I've been getting a flood of hits and email since yesterday when that PI article turned into a piece on KING 5 TV here in Seattle and, obviously, this Slashdot piece. When it rains, it pours.:)
I've won $7150 in small claims court. I've collected $2650, of which $1800 was from pre-trial settlements.
I've been doing this for about a year and I'd estimate I spend about twelve hours a month doing it. That works out to ~$18 per hour, which isn't too shabby in this economy. If you actually enjoy doing this sort of thing, it's that much better.
This hobby keeps getting more interesting every day. Two weeks ago I was contacted by an assistant attorney general in Arizona about one of my cases. They wanted to "compare notes." That same week, a police detective from Oregon contacted me, wanting to "share" information. It seems that these people might not have jurisdiction over the spammers (who violate more than Washington law when they hijack mail servers), so they're really rooting for me. The Oregon detective said he was hoping to come to my court case!
All in all, this is good fun and you get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing what slimebags most of these people are. Junk faxes and recorded calls are illegal under federal law as well as many state laws, so anyone can go after those folks and, if you enjoy playing detective at all, you really should.
Disclaimer: IANPTSTBK (I am not posting this simply to bash Katz)
I am curious if anything ever came of that Message from Kabul brouhaha. For some time I was on the lookout for a response from Mr. Katz. Was one ever posted here or anywhere else?
When I read that article, I was reminded of the monkey fishing fiasco over at Slate. In that instance Slate apologized and fired the guy. Even if the Message from Kabul article wasn't an intentional lie (as the monkey fishing story was), it'd be nice to see some response. (My apologies if one was posted and I simply missed it.)
Did that Afghanistan article ever get a response?
on
Review: Orange County
·
· Score: 1
I don't mean to be a Katz basher like the majority of Katz commenters. In fact, I often enjoy and appreciate Jon's thoughts.
That said, I was quite amazed at that whole Message from Kabul debacle and for some time was looking for a response from the author. Was one ever posted here or anywhere else?
A single lawsuit won't do anything to stop spam, but once fifty or one hundred people start suing, it will get too expensive for many spammers. In Washington State, we've nearly a dozen folks filing lawsuits, some of them going for some serious amounts -- to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you've got spam with a phone number or ordering address in it, you can (usually) track it down to a specific company or person. If it's only got a URL, like those mortgage spams, Washington litigants are filling out the contact forms on the site, then going after the mortgage company that contacts them. When these mortgage companies get hit with a lawsuit, they either want to settle right quick, or they rat out the spammer they hired. I've been focusing on spam with phone numbers, as I find it relatively easy and fun to track down the company behind the number. It may not always be easy to find the spammer, but it's not rocket science either. Anyone can do it given a little bit of time.
The Seattle Times had a good article on Saturday about the anti-spam law, some folks who've been using it, their wins, and the troubles they've encountered with the court system. The biggest issue in Washington is that court clerks and judges aren't fully educated about procedural issues like whether one can sue an out-of-state defendant or for punitive damages in small claims court. (The answer to both is yes.) It's been pretty frustrating for us "trailblazers," as the judges are saying contradictory and often quite stupid stuff.
For a copy of my 24 page zine, Zen and the art of small claims, send some stamps to PO Box 95227, Seattle, WA 98145. You can also just read it online at my site, but any zinester knows that it's just not the same.
I am one of a handful of people actively pursuing spammers in Washington. I am vice-president of a Seattle ISP and when I get bored on the weekends, I scan the Qmail alias file, which is 99% double-bounced spam. Under RCW 19.190, almost every one of these is illegal as the spammer "misrepresented the point of origin" of the email.
I pick out the easy spams -- ones with phone numbers, fax numbers or physical addresses -- and I contact the spammer and say, "look, we got illegal email from you and we're willing to overlook it if it doesn't happen again." A fair number of spammers then remove all of our domains from their lists. The ones that don't get a few reminders, then a notice of small claim. Under Washington law, ISPs can sue for $1,000 per email.
Check out my lawsuit page for some info. For those non-Washingtonians, you can get in on some of the lawsuit fun by suing junk faxers and telemarketers under federal law, which I've tried just to see if it works. The good news: it does.
Us folks in Washington State have a great deal of cooperation going on via mailing lists. We're gearing up for some serious spammer suing. And it is hard to collect, but it's not impossible. Once you get a dozen cases going, the money from one case isn't a big deal so you just send it to collections to fuck with the spammer.
Essentially, this is just a real fun hobby that happens to pay a bit of money. Oh, you might find this interesting: Zen and the Art of Small Claims.
Folks, get over yourself. America is at war, really at war, not just scratching an itch. For the first time since 1945.
Technically speaking, we are not at war. We don't have war unless Congress declares it, as per Article 1, Section 8 of this silly thing. So call it whatever you like; just don't call it a war. We haven't had one of those in quite a while.
Peacekeeping would be a better description of America's actions in other countries. Because we definately do not have wars.
You should switch registrars as soon as possible, not only because NSI is unethical, but because your first few attempts may fail because NSI is very, very bad.
I work for an small ISP and whenever an NSI-registered domain we host comes up for renewal, we suggest that the domain owner switch registrars. We recommend Gandi, a bunch of French Linux geeks who we've never had a single problem with. They charge 12 euros a year, about $10-11. It helps that they are one of the cheapest, because transfers are often denied by NSI, meaning you lose your 12 euros. Make sure to start this process a while before your registration expires, so you can attempt multiple transfers if need be.
Be very, very careful not to let your domain expire. Occasionally, a customer will call up because their web site isn't working and we look into it and see that their domain name expired (generally because they forgot to pay their bill). In that case, we tell them to pay NSI ASAP or we often pay it ourselves, because of the NSI horrors we've had in the past.
One of our customers forgot to pay their NSI bill and the domain expired. NSI deleted it from their database, but it was still in the master registry. So the registry shows the domain as registered through NSI, but NSI has no records for it. This means that nobody can register the domain until it is expunged from the registry (which, funny enough, is also run by NSI). This takes an undetermined amount of time, meaning that they could do it today or they could do it in six months, but they absolutely will not tell you when they're going to do it.
In the case of our customer, it took about six weeks for NSI the registry to expunge the domain, which generally happens around 6:30 a.m. eastern time. As soon as it was expunged, a domain name hijacker registered the domain and won't relinquish it without getting a wad of cash.
It used to be more frequent and would cause the system to completely die after a while, requiring some console-based fscking. But many months back we changed some kernel option -- forgive me as I can't recall which, though I think it was the "burst bit" or something related -- and it hasn't been completely crashing, though we still get those errors about once a week.
I've heard stories of drive completely dying, but thankfully -- knock on wood -- that hasn't happened here. Here's what our setup looks like (from dmesg):
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 21
VP_IDE: chipset revision 16
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd800-0xd807, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd808-0xd80f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
PDC20265: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 88
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:11.0
PDC20265: chipset revision 2
PDC20265: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
PDC20265: (U)DMA Burst Bit ENABLED Primary PCI Mode Secondary PCI Mode.
ide2: BM-DMA at 0x8400-0x8407, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
ide3: BM-DMA at 0x8408-0x840f, BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio
hde: IBM-DTLA-307030, ATA DISK drive
hdg: IBM-DTLA-307030, ATA DISK drive
ide2 at 0x9800-0x9807,0x9402 on irq 10
ide3 at 0x9000-0x9007,0x8802 on irq 10
hde: 60036480 sectors (30739 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=59560/16/63, UDMA(100)
hdg: 60036480 sectors (30739 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=59560/16/63, UDMA(100)
I received one of these "you are a criminal" letters at the ISP I work for, so I called up the BSA at (888) NO-PIRACY and had them remove us from their mailing lists. I asked where they got our name and address, and they said they purchased the list from Dun & Bradstreet. I gave DNB a ring at (800) 234-3867 and had them remove us from their lists. I asked the operator if there was a space to note the reason for the remove request and she said yes, so I made sure she noted that I had been offended by a mailing the BSA did using their lists.
New.net operates.kids,.xxx,.mp3,.inc and a bunch more without the nod from ICANN. Two days ago, they announced that Prodigy had jumped on board. They also have agreements with Earthlink, Juno, @Home, NetZero, and mp3.com and they claim 34% of Internet users can view their TLDs.
This patent application references my previous patent application "Tactical Voting."
The present invention is a Tactical Voting Simplification System (TVSS) for permitting timely and simplified candidate selection information to subscribers of said system. In contemporary society, especially in the United States of America, qualified voters are given up to multiple hundreds of candidates for any given office. Many voters resort to "Tactical Voting," a method of voting we've devised whereby a qualified voter examines multiple sources of data on public opinion and possible election outcome and bases his or her decision on the probability of a candidate they certainly do not want to win the election winning the election (see "Tactical Voting" patent).
To simplify "Tactical Voting," we've devised a system to compile various sources of election data and through a proprietary computational function, inform a qualified voter of the effect casting their vote for the candidate they most want to win -- or not using "Tactical Voting" -- will have on the election outcome.
On an election day, for qualified voters -- especially those in Pacific, Alaska and Hawaii time zones -- this "election outcome effect" will be computed not only with various sources of data on public opinion but actual election outcomes in states where election polls have closed and election results are being tabulated. For instance, if a qualified voter lives in a state where no one "leading candidate" has a clear victory (ie. "neck and neck"), said qualified voter would normally receive a high "election outcome effect" were they to vote for the candidate they most want. However, if election results in states where election polls have closed show a qualified voter's least-favored "leading candidate" behind in electoral college votes by a signifigant margin, said qualified voter may receive a low "election outcome effect" if their state has a low number of electoral college votes, even if the "leading candidates" are "neck and neck."
A method of voting whereby a qualified voter examines multiple sources of data on public opinion and possible election outcome and bases his or her decision on the probability of a candidate they certainly do not want to win the election winning the election.
In any given election, a qualified voter often has a wide spectrum of opinions on the various candidates provided. If multiple sources of data on public opinion and possible election outcome show a number of candidates greater than one ("leading candidates") holding the highest percentage of electorate stating they shall vote for said candidates and that percentage of electorate being nearly equal for each "leading candidate" ("neck and neck"), a qualified voter shall select the one candidate of said "leading candidates" that they dislike the least and cast their vote for that "least disliked" candidate.
A few weeks back, there was a story at News.com about a ballot initiative in Washington State that is doing online petitions. You still have to print them out and sign on the dotted line, but even those had controversy surrounding them.
The major benefit of online ballot initiative drives is that it makes the process easier and cheaper. The downside is that it makes the process easier and cheaper. It will open the initiative process up to real grassroots organizations who don't necessarily have a few hundred grand to spend. But for the people that are already spending millions on such initiatives, why not do three or four of them since it's so cheap now.
I submitted this article last week, but it didn't make it through. Since it's an ICANN subject, I'll just attach it here.
News.com had an article last week about the "Sunrise + 20" proposal from ICANN's Working Group B. It would allow trademark owners to register their mark and up to 20 variations on that mark in the new TLDs that ICANN is proposing -- before the general public has a chance to register a single domain. With over 1 million trademarks registered in the United States alone, the math works out to a possible 20+ million domains being registered before Joe Average gets a shot. (There are 17.5 million.com,.net, and.org total right now.)
The Working Group B comments regarding the proposal were overwhelmingly supportive -- not too suprising considering it's comprised of mostly trademark lawyers representing folks like Time Warner, Dow Jones & Co., Kodak, Bell Atlantic, Major League Baseball, Intel, 3M, the Motion Picture Association, Viacom, etc.
Several people have said that the reply is irrevelant. But the points in the response are deceptively simple.... These are trying to establish fair use defenses against the copyright claims.
Agreed. US Code Title 17, Section 107 states:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
They are arguing that the posts are for purposes of "commentary and criticism" and thus are protected by the "fair use" clause of Title 17 Section 107. I doubt "fair use" applies to trade secrets, however, so they've got to argue that it's not a trade secret, which shouldn't be too hard since Microsoft released it to the public.
The rest of the questions were probably the result of a "what do you want to ask Microsoft's lawyers?" auction over at the VA Linux offices.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been getting a flood of hits and email since yesterday when that PI article turned into a piece on KING 5 TV here in Seattle and, obviously, this Slashdot piece. When it rains, it pours. :)
I've won $7150 in small claims court. I've collected $2650, of which $1800 was from pre-trial settlements.
I've been doing this for about a year and I'd estimate I spend about twelve hours a month doing it. That works out to ~$18 per hour, which isn't too shabby in this economy. If you actually enjoy doing this sort of thing, it's that much better.
This hobby keeps getting more interesting every day. Two weeks ago I was contacted by an assistant attorney general in Arizona about one of my cases. They wanted to "compare notes." That same week, a police detective from Oregon contacted me, wanting to "share" information. It seems that these people might not have jurisdiction over the spammers (who violate more than Washington law when they hijack mail servers), so they're really rooting for me. The Oregon detective said he was hoping to come to my court case!
All in all, this is good fun and you get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing what slimebags most of these people are. Junk faxes and recorded calls are illegal under federal law as well as many state laws, so anyone can go after those folks and, if you enjoy playing detective at all, you really should.
Disclaimer: IANPTSTBK (I am not posting this simply to bash Katz)
I am curious if anything ever came of that Message from Kabul brouhaha. For some time I was on the lookout for a response from Mr. Katz. Was one ever posted here or anywhere else?
When I read that article, I was reminded of the monkey fishing fiasco over at Slate. In that instance Slate apologized and fired the guy. Even if the Message from Kabul article wasn't an intentional lie (as the monkey fishing story was), it'd be nice to see some response. (My apologies if one was posted and I simply missed it.)
I don't mean to be a Katz basher like the majority of Katz commenters. In fact, I often enjoy and appreciate Jon's thoughts.
That said, I was quite amazed at that whole Message from Kabul debacle and for some time was looking for a response from the author. Was one ever posted here or anywhere else?
A single lawsuit won't do anything to stop spam, but once fifty or one hundred people start suing, it will get too expensive for many spammers. In Washington State, we've nearly a dozen folks filing lawsuits, some of them going for some serious amounts -- to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you've got spam with a phone number or ordering address in it, you can (usually) track it down to a specific company or person. If it's only got a URL, like those mortgage spams, Washington litigants are filling out the contact forms on the site, then going after the mortgage company that contacts them. When these mortgage companies get hit with a lawsuit, they either want to settle right quick, or they rat out the spammer they hired. I've been focusing on spam with phone numbers, as I find it relatively easy and fun to track down the company behind the number. It may not always be easy to find the spammer, but it's not rocket science either. Anyone can do it given a little bit of time.
The Seattle Times had a good article on Saturday about the anti-spam law, some folks who've been using it, their wins, and the troubles they've encountered with the court system. The biggest issue in Washington is that court clerks and judges aren't fully educated about procedural issues like whether one can sue an out-of-state defendant or for punitive damages in small claims court. (The answer to both is yes.) It's been pretty frustrating for us "trailblazers," as the judges are saying contradictory and often quite stupid stuff.
Here's some nifty links:
For a copy of my 24 page zine, Zen and the art of small claims, send some stamps to PO Box 95227, Seattle, WA 98145. You can also just read it online at my site, but any zinester knows that it's just not the same.
If you are in states with so-called "anti-spam" laws, you can start taking legal action against spammers. Check out:
Sorry for the Washington-heavy links; it's my home state.
I am one of a handful of people actively pursuing spammers in Washington. I am vice-president of a Seattle ISP and when I get bored on the weekends, I scan the Qmail alias file, which is 99% double-bounced spam. Under RCW 19.190, almost every one of these is illegal as the spammer "misrepresented the point of origin" of the email.
I pick out the easy spams -- ones with phone numbers, fax numbers or physical addresses -- and I contact the spammer and say, "look, we got illegal email from you and we're willing to overlook it if it doesn't happen again." A fair number of spammers then remove all of our domains from their lists. The ones that don't get a few reminders, then a notice of small claim. Under Washington law, ISPs can sue for $1,000 per email.
Check out my lawsuit page for some info. For those non-Washingtonians, you can get in on some of the lawsuit fun by suing junk faxers and telemarketers under federal law, which I've tried just to see if it works. The good news: it does.
Us folks in Washington State have a great deal of cooperation going on via mailing lists. We're gearing up for some serious spammer suing. And it is hard to collect, but it's not impossible. Once you get a dozen cases going, the money from one case isn't a big deal so you just send it to collections to fuck with the spammer.
Essentially, this is just a real fun hobby that happens to pay a bit of money. Oh, you might find this interesting: Zen and the Art of Small Claims.
Technically speaking, we are not at war. We don't have war unless Congress declares it, as per Article 1, Section 8 of this silly thing. So call it whatever you like; just don't call it a war. We haven't had one of those in quite a while.
Peacekeeping would be a better description of America's actions in other countries. Because we definately do not have wars.
You should switch registrars as soon as possible, not only because NSI is unethical, but because your first few attempts may fail because NSI is very, very bad.
I work for an small ISP and whenever an NSI-registered domain we host comes up for renewal, we suggest that the domain owner switch registrars. We recommend Gandi, a bunch of French Linux geeks who we've never had a single problem with. They charge 12 euros a year, about $10-11. It helps that they are one of the cheapest, because transfers are often denied by NSI, meaning you lose your 12 euros. Make sure to start this process a while before your registration expires, so you can attempt multiple transfers if need be.
Be very, very careful not to let your domain expire. Occasionally, a customer will call up because their web site isn't working and we look into it and see that their domain name expired (generally because they forgot to pay their bill). In that case, we tell them to pay NSI ASAP or we often pay it ourselves, because of the NSI horrors we've had in the past.
One of our customers forgot to pay their NSI bill and the domain expired. NSI deleted it from their database, but it was still in the master registry. So the registry shows the domain as registered through NSI, but NSI has no records for it. This means that nobody can register the domain until it is expunged from the registry (which, funny enough, is also run by NSI). This takes an undetermined amount of time, meaning that they could do it today or they could do it in six months, but they absolutely will not tell you when they're going to do it.
In the case of our customer, it took about six weeks for NSI the registry to expunge the domain, which generally happens around 6:30 a.m. eastern time. As soon as it was expunged, a domain name hijacker registered the domain and won't relinquish it without getting a wad of cash.
We got two IBM 75GXPs almost a year ago and they've consistantly given us trouble. At least once a week now we get something like:
hdg: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdg: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=38535423, sector=38535360
end_request: I/O error, dev 22:01 (hdg), sector 38535360
Over and over again.
It used to be more frequent and would cause the system to completely die after a while, requiring some console-based fscking. But many months back we changed some kernel option -- forgive me as I can't recall which, though I think it was the "burst bit" or something related -- and it hasn't been completely crashing, though we still get those errors about once a week.
I've heard stories of drive completely dying, but thankfully -- knock on wood -- that hasn't happened here. Here's what our setup looks like (from dmesg):
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 21
VP_IDE: chipset revision 16
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd800-0xd807, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd808-0xd80f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
PDC20265: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 88
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:11.0
PDC20265: chipset revision 2
PDC20265: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
PDC20265: (U)DMA Burst Bit ENABLED Primary PCI Mode Secondary PCI Mode.
ide2: BM-DMA at 0x8400-0x8407, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
ide3: BM-DMA at 0x8408-0x840f, BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio
hde: IBM-DTLA-307030, ATA DISK drive
hdg: IBM-DTLA-307030, ATA DISK drive
ide2 at 0x9800-0x9807,0x9402 on irq 10
ide3 at 0x9000-0x9007,0x8802 on irq 10
hde: 60036480 sectors (30739 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=59560/16/63, UDMA(100)
hdg: 60036480 sectors (30739 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=59560/16/63, UDMA(100)
PS1="[\`date +%l:%M\`][\\w]\\\$" [ 2:01][/var/log]$
I received one of these "you are a criminal" letters at the ISP I work for, so I called up the BSA at (888) NO-PIRACY and had them remove us from their mailing lists. I asked where they got our name and address, and they said they purchased the list from Dun & Bradstreet. I gave DNB a ring at (800) 234-3867 and had them remove us from their lists. I asked the operator if there was a space to note the reason for the remove request and she said yes, so I made sure she noted that I had been offended by a mailing the BSA did using their lists.
New.net operates .kids, .xxx, .mp3, .inc and a bunch more without the nod from ICANN. Two days ago, they announced that Prodigy had jumped on board. They also have agreements with Earthlink, Juno, @Home, NetZero, and mp3.com and they claim 34% of Internet users can view their TLDs.
This patent application references my previous patent application "Tactical Voting."
The present invention is a Tactical Voting Simplification System (TVSS) for permitting timely and simplified candidate selection information to subscribers of said system. In contemporary society, especially in the United States of America, qualified voters are given up to multiple hundreds of candidates for any given office. Many voters resort to "Tactical Voting," a method of voting we've devised whereby a qualified voter examines multiple sources of data on public opinion and possible election outcome and bases his or her decision on the probability of a candidate they certainly do not want to win the election winning the election (see "Tactical Voting" patent).
To simplify "Tactical Voting," we've devised a system to compile various sources of election data and through a proprietary computational function, inform a qualified voter of the effect casting their vote for the candidate they most want to win -- or not using "Tactical Voting" -- will have on the election outcome.
On an election day, for qualified voters -- especially those in Pacific, Alaska and Hawaii time zones -- this "election outcome effect" will be computed not only with various sources of data on public opinion but actual election outcomes in states where election polls have closed and election results are being tabulated. For instance, if a qualified voter lives in a state where no one "leading candidate" has a clear victory (ie. "neck and neck"), said qualified voter would normally receive a high "election outcome effect" were they to vote for the candidate they most want. However, if election results in states where election polls have closed show a qualified voter's least-favored "leading candidate" behind in electoral college votes by a signifigant margin, said qualified voter may receive a low "election outcome effect" if their state has a low number of electoral college votes, even if the "leading candidates" are "neck and neck."
A method of voting whereby a qualified voter examines multiple sources of data on public opinion and possible election outcome and bases his or her decision on the probability of a candidate they certainly do not want to win the election winning the election.
In any given election, a qualified voter often has a wide spectrum of opinions on the various candidates provided. If multiple sources of data on public opinion and possible election outcome show a number of candidates greater than one ("leading candidates") holding the highest percentage of electorate stating they shall vote for said candidates and that percentage of electorate being nearly equal for each "leading candidate" ("neck and neck"), a qualified voter shall select the one candidate of said "leading candidates" that they dislike the least and cast their vote for that "least disliked" candidate.
A few weeks back, there was a story at News.com about a ballot initiative in Washington State that is doing online petitions. You still have to print them out and sign on the dotted line, but even those had controversy surrounding them.
The major benefit of online ballot initiative drives is that it makes the process easier and cheaper. The downside is that it makes the process easier and cheaper. It will open the initiative process up to real grassroots organizations who don't necessarily have a few hundred grand to spend. But for the people that are already spending millions on such initiatives, why not do three or four of them since it's so cheap now.
I submitted this article last week, but it didn't make it through. Since it's an ICANN subject, I'll just attach it here.
News.com had an article last week about the "Sunrise + 20" proposal from ICANN's Working Group B. It would allow trademark owners to register their mark and up to 20 variations on that mark in the new TLDs that ICANN is proposing -- before the general public has a chance to register a single domain. With over 1 million trademarks registered in the United States alone, the math works out to a possible 20+ million domains being registered before Joe Average gets a shot. (There are 17.5 million .com, .net, and .org total right now.)
The Working Group B comments regarding the proposal were overwhelmingly supportive -- not too suprising considering it's comprised of mostly trademark lawyers representing folks like Time Warner, Dow Jones & Co., Kodak, Bell Atlantic, Major League Baseball, Intel, 3M, the Motion Picture Association, Viacom, etc.
Several people have said that the reply is irrevelant. But the points in the response are deceptively simple. ... These are trying to establish fair use defenses against the copyright claims.
Agreed. US Code Title 17, Section 107 states:
They are arguing that the posts are for purposes of "commentary and criticism" and thus are protected by the "fair use" clause of Title 17 Section 107. I doubt "fair use" applies to trade secrets, however, so they've got to argue that it's not a trade secret, which shouldn't be too hard since Microsoft released it to the public.
The rest of the questions were probably the result of a "what do you want to ask Microsoft's lawyers?" auction over at the VA Linux offices.