Domain Disputes

Disputes about domains and the way in which they are resolved are one of the more hotly debated issues of InternetPolitics? at the moment. Although there are very good reasons for having some sort of (semi-)legal procedure to control the overt cases of CyberSquatting?, the way in which the UDRP is handled at present, especially by WIPO has completely tipped the scales.

If someone who is bigger than you wants your domain, you lose it. ThisMustChange?.

Only domains that have been registered with the intention to extort money from a specific company or person are cases of CyberSquatting?. Trying to make money on DomainNames is not "BadFaith?" in itself. Why would it be? Is marketing BadFaith?? Is finding a good slogan and TradeMarking that BadFaith?? Is speculation in stocks, land or houses BadFaith??

Just how do we draw the line between extorting and making money?

Seems simple enough. If you produce something of value, you are 'making money'. If you try to make money without producing something of value, you are 'extorting'. Marketing, if done truthfully, provides product education as a service. Finding a good slogan and TradeMarking it is creating something (the new marketing tool) of value. Stock speculation is zero-sum, so it doesn't matter. Likewise land and houses. [Difference with domain names still not made clear.] Racing to register 'juliaroberts.com' seems pretty clearly bogus to me, unless your name is Julia Roberts. [Or you are a fan of her, or you really hate the way she performs on the screen and want to tell so on a website.] Under this logic, WIPO turned over juliaroberts.com to the actress actually named Julia Roberts. However, Sting.com was registered by someone (not the singer) who had also been known as =Sting= so WIPO ruled the singer was out of luck. [The question is, of course, who should get madonna.com? The singer/actress or the Pope? Oct 16, 2000 - singer got it] On the plus side, at least WIPO prevents the lawyers from doing their little extortion dance. [If you want a chance in a WIPO case, you have to hire a lawyer to do the talking though.]

The above examples (juliaroberts.com, sting.com) clearly show that UDRP *can* work all right and that WIPO is *sometimes* doing the right thing. There is not enough consistency, however, in the cases. Compare, e.g., barcelona.com and stmoritz.com cases. There are too many cases, moreover, in which WIPO takes decisions that are not based upon the UDRP-rules, but on some extension (not interpretation) of them. Disputes that come to mind are: crew.com, barcelona.com, corinthians.com. And from an pre-UDRP/WIPO period: clue.com.

Clear cases of cybersquatting, by UDRP-definition, should be dealt with according to the rules. An end must be put to the stealing of domains by making new rules, like in the barcelona.com case, about who has a "more legitimate right" in a name. Trying to make money on a *generic* name may not entitle one to moral praise. It is by no means a crime. [no-one said it was a crime, you just don't have an enforceable right of possession, so you ability to make money by squatting on the name is limited.] On the contrary, it is a crime that a city council can steal an active and useful website like barcelona.com. And that they can say they will go all the way legally to get it, thus more or less forcing the owners to give in. A city council has no problems paying lawyers. They can always raise taxes.

The city council issue also seems pretty clear... a city is NOT a commercial enterprise of any description, so cities/states/countries should have no right to .com domains. I see no problem with giving them barcelona.gov or barcelona.sp etc. WIPO should start enforcing the meaningfulness of top-level domains (.com .gov .net .org etc) FIRST, and only then worry about second-level domains like barcelona. There could be a .ent top-level domain created for entertainers that would resolve a lot of difficulty there. ACTRA (the actor's union), for example, enforces a rule that no two people are allowed to have the exact same name, so there cannot be two 'Julia Roberts' members, either alive or dead which also helps reduce conflicts/confusion.

[line put in to separate from original authors work, as context *is* different]

The whole point of a DomainNameServer? is to point to a resource so really it should be up to the holder of the DNS entry (or RootServer?) to say that the pointer is pointing correctly. Not so much who 'owns' the name of the entry.

The previous paragraph is unclear, specifically in this context. At least to this reader :-)

: Am I reading that right? Is it basically saying it's ok for Network Solutions to continue with the policy of "We own your domain, so bugger off"?

What about putting it this way, when registering a domain should there be a mechanism to specify that the content match the name? Then once approved it stays forever (unless content drifts out of original scope, so then could be challenged)...

this is now (kind of) how the .au domain is administered, suitability is reviewed each year and the domain license renewed if appropriate. A TradeMark is considered an eligibility criteria. There is now a FreenetNameService? running under FreeNet, solving the problem by strictly doing it FirstComeFirstServed?. -- AndrewMcMeikan

Or we could come up with a clever AlternativeToDomains.