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The Internet Your Rights Online

Ruling the Root 98

Posted by michael from the and-in-the-darkness-bind-them dept.
Overcoat writes "Interesting review on Salon of the recently published book by Milton Mueller entitled Ruling The Root. The review claims that ICANN's dominance of the Domain Name System will lead to the end of free speech the the internet: 'But what is surprising, and disturbing, is the process by which control over the domain name system has been used to extend intellectual property rights to new heights. Ultimately, the free-speech utopia of cyberspace is evolving into a domain where corporate interests have more power to control speech than they have had in other arenas.' Not sure if trademarking "yahooo.com" constitutes a really big threat to free speech, but it's still a thought-provoking article."
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Ruling the Root

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  • So? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Saturday June 15, 2002 @11:08AM (#3707816) Homepage Journal
    For example, Yahoo gets to trademark not only its own name, but at least 30 misspellings of its name. And it can prevent other groups from registering domain names with the word Yahoo in them, even if they are not competing in any way with Yahoo's business. In both cases, Internet practice goes beyond established legal precedent.

    So what? Those misspellings are obvious attempts at getting money (from popup circle jerks for porn sites, usually) off Yahoo!'s brandname - shouldn't they have the right to stop that? It'd be like naming a product CocaCola instead of Coca-Cola - the intent is obvious.
    • Well sir, it all depends on the context of yahooo.com. If the site was nothing more than I re-dirrect, indeed it would fit your idea. But what if it was a site devoted to silly antics, or something else legit that would use yahooo.com, or yahoooo.com or something else, or even a pardody of yahoo itself comparing it to wild out of control hooligans. Yes that would be free speach, yahoo is not hard to spell, being a nazi about it is completely unneccary

    • Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by darkonc ( 47285 )
      Those misspellings are obvious attempts at getting money ... off Yahoo!'s brandname

      In some cases, that may be the case -- but sites like yahoo-sucks.com or fuck-yahoo.org might be legitimate criticism or satire sites. The name, itself is a statement. It's clear that the site has no direct relationship to yahoo (other than being critical of it), and the site owner would probably be very happy to increase that logical separation. Network users would be very unlikely to type it in by mistake.

      In cases like those, handing over the domain is little more than an attempt (successful, at that!) at censorship.

    • For example, Yahoo gets to trademark not only its own name, but at least 30 misspellings of its name. And it can prevent other groups from registering domain names with the word Yahoo in them, even if they are not competing in any way with Yahoo's business

      They never bothered Yahoot! [yahoot.com]. Though maybe that's because Yahoot has been around since before Yahoo.

      It's also a much better source of information than Yahoo is.

  • Well when... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Husaria ( 262766 ) on Saturday June 15, 2002 @11:09AM (#3707819) Homepage
    When scientologists can get slashdot to remove comments from the site because they violate copyright laws, or ms bitches that slashdot comments violate the dmca, or when corporations think that everyone should be identifiable on the internet, or that web pages with criticism should be sued into oblivion, or when someone makes a secnario on kuro5hin about the vice president, you get the secret service knocking at your door, we should be worried about free speech on the internet
    • Absolutely. And each of those, IMHO, are of far greater import than control of the root domain. (My sense from your comment is that you would agree with that, so this isn't meant as a dig or contradiction.)

      Control of the root domain is important, but not as important as this book would suggest, because a) most Internet users aren't sophisticated enough to change their nameservers to, say, those of Alternic [alternic.org], and b) there are (I'm guessing) a lot more domain names than IP addresses.

      For instance: I run a server that hosts five websites -- five different domains. If I decide that it's time to Screw the Man (tm), and that I'm not going to be able to get the really rebel domain name that I want 'cos of InterNic, and therefore I'm going to have to just pass around a link to the IP address, that leaves less namespace usable on that server.

      I've lost a convenient label for this site, one that can be easily remembered. While that's a setback, and not a small one, it's not a showstopper. (God almighty...first namespace, now showstopper...somebody stop me!) If my task is Educating The Masses (also tm), all I need is to convince someone to put up a link on a website that does have a memorable domain name; at that point, Joe User can click it, or make a bookmark, or email it, or be emailed it, or remember the path of links it took to get there. Less convenient, but not a killer. And in any case, a link from a memorable site would be half the battle anyway in getting the word out; I'm sure print/spoken advertising isn't everything in getting people to go to a site.

      What is a showstopper is, as you say, explicit censorship of the contents for reasons of copyright, or security, or litigation. This worries me a lot more than whether or not I can register yahhooo.com.

  • WHOIS Surveillance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DaveWood ( 101146 ) on Saturday June 15, 2002 @11:17AM (#3707834) Homepage
    At first I thought this was a BS article bemoaning the special treatment the rich get when arbitrating domain name disputes. But they save a very big surprise for the end.

    "Copyright interests now view expanded WHOIS functionality as a way to identify and serve process upon the owners of allegedly infringing Web sites," writes Mueller. "That is, 'technical coordination' of the domain name system is already being leveraged to police the content of Web sites as well as their domain names. Moreover, public law enforcement agencies, notably the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, have become deeply interested in the use of WHOIS to supplement their law enforcement activities. Ultimately, the intent seems to be to make a domain name the cyberspace equivalent of a driver's license. Only, unlike the driver's licenses database, this one would be publicly accessible to anyone and everyone to rummage through as they pleased."

    People will draw different conclusions from this. But it's certainly not just about trademarks.

  • DNS needs to be replaced (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fastolfe ( 1470 ) on Saturday June 15, 2002 @11:17AM (#3707835)
    I'm interested in reading the book's take on this, but it seems to me that DNS was never meant to be twisted into what it's being used for today.

    DNS's primary purpose was to allow someone to lookup a numerical address from a hierarchial alphanumeric one. It was never meant to be a search mechanism for people to find an organization. That's what directories like X.500 and LDAP, or search engines are for. The very fact that there can be multiple commercial entities primarily identified with the same word makes DNS wholly unsuitable for this.

    I think we need to scrap DNS and start over from scratch. Hand out names as needed for technological reasons, and set up a directory for users to provide an organizational name and get back links to that organization's web site(s). Regulate that directory with all of the intellectual property and trademark crap that you want, but do it in such a way that local IP and trademark law can be respected. Hide DNS (and maybe URL's entirely for that matter) from the user through their browsers, and utilize certificates for establishing identity, instead of the basic assumption that if the domain name in the URL "looks right", then it must be them. I might even go so far as to suggest that when an organizational's DNS domain is created, they automatically get a certificate that allows them to sign for SSL sites within that domain, keeping the organizational identifier the same.
    • That's a good idea but changing all the servers and structures all over the internet would take a long time
      Kind of like forcing all cars to stop using gas
    • Hm...fair point -- but if a tool intended for one purpose has turned out to be fabulously valuable, or useful, or even just used, by a large number of people for another purpose, how do you expect to just stop that use?

      • What it would probably take is for geeks to design and implement it, and then develop some kind of 'killer app' based upon it. Maybe modify mozilla to support it and put some mp3 distro sites on it. Overnight you'd see it proliferate in college dorms, and in about 6 months IE would support it. Although, MS would probably make their own version, slightly modified and patented, which has DRM or somesuch... but you get the idea.

        People need a reason to use things. The average joe isn't going to switch just because its technically better. Hey, how bout this: if we get a working implementation of something, we petition OSDN and other geek sites to drop their DNS
    • The Internet as a whole was never ment for this purpose! What gurrlpages.com has to do with creating a communications network for defence and research that can survive golbal thermonuclear war is beyond me.
    • DNS was never meant to be twisted into what it's being used for today.

      No, it wasn't. But there's a long history of this type of thing. Social Security Numbers were not originally intended to be used as tracking numbers for every citizen of the United States. Driver's Licenses were not originally intended to be used as identification cards for every citizen in the United States.

      To make it worse, pretty soon the United State's Social Security funds will run out and the only use for Social Security Numbers will be to track people. They'll no longer have their original "legitimate" use. And, it looks like the government is going to change the Driver's License into a national ID card (due to Sept 11).

      The problem is that creating something else to fill those needs (the US govt's needs, that is) would be very expensive; and since there already is a solution in place, why not just use it?

      The issue with DNS is not whether it's technically capable of filling the need - that is, the need of the large corporations (which are essentially in political power via their lobbyists and contributions) to enforce their "intellectual property" over the internet. DNS is quite capable of filling this need. The issue is whether this is a legitimate need that should be filled. Those whose interests it serves (those with IP) think it should be. Those whose interests it harms (the general population) are against it (if they are informed of the issue). The corporations (who have the power) are most likely going to win.

    • And to imagine, all of this hassal and hardship people must face because the "geeks" decided to make the internet more user-friendly, i.e. lets use names that can be translated into 32bit number sequences(IP address) so that people don't have to remember 64.28.67.150 whenever they want to visit slashdot. While it isn't a bad idea it would only take a little more thought to realize that companies would start buying these things to attempt to sell products, and hence feel the need to protect themselves from others that might do harm.

      Just imagine if in the early days we could of not added in some of the extra ease of the internet, we could of kept most, if not all business off the internet, leaving it to simpling be a place for education and learning. Oh well.
      • I'm not saying that commercialization of the Internet should not have occurred, I just think that steps should have been taken early on to allow that to happen in a more sane fashion. Treating the DNS hierarchy as an intellectual property battle-ground is silly. DNS domains should have exactly the same weight as any assigned name or number.

        What are we going to see next? IP battles for control over different Java class name hierarchies? What about SNMP MIB organizational identifiers?

        DNS is a technological tool, and should not be a business tool (like it's become).
    • I think we need to scrap DNS and start over from scratch. Hand out names as needed for technological reasons, and set up a directory for users to provide an organizational name and get back links to that organization's web site(s).

      Funny. I could have sworn I use one of those [google.com] every day.

      • I mentioned search engines.

        But search engines as they are today have one flaw: it's difficult to find authoritative information.

        If you want to find organizational information (e.g. a web site) for, say, Joe's Widgets located in Anytown, YZ, you might do a netsearch like you imply. This netsearch might come back with one or more web pages related to this company, and if you're lucky, the first link might even be the home page for this company itself.

        But realistically, we don't have a "phone book" equivalent for the Internet. That's what a real directory service can provide that search engines, today, do not.
        • Expanding upon this comment, the directory service should not even be web-centric. It should just associate a legal business name with the assigned DNS domain name (and/or telephone number, physical address, whatever). Using DNS SRV records, you could then associate a web server or an internal directory server with this domain name. All of this can be done without having to guess that "www.company-name.com" is the home page for a company. You'd just ask for "Joe's Widgets", and you'd get back joes-widgets.co.yz.us (or whatever). This domain would have an SRV record pointing to perhaps web.it.joes-widgets.co.yz.us, which would be a web server located in Joe's Widget's IT group. A certificate presented by the server would authenticate it as Joe's Widgets of Anytown, YZ, as certified by the state of YZ, as certified by the US, and your location effort would be complete.
          • Not a bad idea. Necessarily.

            Remember that the design needs to avoid single points of failure, and that you are talking about an immense database. Something more like gpg keys would seem to be a better choice, with a web of trust kind of authentication.

            So if a public gpg key were the primary identifier, you could create a format (XML?) into which the owner of that key could enter such data as he choose. URL's could be an index into the database. But how should the database be distributed? We don't want to repeat the mistake of creating another ICANN. Centralized points of control *will* be siezed when they become valuable.

            Using gpg keys would allow a single person or organization to have their keys associated with different records for different purposes, which seems desireable. And it would allow one to check who vouched for them, etc., just like an ordinary gpg key (which it would be). People who wanted to use pseudo-nyms could. They just might have trouble getting people to sign for them. etc.
            • It's no more immense than DNS (which, admittedly, is pretty freakin' immense). X.500 (and LDAP) is designed to be distributed. You'd have a root (like DNS), but no "generic" top-level domains. You'd just hang each country's X.500 directory off of the root, and each country would be responsible for getting its local organizations listed in its directory. For the US, this could mean sub-delegations at the state level, sort of like how the .us DNS domain works. Traffic between tiers should be authenticated, a la DNSSEC (but who uses that?). When a business (or individual, for that matter) gets registered, they go into their local X.500 (or LDAP) directory and are immediately visible to the globe. This has the added benefit of doubling as a global telephone or address directory, with whatever information the user wishes to publish.

              But really I'm kind of digressing. This is just one potential method for accomplishing the same goal: reducing DNS back to what it was designed for and creating something else to fill the demand for a look-up service, designed for that purpose.

              Somebody else mentioned RealNames, and that's a step in the right direction, but it's still trying to use the "one word" approach to resolving trademarks. Why should 'Apple Computer' have any more claim over 'Apple' than 'Apple Hardware Store'?
          • This sounds very much like RealNames. However, that wouldn't really help in situations where you just misspell a name. The fundamental problem is that of the "name" itself - what is a name? Yahoo is just a noise people make when they're happy: why should a corporation be able to own that? And more to the point, if they can own that, who says they can?

            • Trademark law says the "own" it.

              And this would be different from RealNames because RealNames would only allow the association of that one word to that one company, so it suffers some of the same problems as DNS.

              A proper directory service wouldn't care. If your business's name is Yahoo, that would go into the directory in the proper place, and a search of the directory would give you what you're looking for. It's not the convenience of 1-word "keywords" in some cases, but it beats having to guess a hostname and, thus, giving hostnames a monetary value and a herd of companies and lawyers ready to exploit that.
    • I think we need to scrap DNS and start over from scratch.

      Capitalism is all about supply and demand. One of the best ways to make a shitload of money is to control the supply of a given resource. The DNS system is ripe for this type of exploitation, since there are a finite number of good domains. Domain value is further increased by making .com a "premium" TLD, instead of one classification among many. The business community will do everything it can to avoid expanding the domain namespace to protect the value of their holdings.

      If we try to upgrade or replace DNS, the established interests will shape the new system so they can continue controlling supply. Call me cynical, but this is how markets work. We can only expect more of the same in the future. The whole .tv scam [www.tv] is a perfect example of this.

    • You are right that DNS needs to be replaced. Among other reasons, because it was poorly designed and engages in a process far too complicated for simple name lookup, all in the interest of making life as easy as possible for lazy bureaucrats in charge of various domains in the mid-1980s.

      The compression format is very poor. The fact that NS and MX referrals use names instead of IPs. The existance of CNAME records. Glueless NS referrals. All of these are things which a well designed DNS replacment would not have.

      Now, before I continue, I feel very strongly that it is far easier to gripe about something which exists right now than to design something better to replace it. I will say nothing more until when and if I have designed and implemented a better replacment.

      - Sam

      • I'm kind of curious about your line of reasoning here. I think DNS as it's designed does a perfectly adequate job at resolving names.

        I think it's a good thing that only "A" records take you from a name to an IP address. All other record types should only permit a name. Administration would be annoying otherwise. Same with CNAME records. If I want to express the fact that www.company-name.com should be the same as www.company.com, and we're in different groups, we shouldn't have to coordinate IP address changes. I just set up a CNAME record telling everyone my "www" is really the other "www", and to go get the "A" mapping from there. (On a side note, I completely disapprove of using this method to alias one web server to the other, unless the destination web server issues a redirect to the canonical web site URL.)

        DNS is for providing information about domain names, including (but not limited to) IP addresses. You also have service information (e.g. MX and SRV records), contact information, etc. Any piece of data you need to associate with a DNS domain name should be expressible with the DNS protocol.

        DNS as it is does its job fine, I have no problem with that. It's the fact that we're trying to squeeze intellectual property status to these assigned names that's the problem.
        • If I want to express the fact that www.company-name.com should be the same as www.company.com

          Keep in mind that BIND does not permit the other desired case: Having company-name.com be a CNAME which points to company.com.

          Any piece of data you need to associate with a DNS domain name should be expressible with the DNS protocol.

          I understand the rational behind this: Minimize the effort people have to do to set up a domain. And it worked with the set up people had in the 1980s when new domains were rare enough that people changed zone files by hand to add the domain in question.

          All of this indirection was designed before changing your IPs with the upstream simply consisted of filling out a web form to change the IPs. The indirection hurts more than helps these days; it makes making a secure DNS server harder, and it also makes DNS less reliable. People with domains in foreign contires (where they want both, say, example.com and example.be) in particular suffer because of glueless NS referrals.

          Additionally, the indirection does not help in the case a large ISP with a zillion domains to manage. They need to add the new domain to /etc/named.conf; the most common feature people request with my DNS server is to have a way of adding a domain without needing to change anything with the DNS server. The other common request is SQL support; this is just another way of asking for the same thing.

          The solution, which only exists in my imagination right now, is to have metadata about DNS be transferred using something besides DNS. Variable substitution in zone files, for example.

          Like I say, I'm just talking out of my butt until I actually implement something; you are right until I have implemented something better.

          - Sam

  • Trademarks on misspelling? Good! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <petedaly@@@ix...netcom...com> on Saturday June 15, 2002 @11:22AM (#3707852)
    When is the last time you wanted to go to burger king, called it buger king, and ended up at some other resturant trying to sell you a "buger king" burger? That doesn't happen in the physical world, it is isolated to places where a businesses physical address is how it spells it's name. There is nothing wrong with registering misspellings.

    I have gone to slashdot in the past, mispelled it, and gotten an X10 popup ad...with slashdot's content. It took me a couple visits to realize why it was happening, as everything else seemed normal. Web sites have a right to try and protect themselves from domain hi-jacking like that. Another example is the paypal knock-off site, which says, or used to say how auwful paypal was. I don't know the adress, or whether is is still in opperation, but I am sure paypal wasn't happy about that.

    It's one thing when some has a site "slashdotsucks.org", and quite another when someone has a site "salshdot.org" which is obviously intending (based on the content) to get "slashdot.org" visitors. A website should be able to register all the trademarks they want for both of these types of cases.

    -Pete
  • I'm interested in reading this book to read the "account of how the geeks eventually lost control of their creation", this seems one of the most potent themes in the book and still extremely relevant to the itnernet at large, just look at WC3 for example, afaik thats still ran by a lot of _geeks_. Many of the /. people, I am sure, have ideas how the net could be improved and how the internet can be improved, but this book contains a warning about letting commercial and governmental groups get involved.
    • The WC3 committee is nearly entirely corporate representatives. They may be technically skilled, but they are primarally corporate representatives, and should be trusted as much as that implies.

      The recent debate about having the W3C approve proprietary "standards " still hasn't been satisfactorially resolved, and it nearly slipped by unnoticed.

      As far as I am concerned, the W3C has lost a very large chunk of their respectability. Not all, they did (sort of) back down when people started talking seriously about creating a different standards group to replace them. (That's ethics in a modern corporate group.)

    • Loss of control is completely relevant, as is the illusion of free speech. True, the system as it currently exists allows anyone to publish ***within the parameters of the system***. By contrast, consider pirate/free radio: there is an alternative for small independent broadcasters. Resources exist for radio hackers to get out there and broadcast whatever they like from their vans, potentially bypassing the FCC completely. There is no similar mechanism for publishing on the worldwide network because every domain and ip address is monitored and registered. Even hacking another's site or grabbing ips has propagation and persistence issues...

  • The difference is vast between what the Internet is becoming and how it was once envisioned. Mueller offers little hope that the process can be resisted. "Most likely ... the Internet's role as a site of radical business and technology innovation, and its status as a revolutionary force that disrupts existing social and regulatory regimes, is coming to an end." Vested interests rule the day.
    Mueller does hold out the hope that new technologies and systems are now being born, somewhere, that will attempt to subvert established structures just as the Net once did. The first step for anyone involved with those technologies who might harbor such intentions should be to learn what has gone before, lest the same mistakes be repeated all over again.

    ...revolutionary force that disrupts existing social and regulatory regimes...

    It's an information channel with high viscosity. Where, your revolution?
    IMHO, ICANN has done about the least-worst job imaginable, and therefore deserves some kind of award.

    Offered you a better suggestion, you might be more impressive, sir.

  • America... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Saturday June 15, 2002 @11:41AM (#3707930) Homepage
    What is indisputable, whether you blame the courts, the legislators, or the lawyers, is the fact that our system of governance can't figure out how to ban what everyone knows should be banned. This should be shocking for people of common sense. And it should be embarrassing to us as citizens.

    Look: I understand that censorship is the sugar in the gas tank of our political culture, it makes everything stutter and shimmy and eventually grind to a halt.

    But, it seems to me, this also reveals the prissy, cowardly, and -- most of all -- spoiled nature of our political leaders. Most arguments about government control have a certain logic to them. We allow the most stuff, the stuff out on the periphery of social and legal behavior for the simple reason that if we allow the stuff on the fringe, the freedoms at the core of our constitutional order will be preserved. For people who zealously defend our Second Amendment rights, this means arguing about the right to carry concealed weapons into churches, schools, airports, wherever.

    Abortion rights and pro-life activists follow the same logic. Not long ago the NARAL crowd wouldn't even concede that killing a live baby -- after the umbilical cord was cut! -- constituted murder. Pro-lifers argue that a tiny clump of cells has rights.

    Whether you agree with the substance of their positions, the logic is generally consistent. Indeed, even if you believe -- as I do -- that the Founding Fathers would have burst into laughter at the idea that a school couldn't have a nondenominational prayer before graduation, these slippery-slope arguments still have to be taken seriously.

    But this overly mechanistic logic careens into wild, self-serving hypocrisy when it comes to the issue of censorship. For some reason the editorial pages, Congress, hordes of academics, and, of course, Hollywood types, honestly, truly believe that the state cannot proscribe images of women getting it on with horses in public libraries for fear we'll skid down the slippery slope to tyranny. At the same time, however, they fervently believe that the federal government can regulate the content of political ads leading up to an election.

    This throws out the whole doctrine of protecting the fringe to safeguard our essential freedoms. If you think some talentless boob who defecates in a tuna can and calls it art is the canary in the coalmine of our free-speech rights, fine. Or if you feel that some hacked-out code from a bearded linux hippie that lives in his parents' basement is speech, wonderful. But, if you believe that, I am at a loss as to how you can tolerate a federal government that attaches all sorts of strings to the fundamental liberties the Founders considered essential to a free society.

    Lamar Alexander noted a long time ago that if our current laws existed at America's Founding, Tom Paine would have been required to register "Common Sense" with the FEC.

    For examle, in its decision overturning the federal anti-child-porn law, the Court answered critics that some images of pedophilia might entice or encourage would-be pedophiles or child pornographers, the Court replied, "the prospect of a crime...by itself does not justify laws suppressing protected speech."

    This is the same Court that regularly holds that "the appearance of corruption" is sufficient justification for draconian regulations of political speech at the heart of our republic. The "appearance of corruption" is a standard which acknowledges no crime has been committed at all. Things just look corrupt because some people are too stupid or too lazy to discern the truth or too cynical to believe the truth when they see it. Don't get me wrong, of course there's corruption in politics -- though vastly less than at any other time in American history -- but saying that citizens spending money on speech creates the "appearance of corruption" -- and therefore it's worth regulating -- is an insult to our collective intelligence.

    • This is the most impressive piece of writing--including all comments and articles--that I have ever read on Slashdot. Thank you.

      Also, for what it is worth, I agree. I believe our nation's strength comes largely as a result of the First Amendment. Our ability to criticize, shock, and innovate mostly as we see fit, gives us enormous intellectual freedom of movement.

    • Re:America... (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by alizard ( 107678 )
      Too bad I don't have moderator points today so I can give your post the "Flamebait" rating it deserves.
    • This is the same Court that regularly holds that "the appearance of corruption" is sufficient justification for draconian regulations of political speech at the heart of our republic. The "appearance of corruption" is a standard which acknowledges no crime has been committed at all. Things just look corrupt because some people are too stupid or too lazy to discern the truth or too cynical to believe the truth when they see it. Don't get me wrong, of course there's corruption in politics ? though vastly less than at any other time in American history ? but saying that citizens spending money on speech creates the "appearance of corruption" ? and therefore it's worth regulating ? is an insult to our collective intelligence.

      The appearance of impropriety is usually a good indication that impropriety exists. It is a strict standard, but it's there for a reason. As for corruption and politics - let me ask ... what do you call it when a government official (or his party) is handed a 'contribution' in exchange for an expectation of favorable treatment? Put in less abstract terms, I pay you so that you can fund your effort to stay in office (and hence, continue to build your power base and inter-governmental empire), and in exchange, I expect you to create, vote in favor of, gather support for, or stonewall attempts to change, legislation that is clearly in my favor. Favor, in this case, can mean anything from a huge government contract, a subsidy, an exemption from certain regulations, etc.
  • the process by which control over the domain name system has been used to extend intellectual property rights to new heights

    Common practice (and the law) before all this stuff with domain names kicked in, was that two products could be named the same thing, just as long as they didn't cross over industry boundaries.

    Say, that there was a product named CHIMP. Say it was a soft drink. You could also have a door knob manufacturer that had a product named CHIMP. Trademarked even.

    The real problem kicked in when domain names started becoming more important with the web. Who gets the domain name? Usually the person who registered first.

    • Certainly happened. Delta.com used to be a plumbing supply house in Georgia somewhere called Delta Plumbing. They registered the url first, and they kept it, since they had just as legitimate a claim to it as Delta Airlines. Delta Airlines eventually got the rights to it (for a tidy sum, I'm sure), but they had to negotiate it. Even funnier is Whitehouse.com, which is the site of a strip club - they had it first (and they place had used that name in the "real world" for years), and there's nothing that the Federal Gov't could do about it, other than to hope that as few kiddies as possible mistyped www.whitehouse.gov when trying to find out about our President. Although, during the Clinton years, it was debatable whether they .com or .gov site was more accurate.
  • if this DNS-war or whatever you want to call it starts getting serious, I better start remembering the ip of /. instead of the domainname. Hmmz... too bad if they change to IPv6... -- this sig is mine! you here me! mine! now get lost and buy me some lunch, im hungry!
  • Ok, firt, remember that DNS is just one way to find web sites- at best its just a handy mnemonic for the IP address, would you prefer:

    www.google.com

    or: 216.239.39.101???

    Both work fine; so we don't absolutely need a dns on the internet at all- in fact I think it is becoming less and less important already.

    And we're supposed to be upset that choosing global mnemonic is politicised? That businesses pay for mnemonics that happen to match their businesses name? That they try to protect their name? I'm sorry but that doesn't bother me. Creating novel names is easy. I mean what did 'google' mean? It didn't mean anything.

    Personally, I'm much more concerned about search engines- I don't really see the point of DNS lookups so much anymore. If search engines in general and google in particular really starts to sell out, the internet could be in trouble. Google is a much more flexible, practical, and less politicised, less bought system; but I expect that to slowly change.

    Still, there are other things on the internet that peform equivalent functions. Peer-peer systems usually don't use DNS much; we could switch over to use them at a pinch- there would need to be some work done, but p2p is harder to buy, it can be open sourced, and the search engine is totally distributed unlike google.

    (Yes, I know that p2p search is slow and inefficient right now, but there's better p2p search algorithms that can be applied that are fast, scalable, distributed and robust, and give similar results to a google if we care to do that. The only reason we're not using them right is because nobody has been forced to implement and deploy them- but they can be if google starts to mess up.)

    Summary: even if DNS is going to hell in a bucket. Who cares?

  • Consequences... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cirkit ( 584149 ) on Saturday June 15, 2002 @12:02PM (#3708003)
    It is interesting just how broadly some companies want to define their trademarks, and the scare tactics they'll use to try to enforce them. For instance:

    From: Pub-Enforcement [enforcement@ebay.com]
    Dear Domain Name Registrant:

    It recently has come to our attention that you have registered a domain name that mimics the famous eBay name and trademark. As you are likely aware, the coined term "eBay" is one of the most famous names on the Internet. eBay owns several registrations for the eBay trademark in the United States and internationally. Accordingly, eBay enjoys broad trademark rights in its name. For your information, in a decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a third party trademark application to register the trademark "ebaysecurities" was denied due to the USPTO recognizing the eBay trademark as a famous trademark, and thus entitled to broad protection. We are concerned that your domain name infringes and/or dilutes the famous eBay trademark. Infringement occurs when a third party's use a company's trademark (or a confusingly similar variation thereof) is likely to confuse consumers as to the affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement of the third party's services. Trademark dilution occurs when a third party's use of a variation of a company's trademark is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the company's famous trademark. In this case, your use of the suffix "bay" in your domain name is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the famous eBay brand. "eBay" is an arbitrary and fanciful trademark; neither "eBay" nor "Bay" describe online trading or e-commerce in any way. Therefore, it is likely that you chose your domain name to evoke eBay's famous brand. We take these matters quite seriously. As you may know, we settled a dispute similar to this one against a company using the name www.bidbay.com . BidBay has agreed to change its domain name, company name, and to pay eBay an undisclosed sum of money. Attached for your information is a news account of the settlement.

    More information on trademark law may be found at http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/aVoid.htm. Federal and state laws, including the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 () provide for serious penalties (up to $100,000) against persons who, without authorization, use, sell, or offer for sale a domain name that infringes or dilutes another's trademark. Infringers who have been notified of such infringing activity, but do not cease their infringements, may also be considered "willful" and could be subject to additional money damages and liability for attorney's fees. Having received this e-mail, you are on such notice. Trademark protection is very important to eBay. In addition to the Bidbay.com case, we have filed several successful federal court actions against cybersquatters. We have also filed more than six proceedings before the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's arbitration panel; all cases order the transfer of the domain names at issue to eBay.

    While eBay respects your right of expression and your desire to conduct business on the World Wide Web, eBay must enforce its own rights in order to protect its valuable and famous name. We appreciate that you may have registered the above-mentioned domain with the best of intentions and without full knowledge of the law in this area. Nonetheless, under the circumstances, we must insist that you stop using the domain name, do not sell, transfer or offer to sell the domain name to any other person, and simply let the domain name registration expire. Please confirm by replying to this email that you will comply as requested. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
    Edith
    eBay Legal Department

    As far as I can tell, this is a FORM LETTER, triggered a scan of new domain registrations. Anyone got a similar one?

    So what was the site? It was a fan-site for A Tale in the Desert [ataleinthedesert.com], called www.egyptbay.com.

    p.s. A tale in the desert is in open beta - check it out - VERY cool.

  • Domain names are a dead issue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday June 15, 2002 @01:01PM (#3708244) Homepage
    This reads like an article someone had lying around from the dot-com era and revived to make a little extra money. The domain name thing is over. The number of registered domains drops every month, as all those people who registered domains but didn't have content behind them let them expire. The actual offers on GreatDomains are tiny, unless it's a really good name ("swap.com" just went for $25K). Outside of ".com", most domain names can be purchased for less than a bag of groceries.

    There is pressure to crack down on phony Whois data, but that problem is associated more with spam than with law enforcement.

    As far as I know, no one has ever had their domain name taken away because of a content issue. So far, names haven't been used as a regulatory system.

    More interesting is that Verisign is re-architecting the root server system to allow much faster changes and integration with Signalling System 7 for telephony. BIND is going away in the root servers. The new system will be closed-source, and will be more centrally controlled than the existing system.

  • Not sure if trademarking "yahooo.com" constitutes a really big threat to free speech, but it's still a thought-provoking article."

    If by "thought-provoking" you mean, "stupid", then, yes, it is thought-provoking.
  • In other news today, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, was sued today by Yahoo! for trademark infringement. Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu had the audacity -- despite being a well-known public figure -- to violate Yahoo!'s trademarks by registering his own personal website, Netanyahu.com. Apparently, Yahoo! is suing Netanyahu for taking advantage of the Yahoo! sound that Yahoo! worked so hard to market. Yahoo! claims that the sound of Netanyahu.com inherently takes advantage of Yahoo!'s trademarks.
  • Personally, I see no reason for ICANN to continue to exist in its current form, and I'd like to see it defunded.

    A non-politicized organization whose role is solely to provide and fund technical administration of the root servers worked well enough until Congress decided to do something about this. Why does the job of running a root or TLD server turn from one guy with a machine in his closet to a gigantic bureaucracy when government gets its hooks into it?

    We might be better off using the courts to decide who gets what domain name... could they really do a worse job than WIPO? Of course, we could simply replace them with one person who awards the domain to the party with the biggest bank account and get almost identical results to the current system for a hell of a lot less money.

  • Hey, I have a BETTER idea! Set up your own damn domain name servers, and allow everyone to get domain names first-come-first-served. FREE. And there's no such thing as suing someone for using your company name in their domain name or some bullshit like that. Then, the whole world will switch to this new domain name system in less than a minute and a half, and ICANN or whatever those idjits are called will disappear off the face of the Earth. And the RIAA will push the MPAA to the east and vanquish them. And the people will push the RIAA into the west until they fall off the edge of the world, and the people will drink Negra Modelo, and there will be much rejoicing in the land.

  • Once again, the shameless karmawhore posts his favourite site about ICANN. Just like last time, when it got me +5.

    Anyway ...

    http://www.paradigm.nu/icann/icannstage.html [paradigm.nu]

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