It's interesting that The Globe and Mail, an Ontario, Canada paper, talks about.eu privacy laws, and doesn't mention Canada's. I wrote about that here almost 3 years ago.
Milton Mueller's mention of some people about to have a big surprise probably refers to the likes of IP weenies like Marilyn Cade, quoted in the article, who have probably slowed down rational management of the namespace much more than all other factors put together (and banked more billable hours from rich newbie megacorps). They are so technically cluefscked that I once had to show Ms. Cade how to read the header on an email to trace it to its source IP, and she's wielded more power for years over the DNS via ICANN than almost anyone, including the ICANN (unelected) board.
Just recently I wrote about what the.name gTLD is now doing. They're charging $2 per 5 WHOIS snoop. Like I say in the article it's all about money, so let the folks who want a public WHOIS pay for it for a change. I also mention in my first link that repurposed ccTLD.ws (western samoa) was acting as a cutout proxy for its registrants for years without the world coming to an end. -g
Why does'nt someone come up with the IDEA to fine the web site referred to in the spam.
They have, at least to the point of cutting the spammers off from their source of income, with limited success (which is to say, only slightly more success than finding the spammer).
Wouldn't that solve the problem?
Not necessarily. First, how do you contact the site? Via false WHOIS data? Many domain names are only there for one spam run, at under $10/ea they're throwaways. Second, some spam uses obfuscated URLs. Going after non-existent parties is a waste of time and going after innocent parties just adds to the noise. Despite Micro$oft's recent belated browser patch to close this phishing hole, a majority of the browsers in use worldwide are still open to this exploit. Third, some spam only points to an IP address (you don't need a domain name to serve up a website). By the time you figure out who 'owns' that IP, they're gone.
If unsolicited spam was sent with out the approval of the site make the site owner track them down or pay the fine...
Assuming that the site owner can be found, and assuming that they are innocent, why make them pay the fine? There are tens of thousands of sites which make use of affiliate marketing programs (drive traffic to my site and you get $x flat rate or a $x percentage, see Commission Junction for thousands of them). It is near-standard to have a policy that spamming for affil dollars means immediate cutoff and no pay, but first you have to figure out who they are and report them, or ma and pa site does, with the inherent problems above, meaning it is still a cash cow for spammers. I expect your suggestion would be opposed by the likes of Amazon.com (who use, even filed a patent on, such affiliate marketing).
...if the user is charged for sending emails, after he or she has sent out 100 or so, his/her email credit runs out; the emails are returned, and he/she notices there's a problem - BEFORE much of the spamming run is completed.
Umm, no. The spam is now often sent via an open port (opened, for example, by DoomJuice, spawn of MyDoom) using a built in mailer. First, who's counting this bitstream to know when it reaches 100 or so? Second, where are the emails returned to? Finally, stopping a spamming run before completion is of little consolation, and a simple workaround for the spammer would be to use various compromised machines, the first aimed at [a-b]@*.*, the second at [c-d]@*.*, et cetera.
Simply having a database that takes in a trademarked keyword and returns results related to that keyword is legitimate -- even if some of the result refer to competitors.
Depends what you mean by legitimate. Various search engines, including Google, have gotten into hot water over serving up paid sponsor links to competitors of a given trademarked search term. Dunno if any actually reached the legal arena, the search engines normally cease and desist. And let us not forget the brouhaha over MicroSoft's Smart Tags.
I fail to see how SiteFinder is any less of a trademark infringer than the prolific typosquatter John Zuccarini, who not only has lost repeatedly (admittedly not all of these are typosquats, or losses) under ICANN's UDRP, where he was found to have domain names confusingly similar to a trademark, he's been fined almost $2m, had further monetary damages found against him, and been arrested.
Generally, the usage needs to be within the same industry or product category. It is unlikely that people will confuse SiteFinder with your site.
Most of Zuccarini's 5000 + names don't point to competitors, yet he is repeatedly ruled to be illegitimate by both the courts and UDRP arbitration. Let's take an example given by John Berryhill. If I register a typosquattingly similar variant of a search engine and put up a rival search site, do you think the courts or the UDRP will find that legitimate? If not, what makes VeriSign any more legitimate for doing the same thing, or any more immune? Then again, with faux domains they don't have to agree to a clickwrap that binds them to the UDRP. Hmmm.
The Video Toaster was originally brought out to go inside the A2000, then the top of the Amiga line. Commodore, in what was probably their largest blunder (because the VT was the best reason that ever came along to purchase an Amiga), then brought out the considerably more powerful A3000, whose case design would not allow for a VT to be installed (although there were various kludges). -g
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Milton Mueller's mention of some people about to have a big surprise probably refers to the likes of IP weenies like Marilyn Cade, quoted in the article, who have probably slowed down rational management of the namespace much more than all other factors put together (and banked more billable hours from rich newbie megacorps). They are so technically cluefscked that I once had to show Ms. Cade how to read the header on an email to trace it to its source IP, and she's wielded more power for years over the DNS via ICANN than almost anyone, including the ICANN (unelected) board.
Just recently I wrote about what the .name gTLD is now doing. They're charging $2 per 5 WHOIS snoop. Like I say in the article it's all about money, so let the folks who want a public WHOIS pay for it for a change. I also mention in my first link that repurposed ccTLD .ws (western samoa) was acting as a cutout proxy for its registrants for years without the world coming to an end. -g
They have, at least to the point of cutting the spammers off from their source of income, with limited success (which is to say, only slightly more success than finding the spammer).
Wouldn't that solve the problem?
Not necessarily. First, how do you contact the site? Via false WHOIS data? Many domain names are only there for one spam run, at under $10/ea they're throwaways. Second, some spam uses obfuscated URLs. Going after non-existent parties is a waste of time and going after innocent parties just adds to the noise. Despite Micro$oft's recent belated browser patch to close this phishing hole, a majority of the browsers in use worldwide are still open to this exploit. Third, some spam only points to an IP address (you don't need a domain name to serve up a website). By the time you figure out who 'owns' that IP, they're gone.
If unsolicited spam was sent with out the approval of the site make the site owner track them down or pay the fine...
Assuming that the site owner can be found, and assuming that they are innocent, why make them pay the fine? There are tens of thousands of sites which make use of affiliate marketing programs (drive traffic to my site and you get $x flat rate or a $x percentage, see Commission Junction for thousands of them). It is near-standard to have a policy that spamming for affil dollars means immediate cutoff and no pay, but first you have to figure out who they are and report them, or ma and pa site does, with the inherent problems above, meaning it is still a cash cow for spammers. I expect your suggestion would be opposed by the likes of Amazon.com (who use, even filed a patent on, such affiliate marketing).
Please shoot holes in this idea if you see em...
I would, but I'm Canadian, eh?
Umm, no. The spam is now often sent via an open port (opened, for example, by DoomJuice, spawn of MyDoom) using a built in mailer. First, who's counting this bitstream to know when it reaches 100 or so? Second, where are the emails returned to? Finally, stopping a spamming run before completion is of little consolation, and a simple workaround for the spammer would be to use various compromised machines, the first aimed at [a-b]@*.*, the second at [c-d]@*.*, et cetera.
Depends what you mean by legitimate. Various search engines, including Google, have gotten into hot water over serving up paid sponsor links to competitors of a given trademarked search term. Dunno if any actually reached the legal arena, the search engines normally cease and desist. And let us not forget the brouhaha over MicroSoft's Smart Tags.
I fail to see how SiteFinder is any less of a trademark infringer than the prolific typosquatter John Zuccarini, who not only has lost repeatedly (admittedly not all of these are typosquats, or losses) under ICANN's UDRP, where he was found to have domain names confusingly similar to a trademark, he's been fined almost $2m, had further monetary damages found against him, and been arrested.
Generally, the usage needs to be within the same industry or product category. It is unlikely that people will confuse SiteFinder with your site.
Most of Zuccarini's 5000 + names don't point to competitors, yet he is repeatedly ruled to be illegitimate by both the courts and UDRP arbitration. Let's take an example given by John Berryhill. If I register a typosquattingly similar variant of a search engine and put up a rival search site, do you think the courts or the UDRP will find that legitimate? If not, what makes VeriSign any more legitimate for doing the same thing, or any more immune? Then again, with faux domains they don't have to agree to a clickwrap that binds them to the UDRP. Hmmm.
The Video Toaster was originally brought out to go inside the A2000, then the top of the Amiga line. Commodore, in what was probably their largest blunder (because the VT was the best reason that ever came along to purchase an Amiga), then brought out the considerably more powerful A3000, whose case design would not allow for a VT to be installed (although there were various kludges). -g