to an mp3 out of a hundred other legit links would not be a problem, but when your site is mostly made up of such links, you do need to question that. (That's why I would say that search engines are ok if they link to illegal mp3's, because the size of their link database is so large, and it's certainly not their intent to create a linkbase as such.).
Again, this is sight unseen of this mp3board.com site, but based on the article, I can infer what they are trying to do.
Regarding trademarks and webspace: Go to an IRC network. Go to a Q3/UT/HL game browser. Go to ICQ or any other instant messaging thing. If I was really anal I could go along and find thousands if not more 'abuses' of trademark, but it could be very hard to proof such was intended. First, the names are dynamic -- they only exist for hours at a time. Secondly, someone might use a name like "Sun", which one might argue as a trademark violation of Sun Systems, but without further examples of the use of the name "Sun", there's no intent for trademark infringement, especially since it's an english word. However, with webspace, there are generally pages attached to the trademark name in question, and intent can be conveyed easily (particularly in this case; the guy had posted joke pages on selling the domain). There's a big difference in these two areas.
As for the TLD issue;/. *was* an.org to start, but as they moved on, they've become more of a.com (though they sell no product; there needs to be another TLD for this type of service). As/. was established, I would not ask them to change their name. But someone registering a domain in this day and age should try avoid polluting the namespace mess further.
IIRC, trademark law defines 17 or so different types of businesses; within a given judisidiction, you can have one business of each type using the same name, since it's hard to compare "Mike's Hardware" with "Mike's Flowers" and "Mike's Food Store". The internet makes this part harder as the judistiction is the entire nation; so far, I've not seen any strong cases dealing with such issues and if anything, we're mostly talking small businesses and first come, first served in their domain names. I had a friend with a domain name, which for purposes of anomyosity, I'll call "XYZ Multimedia" - which was exactly how you read; he was into video editing, audio editing, and web page design. Another company, "XYZ Networks" came along and asked him to *NOT* give up the name, but to instead at least place a link predominately on the main page to indicate that his page was not associated with XYZ Networks. Those two companies are in different businesses, so the two businesses could theorhetically interact without trademakr confliction. However, this was about 4 years ago; in today's world of trademark names, I would how the second company would have acted.
We need a major legal ruling on trademarks; not out of ICANN's, but from something like the Supreme Court. Trademarks are important, but they should not be as predominate on the net, and loosen the control that copyright owners have. As it stands, the cybersquatting law has yet to be used unfairly but the wording is vague enough that something will be coming soon that will challenge it, at least terms like "in good faith" and such.
If, tomorrow, all domain names databases were erased, and NCI and other registars started reaccepting applications, WITH the stipulation that.coms were commercial and for-profit,.net were for network connectivity/ISP, and.org for non-profit, then yes, slashdot.org should. However, back when/. started, it was truly an org, but since then things have changed. The pollution of the TLD namespace is very deep; repairing *maybe* but over several years, but it's better not to try to contribute to the mess and stick with the best name possible for your site (and to strongly encourage the addition of 3 or 4 additional TLDs that adquetely describe something like/., a for-profit organization that sells nothing.
I'm not saying that you choose a bad name for the clan; outside of web space, it's very hard to connect names and the like to trademarks (and I'd love to see anyone try to inforce that).
However, nowadays, with trademarks entering the domain frey, a bit of research should have been done to find out what problems might have come from using that domain name. Your research would probably have pointed to the various mattle legal battles that you spotted already, and you may have wanted to change the name or done something different.
Secondly, and more of my nit, why are you polluting the TLD.com with a non-commerical entity? An.org name would be better here, and would probably have taken mattle's site off from you.
While I'm not sure that your joke content caused teh problem, you should also have a bit more on your page as it stands now as to avoid issues with cybersquatting. Explain that this will be a clan page for "Tribes", and also state that in no way the page is connected with the Barbie trademark or MAttle. That might have also calmed the lawyers and made your case stronger when ICANN reviews it.
If you can suspend an array of said molecules in a non-chiral gel, aim a x-y plane laser to it (or put the gel on an x-y stage), you have an (nearly completely) organic storage device.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, here's a snippet that made me blink twice in the article about securing and defending your domain name:
Odds are, however, someone prior in time had a similar idea and the domain name you want is already registered by that person. Under these circumstances, three options exist: (1) try to handle the matter amicably and directly with the registrant; (2) file a law suit; or (3) arbitrate.
Um, where's option number 4: Find another domain name? The rest of the article talks about all the legal hassles that you have to do to get the domain you want, but alludes to nothing more on searching for alternate domains. This is NOT the way that domain names were supposed to work, and given that this journal is proporting the 'new' way, I raise a few doubts about it.
Two different cases, as already pointed out.
"peta.org" without further knowledge, tells me that the site is owned by a group named "peta" which is a non-profit organization. This is probably the first site that most people go to when they want to visit PETA's website, knowing that it's a npo. They don't need to trademark "peta.org", much like MS does with microsoft.com (though I'd be surprised), as the full domain name itself is not trademarkable, only the part before the .com, .org. or whatever.
But in this case, the owner of peta.org was doing two things wrong:
- Using a trademark in a derrogatory manner
- Profiting on that.
Combined, these both give the impression that peta.org was being used maliciously againsts the lawful trademark owners, PETA, and PETA had every right to sue and reclaim their name.If instead they had used petasucks.org, I doubt that the case would have turned out the same way. Parody would be protected, and it's hard to claim trademark disputes since the whole domain name is not trademarked. However, the fact that peta.org is probably the first place that people will look when finding info on PETA, and such parody would hurt PETA's image.
Trademark disputes are not all cut and dried. Etoys vs Etoy, Mattle's and Archie Comic's attempts to swap trademarks have failed or are still in the works, but in those cases, the conflicting site is legit and does not dilute or harm the image of the company that questions the trademark. But here is a different case, and I believe I agree with the decision.
I do want to see this appealed however, up to the Supreme Court, such that some national precident is set; hopefully not in the judges words, but to the point that the cybersquatting/trademark laws are more strongly set. Why this case? Neither side is a large company with lots of money to blow, so this won't be a battle of resources, but of true intent.
That principle is certainly not dead today; gov't groups like the FTC and DOJ only step in when a company pushes the bounds. While there are always people screaming that the gov't has too much control on businesses, I would argue that businesses are free to do nearly everything they want, as long as they pay their taxes and don't hurt citizens or the environment.
However, I would also think that laisse faire works both ways; while the gov't cannot regulate an industry unless it's required, the gov't should not also favor industry unless required (such as during the S&L crisis). However, laws like the DMCA actually benefit companies and do not benefit the average citizen in any real regard. If the founding fathers had a bill like the DMCA to review, they would have probably trashed it, not only for the copyright extentions, but the fact there is no obvious benefit that non-corporations can get from it.
But unfortunately, our democratatic system as it stands is flawed, allowed corporations to buy votes to get such bills enacted. Grassroot campaigns are great, but they rarely have money or media attention to get any votes whatsoever, and many have come to rely on a higher court (which can't be bought) to overturn a law.
What suprises me is that given how fast the two CDA bills were fought and successfully overturned, nothing save for deCSS and Napster has been really pushed forward for anti-DCMA. (IMO, even without the DCMA in effect, both cases would be before courts right now). And to be truthful, I rather not have the DCMA challenged with these cases, because if one of them loses, it sets a dangerous precident that some later case that challenges the DCMA with more legit concerns would have to overcome. A win for the copyright holders might also toughen up some other copyright holders and cause a strong death grip for many sites on the web.
And to come back to the case in point, in the case of copyrights, the time a copyright should be granted should be related to the number of people that would be interested in said product, and the time of delievery to said product. In 1800, say with a million Americans and a lack of rapid communications between the various states, 14 years is reasonable. In 1950, 200 million Americans, and with an interstate system, fast printing presses, and the proliforation of tv and radio, 14 years is overkill, because the large amount of information there and the speed to get it to everyone. Today, with 300 million and the internet, the amount of data has probably exponentally grown the number of citizens, and thus, the time for copyrights should be much much smaller.
I'm sure that the game makers know that they waste space like this, and if they could, they would reduce it, but no one will take the initiative. If you're the only company putting out games in a box that actually fits the stuff you're selling, you won't take up as much shelf space (though you may have the same number of copies), and it's easier to overlook the package for something that's bloated. Unless all the major software publishers switch at the same time, this won't happen.
At *least* the bulk of the packaging is cardboard which can be recycled in most cases. I generally do that and keep the colored printed part of the package for UPS symbol and whatnot.
(Of course at the same time, it makes me think of interesting software product boxes that have been used; the Marathon series were always a challenge...)
Quake is definitely the first true 3d game, in that you could have bridges, floating blocks, etc. I've tried enough map making in HL to know that floating blocks are quite possible which I misjudge the height of an object :D
I would still say though that there's a bit more to go to get 3D complete; Quake, HL, Unreal all are based on a free x-y movement with limited Z movement because of gravity. For 90% of the games out there, sure, this makes sense, but what if I really wanted to make a Matrix- like game, walking sideways on a wall? Or create a map based of Escher's designs? That Z dimension is still optimized away, to make the games faster, sure, but now that CPU and video boards of today can definitely meet the challenge, someone should add the completely free x-y-z type of movement for enclosed map games (In games like Homeworld, the free x-y-z is already there, but it's not in enclosed areas which make line of sight calculations harder.
I recently learned that the person or company that issues a patent can 'indefinitely' extend the finalization of the patent process (that is, the move of the patent from being applied for to being accepted), by 'forgetting' to apply for some form to the USPTO, thus having a fine of $500 to be paid to the USPTO, and thus holding the patent in limbo for another year. $500/yr is NOTHING compared to some of the benefits that come from just holding the patent.
On another note, Douglas Adams is also keeping a very tight rein on the production of Hitchhiker's Guide , so that's another positive note to look foward too.
Ok, so there are cute furry creatures in it. But it is Sci-Fi. The animation, for it's time, was well done, and there's real character development. Yes, the movie has it's flaws (too much of the Dom Deluis character), but it's very strong by itself. (And this was also a Bluth production).
Also, you can try "Balto", while not sci-fi, the story and characters are rather deep, and only suffers from improperly placed comic relief. But there *are* moments in that film that are quite moving emotionally.
Marathon wasn't 3D; you could not create a true bridge (much less an object unconnected to any other wall), most people call it 2.5D, in that height was simulated with Z-coords from the polys. I'd even call it 2.5+D; you had the ability to overlap polys in the same X-Y space unlike Doom, thus allowing one to create 'floors' at various heights. You could even have these polys overlap at the same Z space, to allow effects where you could have players think they are in the same spot but were actually in separate parts of the map (they won't see each other, however, save by radar positioning. One of the network maps that came with the first Marathon was 5-D space that used this aspect well.)
I read this article and the one at News.com carefully, and while it suggests that Halo may only be X-box only, I really can't see that happening. MS is trying to aim the Xbox at people that can't afford a full home computer, and thus compete with the game consoles like Dreamcast which come with limited internet access. The way I'm reading it, but obviously may not be right, is that Halo will be release first for the Xbox to allow it to be one of the first games you can get for it (possiblibly even shipping it), but at some point after the Xbox release, you'll see the PC and Mac (and Linux, maybe) releases. Especially with Halo's huge kudos at E3, *NOT* releasing this for PC platforms would be stupid. However, the article does use the word "proprietary" in here, so it may be that Halo is completely gone for the PC, which would really suck.
There are no hydrodams in SC3K, sorry to say. There's no easy way to get energy for that cheap (those bastards! :-)
The problem with what this article brings up is the issue of trademarking one's name. The specific case in question was Julie Roberts. Now, my understanding is that the original owner of the domain reg'd it and did nothing with it. He was approached by Robert's lawyers before the squatting rules were strongly in place; he offered to sell the domain for a few good bucks but they refused. After that approached, he turned the site into a fan site for Roberts, and then the squatting rules hit. The lawyers swooped in again, and claimed that his earlier offer was evidence of squatting and he lost the domain.
Ok, some of what he did was on the poor side, but let's take the case a bit further. Say I register (joking) www.patricksteward.com, and make it a fan site praising Patrick for his Shakespearing work and Trek years, etc. The site is in good nature, and no money is made off the site. Does Patrick Steward, in this case, have the ability to ask WIPO to nab the domain from the original register? Cases like the above *suggest* yes, but certainly not there yet.
Of course, I'd insert my standard rant about the need for expanded TLDs with strictly enforced rules for registering them , as such problems as the above will be limited. But I've said it before ...
The good thing about digital pinball -- it ends up costing a hell of a lot less than all those quarters :D
However, I suggest that for those with win-enabled machines to check out the series of pinball games from Pro Pinball (Empire games). The series is "The Web", "Timeshock!", "Big Race USA" and most recent, "Fantastic Journey". The boards are very similar to today's tables with lots of overhead ramps, more 'mechanical' features, and generally play as well as many of the recent physical tables. In addition, the physics and gameplay of the Pro Pinball series is super enhanced compared to anything else, with very tight gameplay and nearly bug free.
Pinball the physical game will be phasing out soon, but pinball is certainly not dead.
I'm guessing that you have to plunk down the $170-$200 full retail price for the non-OEM, full install, non-upgrade CD, as you have been able to do in the past, but the article doesn't say that.
Secondly, the solution that the ISP took is not fully spelled out; I can understand for a short time removing access to the victim's site to get the DOS attacks to die down and free up conjestion on their network. But they should inistate the person's access after they have been able to locate the IPs used to DOS the victim and block them before entering the ISP's pipe. Sure, it might take some work, but if a script kiddie goes after one user's site, what's them to stop them from going after another site under that ISP? A malevolent script kiddie could theorhetically close off all user accounts at this ISP with only a small amount of work. ISPs that aren't prepared to deal with such should not be in business and customers should know this.
Unfortunately, this case was settled at the local level, and no national precident is there. However, this case should help the defence of the student as it argues *for* his rights outside of school grounds.
However, this comes back to the Napster deal. I don't know if it was Lars' statement or a general statement, but 99.9% of the Napster traffic is copyrighted stuff; yes, Napster has legal uses as well for those public domain mp3's, but we all know that it's primary use is for pirating music.
I don't know about this mp3board's site, but it sounds like it's Napster in a different form; inside of being an application, it's a web page. Sure, there's probably legit uses for it to point to public domain mp3's, but I would expect that 99.9% of the links that are followed are for pirated music.
If the intent is there to help find illegal mp3s, I can't feel strongly for this case, as it's just the same arguement that Napster's falling back on. Yes, a link or two to an mp3 out of a hundred other legit links would not be a problem, but when your site is mostly made up of such links, you do need to question that. (That's why I would say that search engines are ok if they link to illegal mp3's, because the size of their link database is so large, and it's certainly not their intent to create a linkbase as such.).
Again, this is sight unseen of this mp3board.com site, but based on the article, I can infer what they are trying to do.
As for the TLD issue; /. *was* an .org to start, but as they moved on, they've become more of a .com (though they sell no product; there needs to be another TLD for this type of service). As /. was established, I would not ask them to change their name. But someone registering a domain in this day and age should try avoid polluting the namespace mess further.
IIRC, trademark law defines 17 or so different types of businesses; within a given judisidiction, you can have one business of each type using the same name, since it's hard to compare "Mike's Hardware" with "Mike's Flowers" and "Mike's Food Store". The internet makes this part harder as the judistiction is the entire nation; so far, I've not seen any strong cases dealing with such issues and if anything, we're mostly talking small businesses and first come, first served in their domain names. I had a friend with a domain name, which for purposes of anomyosity, I'll call "XYZ Multimedia" - which was exactly how you read; he was into video editing, audio editing, and web page design. Another company, "XYZ Networks" came along and asked him to *NOT* give up the name, but to instead at least place a link predominately on the main page to indicate that his page was not associated with XYZ Networks. Those two companies are in different businesses, so the two businesses could theorhetically interact without trademakr confliction. However, this was about 4 years ago; in today's world of trademark names, I would how the second company would have acted.
We need a major legal ruling on trademarks; not out of ICANN's, but from something like the Supreme Court. Trademarks are important, but they should not be as predominate on the net, and loosen the control that copyright owners have. As it stands, the cybersquatting law has yet to be used unfairly but the wording is vague enough that something will be coming soon that will challenge it, at least terms like "in good faith" and such.
If, tomorrow, all domain names databases were erased, and NCI and other registars started reaccepting applications, WITH the stipulation that .coms were commercial and for-profit, .net were for network connectivity/ISP, and .org for non-profit, then yes, slashdot.org should. However, back when /. started, it was truly an org, but since then things have changed. The pollution of the TLD namespace is very deep; repairing *maybe* but over several years, but it's better not to try to contribute to the mess and stick with the best name possible for your site (and to strongly encourage the addition of 3 or 4 additional TLDs that adquetely describe something like /., a for-profit organization that sells nothing.
However, nowadays, with trademarks entering the domain frey, a bit of research should have been done to find out what problems might have come from using that domain name. Your research would probably have pointed to the various mattle legal battles that you spotted already, and you may have wanted to change the name or done something different.
Secondly, and more of my nit, why are you polluting the TLD .com with a non-commerical entity? An .org name would be better here, and would probably have taken mattle's site off from you.
While I'm not sure that your joke content caused teh problem, you should also have a bit more on your page as it stands now as to avoid issues with cybersquatting. Explain that this will be a clan page for "Tribes", and also state that in no way the page is connected with the Barbie trademark or MAttle. That might have also calmed the lawyers and made your case stronger when ICANN reviews it.
If you can suspend an array of said molecules in a non-chiral gel, aim a x-y plane laser to it (or put the gel on an x-y stage), you have an (nearly completely) organic storage device.