Canadian Judge Rules Domain Names Are Property 142
farrellj writes "A recent decision in the Ontario Appeals court has ruled in favour of Tucows, saying that domain names are considered property, rather than being a license. This has major ramifications for a people both inside and outside Canada, doubly so since Tucows is a major domain registrar. This ruling comes from a very high court, which means that any appeal must go to the Supreme Court of Canada. So there is a good chance this ruling will stand."
So who owns it? (Score:1)
Who owns the domain name?
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The registrant. And FWIW, the term "domain name investor" is the best euphemism for "scumbag speculator" I've seen yet.
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Re:So who owns it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we need liquidity for domain names?
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But domain names are not there for investment. They are there for simplifying access to internet resources.
Re:So who owns it? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's completely untrue. You need some speculators in the stock market because there's a lot of businesses that need the proceeds of stock sales before they're a reliable bet and during times of risk.
But this is a completely different matter. Domain names are for the purpose of not having to type an IP address in to access a site. Having people licensing sites with no intention of using the site does nothing helpful.
As for the ruling, as much as I typically like to see people sticking it to corporations this was an idiotic court decision that will have real consequences in the long term. If you're now the owner of a particular domain, that means that there is no way that the registration can be stripped or a means of a registrar seizing the domain if payment is withheld.
Analogy to property tax (Score:2)
If you're now the owner of a particular domain, that means that there is no way that the registration can be stripped or a means of a registrar seizing the domain if payment is withheld.
The owner of a piece of real estate still has to pay property tax to the state.
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There is only and only one owner of domain names, that is the domain registrar, the entity that owns the database that provides the link between domain names and IP addresses. People pay them to make changes to that database, basically a licence to print money.
This is largely a an act of modern marketing as it is driven by getting all significant entities to direct traffic to DNS services that recognise the leading registrars.
It is likely that the whole Domain Service will come under growing attack as
Service (Score:2)
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That's a large part of the problem, this was a Canadian court that made this ruling. Not an American one. Consequently, this isn't binding on anybody that isn't operating out of Canada.
If you want a ruling that will affect everybody everywhere you'd have to use the US court system as it stands as presently the US delegates control over some important bits of the system to ICANN. I doubt that will last for much longer given the abuses that the US government has been engaging in of the system, but that's how
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Re:So who owns it? (Score:5, Informative)
By that ruling, Tucows owns it. They registered it previously, and the court says it is still theirs and theirs alone to do with as they please.
Actually the ruling says that Tucows as the register does not have to turn the domain name over to the person in Brazil, who demanded the domain(because the domain name is the same as his last name). The domain name was in use, and also hosted 14 active domain email addresses that did not have to be surrendered by the person that registered the name with Tucows. The court ruled that the domain name and the domain email have a "real value" which makes them equal to property(as in I can't demand you give me your car because my last name was ford).
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By that ruling, Tucows owns it. They registered it previously, and the court says it is still theirs and theirs alone to do with as they please.
...The domain name was in use, and also hosted 14 active domain email addresses that did not have to be surrendered by the person that registered the name with Tucows.
The article also mentions :
Tucows acquired the domain name when it bought MailBank.
So the answer to the question of who owns it is still Tucows. Whether you want to call the original registration domain speculation or not, the end result is the same in that the registrar is in this case the owner as well. Hence at this point there is no "person that registered the name with Tucows", as the registrant and registrar are one and the same.
FWIW, there is a little more information on mailbank.com on the Tucows wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org].
so once you buy one its yours for life? (Score:1)
and then it should also mean if i attach an ip to said domain that all the protections of law regarding my private home must be observed aka you must have a warrant to enter or view anything that iis behind my domain....THIS will really put a crimp in the lawfull access law that wants warrantless search and seizure of internet ....home users i suggest you get a static ip and point a domain at your ip....
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Attaching an IP to the domain and opening up a web server could be implied invitation.
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THIS will really put a crimp in the lawfull access law that wants warrantless search and seizure of internet
You say this as if the Justice Department doesn't already do what it damn well pleases...at the end of the day, if they want in, they'll get in.
Court not Judge (Score:2)
TFA explains that it was a panel of three judges, so it was the Court of Appeal for Ontario's decision, not the decision of a single judge.
Re:Court not Judge (Score:4, Informative)
TFA explains that it was a panel of three judges, so it was the Court of Appeal for Ontario's decision, not the decision of a single judge.
Yes, but as often happens in cases where there is a panel, only one of them gave a judgment, the others just agreed.
If anyone is interested in what the ruling actually says, the judgment is here [ontariocourts.on.ca] with the relevant part starting at [41]. The judge seems to have noted that in both the US and UK, domain names are already being treated as a form of intangible property in law (like patents, copyrights etc.), which could, as discussed elsewhere in the comments, lead to greater "rights" for those who have "bought" a domain name; making it more like renting than licensing.
The reason the court needed to consider this was due to jurisdictional issues; the claimants needed to show a "real and substantial connection with Ontario", i.e. that the case concerned property there. The case seems to be mainly about procedure rather than substantive law. [For the record IAALS]
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In Canada, in a panel of judges or justices, they all give their views. This looks to be just the brief, which means it'll take upto a month before the full record is posted since it's not a breaking or earth shattering case. "Property" cases in Canada rank low, personal cases rank high, and are published quickly.
Anyway, I recommend reading CanLII's page, since it automatically links decisions to make this decision, and has the reflex record built in.
http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2011/2011onca548/2 [canlii.org]
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Ooh, Canada has a LII as well - shiny.
Ah, so this isn't really a judgment, just some sort of pre-ruling opinion? Also, the other two judges are listed at the bottom with an "I agree" each, so I had assumed that was like the E+W courts where, if there are multiple judges and only one giving the lead judgment, the others will just "agree".
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It is a judgement, but in Canada, new cases and rulings are generally published as a brief. A short condensed version before the judges, justices, or JP's finish writing out their full opinion. Even in the even that a single judge leads, the other 2 will often give their own opinions as to why they're in agreement. Which are stripped out for the short condensed version.
But sometimes what is is, is.
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It would actually be kinda creepy/cool if they had to recite the judgement at the same time. :p
Tucows? (Score:2)
The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software is registering domains? Man I'm old. Has Flint Michigan done so bad that we gave it to Canada?
Next you're going to tell me Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company has stopped selling stuff for my mine.
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The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software is registering domains? Man I'm old. Has Flint Michigan done so bad that we gave it to Canada?
No, but bad enough that Tucows would want its head-quarters in Canada rather than there. From Wikipedia:
Tucows (originally an acronym for The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software, a name which has long since been dropped) was formed in Flint, Michigan, USA in 1993. It incorporated in Pennsylvania and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Interestingly... (Score:3)
If it does go to the Supreme Court in Canada, oral arguments will be watchable. In the US, the Supreme Court does not allow cameras in the Courtroom (although you can still hear the audio).
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If it does go to the Supreme Court in Canada, oral arguments will be watchable. In the US, the Supreme Court does not allow cameras in the Courtroom (although you can still hear the audio).
You watch oral arguments? Funny. I listen to them.
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amazingly enough, yes you can watch someone deliver oral arguments.
score -1 for the pedant.
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As a deaf lipreader, yeah, that's my preference, thanks for asking.
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Do you ever watch concerts on TV?
So... sufficient greed can make anything property. (Score:2)
If I were to create some new kind of network, and start assigning a system of names to things that people on the network had control over, no one would think that such names were property at first.
But if they were to start making money on those resources, eventually, the assigned names would be considered 'property', in the sense of legal ownership? On a shared network? Seems odd.
It seems that whenever people start to depend on a resource, they start clamoring for exclusive ownership to be imposed on that
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You'd think they'd be more like trademark than property, in that respect?
I don't really see how a domain name can be property any moreso than a mailing address?
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>You'd think they'd be more like trademark than property, in that respect? //
Trademarks are [intellectual] property and can be sold, rented, etc..
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Unless you count case law. In which case there's a crapton of it.
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For example: that large company up in Redmond is called Microsoft. Some guy named John Microsoft brings them to court, claiming that he has the legal right to the company name of "Microsoft", since it is his legal name. The courts would disagree, and rule that the name "Microsoft" belongs to Bill Gates & co.
A similar case has been going on for ma
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Good point... at first I kinda liked the idea that domain names could be "owned" by the person that registers them (assuming registrar can still charge maintenance fees like a Co-Op landlord), but that last phrase of yours made me think of something...
...in a DNS system
What about other DNS systems? Anyone can setup their own root-server. For more cases, "somedomain.com" is a unique property on the net, but that's not technically accurate - it's only a unique property on a given DNS server (or possibly extended to that DNS n
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Just imagine a nickname on IRC or anywhere else for that matter. People claim to own it. It becomes part of their identity and is irrespective to money.
So it makes sense to me that domains would be treated the same or even the system of names in your "some kind of network".
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For games/movies, the issue isn't ownership - it's the ability of companies to take AWAY your right to play the game you sacrificed resources to obtain.
For art in general, it's more of a business model argument - that they should have a way to make money akin to another profession. Again, legal ownership is a proxy argument, not the key issue.
Licenses and ownership arguments are about setting defaults in other arguments, who gets to take what from who. The status of these legal agreements change over time
Great, more power for the registrars (Score:2)
And of course, they would likely list the registration of what used to be your domain through an obfuscation service, so that it would be unclear who the new owner is - which would then result in
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I imagine that domain names will be irrelevant in a few years anyway. People will find you and come
back to you based on content, and how you package that content when you pay a search engine to index you.
The domain name gold rush will come to an end.
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The domain name gold rush will come to an end.
That is clearly not what ICANN is counting on with their decision to start selling gTLDs. They are in fact betting the exact opposite, that they can start a new domain gold rush - and of course make some money for themselves in the process!
That said, people do use the internet differently now than they did back when the first rush of name registration began. Indeed the search engines are, for many users, the primary way to get to web sites. And for many of those same users, the secondary way is throug
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They could sell it to you for an inflated price, or never sell it to you again if they felt so inclined.
They can and some already do this.
Ever hear of "redemption fee"? If your domain goes into redemption, they'll happily charge you $100+ for redemption
The registrar can hold onto it as long as you like.
If you don't like it, take it up with ICANN. Personally, I think we have a conflict of interest situation here, where registrars are encouraged to act in a manner inconsistent with their customers'
Property in Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
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The domain name is not the mail or web server addressed with it. If I own a direction sign, I do not acquire additional rights to whatever it points to.
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The passwords you set on the servers are completely independent of the domain name. You could as well put a password on a server only accessible via IP address. And if you lose the domain name, you don't lose the server.
You do not put your server's access permission into the domain name system. You put it on the server.
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the court has ruled that a domain name is "property"
Not just property but "real property". It has always been something that can "belong" to an entity. eg, intellectual property. Now it is a real something, just like any other physical belonging. Your also correct in that EU and US copywrong lawyers are now flopping around and foaming at the mouth.
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Oh ye of little cynicism. ANY government can do ANYTHING to its hapless citizens and most of them perform execrable acts against their citizens repeatedly. Governments have armies and marshals; U.S. State governments have state police; local governments have police. All of these entities and forces have more than ample power to get the job done, and break any number of constitutional clauses and similar restrictions every day.
Your optimistic idea that a court order is necessary for property to be seized
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Well, it's funny that you compare the US with those military dictatorships, and then pull other countries into the mix.
Sure, anybody with a few men and a few guns could do whatever they want to unarmed civilians -- but without the law on their side they'll eventually suffer the consequences -- if they're in a place with rule of law.
Be cynical of the world you're in if you will. Not every part of the world has abandoned the pretense of maintaining the rule of law, don't speak as if the world follows eagerly
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Interesting. I own a domain for personal use and my soon to be ex-wife has an email account with this domain name. If this were valid in the US then I could just shutdown her email account and remove all of her web pages she created as part of the divorce since this would have been "property" that I owned before our marriage and I still have the "property". Maybe I should push this issue in the divorce case instead of maintaining everything of hers on my domain for the next year per her request.
Or just demand a fee for continued maintenance?
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or just let sleeping dogs lie...
Who really gives a fuck about "maintaining" a web account for a year. It's not like she's fucking eating up all your bandwidth or anything. Why bother creating/perpetuating the bad blood?
(serious question, btw)
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Continuing the property analogy of domain registrars being landlords, you could say that spamming is a lease violation, and the consequences could be like getting evicted.
Murky: could be good or bad (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to know exactly what the judge had in mind (yes, I read the article).
I was reading the actual judgement [ontariocourts.on.ca], but it was too long.
This brings up some interesting points: if you have a property interest in a domain, then what do you pay the yearly fee for?
It must only be for server usage. By that standard, a registrar shouldn't be able to seize your domain if you don't pay the fee.
Or, perhaps, in order to recover their fee, they could auction the domain, and take their cut ($9). The rest is your money. So if a domain sells for $100k, you get $99,991.
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Administrative costs. In a similar way, once I stake a claim to a particular trademark, I continue to own it as long as I do not abandon it. IMHO, this is an easy decision, though I agree there will be pressure in some quarters to get it quashed.
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This brings up some interesting points: if you have a property interest in a domain, then what do you pay the yearly fee for?
Is it not similar for patents and/or trademarks? Don't you have to pay a fee to maintain your status?
I was just discussing this with a (Canadian) IP lawyer and his take on it was he would consider a domain (intangible) property similar to patents, trade-marks and copyrights.
Supreme court in Canada (Score:2)
Trademark vs Property Interest (Score:2)
This overall case would seem to have two elements:
One is the conflict between trademark protection and property right.
The second is the horribly messy jurisdictional overlaps that occur in Internet related legal disputes.
If I acquire the domain name Googler.com legitimately because someone from the big G forgot to register that variant,
I now have a property right to that domain name.
But Google also has a trademark right to it (easily confusable etc etc) so under trademark law they ought to be able to
prevent
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ice ice baby (Score:3)
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Why would it do that? Seizures under the RICO act and similar measures without proper court proceedings are already plainly and boldly unconstitutional in the U.S. as it is. Why would American governmental thugs care about any other impediment if they are already getting foreign connivance in their thuggery as it is?
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This is Canadian. (Score:5, Informative)
This is Canadian. Canadian and UK law don't have as much baggage attached to the concept of "property" as the US does. Through an accident of legal history, that Blackstone's commentaries [wikipedia.org] were more available in America than other writings on law, American law and the American constitution attaches undue weight to property rights. The "due process" clause in the U.S. Constitution limits due process to "life, liberty, and property", which is part of why it matters so much whether something is "property". A leasehold, for example, is not property.
The US never had feudalism, where the lords owned all the property, and thus never had to get rid of feudalism. In the European countries that did, when feudalism went down, so did the emphasis on property rights. This remains quite real today. In Britain, (but not Scotland) there is a "right to ramble", to walk over undeveloped, uncultivated private land. Squatters in abandoned buildings have rights. Penalties for trespass are very low by US standards. Conversely, the rights of renters are stronger in England than in the US.
Canada generally follows English precedent in this area. "Properly" is not an absolute; it's a bundle of rights established by law and precedent. So that domains are "property" means less than it would in the US.
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...American constitution attaches undue weight to property rights.
Understand one thing, the founders knew that property rights equaled liberty. There is no "undue weight to liberty".
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I'll see your "property rights equaled liberty"
and raise with "Freedom's just another name for nothin' left to lose"
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US is still mostly Feudal (Score:3)
The US never had feudalism, where the lords owned all the property, and thus never had to get rid of feudalism
Actually we still have feudalism in the US. In most States, most property is owned 'in fee simple'. You only ever own a title to the land, you don't own the land itself (in allodium, historically available in Nevada and a few other States). Most often, the State is the landowner, and effectively he can take it back whenever he wants to. If you don't pay him rent on his land, he'll seize the titl
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Good points. There are probably alternate options, though. You could rent-to-own from a bank, with a 30-year commitment (transferable). For a contractor, a trusted third party could hold money in escrow. Home equity loans could be converted back to the rent-to-own model, starting at 80% or so.
There are some interpretations of allodial title that say it's never saleable or transferable, but that's pretty narrow and doesn't jive with other tenets of property rights.
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In Britain, (but not Scotland) there is a "right to ramble", to walk over undeveloped, uncultivated private land.
You make it sound as if Scotland does not have these rights, however this is not the case. Instead, here in Scotland we have a complete "right to roam", far less restrictive than that of England and Wales. I believe the main difference is we can be on any land for a variety of purposes instead of just certain types of land like moorland and coastal land.
I realise this does not necessarily affect the point you were making, I just thought it should be pointed out.
Sources: Me (An Englishman living in Scotland)
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This is Canadian. Canadian and UK law don't have as much baggage attached to the concept of "property" as the US does. Through an accident of legal history
The big deal here is... if the UDRP cannot be applied to Canadian residents, then the UDRP is inherently unfair and should be crossed off the books. The whole point of the UDRP is it's to be universal.
The UDRP is unfair anyways, and should be crossed off the books anyways. The concept of 'disputing' a registration based on what the name is, should go
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In Texas they don't need renters rights. To paraphrase the NRA: Six-guns don't kill people, Disgruntled renters kill people.
Reasons (Score:2)
Here's the Judgment on Canlii: Tucows.Com Co. v. Lojas Renner S.A., 2011 ONCA 548 (CanLII) [canlii.org].
This dispute is about the service of a Statement of Claim (the document that initiates a claim). Once a claim has been served, there is an obligation to respond - otherwise the defendant may be noted in default and lose the right to defend themselves. Service of a Statement of Claim may only be completed on a foreign company in certain circumstances, namely where (in principle) the allegations in the claim are relat
IP Addresses (Score:2)
Now the real question is, do I also own the IP the domain name is pointing to if I have a static IP address, or am I leasing it?
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Now the real question is, do I also own the IP the domain name is pointing to if I have a static IP address, or am I leasing it?
The concern that some day organizations might try to claim some sort of property right to an IP address was thought up a long time ago.
The ISP assigned the address, if it was obtained in the past 12 years [or so], had to sign the RSA [arin.net], which contains the following clause, as a condition of being assigned IP addresses:
Complicating the issue (Score:1)
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I guess it depends on who owns the domain name. Since I don't know the entities mentioned int he article, nor the case it speaks about, I can't tell. Now if the domain name is property of ICANN or the registrar, I guess not much changes. However if the domain name is owned by whoever registered it, I don't see how the registrar could legally reclaim the domain name, or demand continued payment for it.
Re:cool story bro (Score:5, Insightful)
but what sort of effect would such a ruling have? ie: why the fuck should we care?
Well, among other minor matters, it would tend to suggest that your registrar is more in the position of a landlord than of a software-licensor(ie. he doesn't have complete power to fuck you over arbitrarily) and it would also tend to suggest that your friendly local feds would be bound by whatever pitiful shreds of procedural protection govern seizing property, rather than something even weaker...
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I find the ruling funny since it can not be Enforced against a .com .net ( and maybe a few others ) since the US Government has already dictated that they own and control it. believe it was handed over to the department of commerce back in 2002 or 2004.
We have seen the results of the above ruling by the act of the custom's serve in taking domains this year.
I can not find the ruling but I'm still searching.
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Bollocks. .com and .net are operated by Verisign, Inc. Formerly a hugely overpriced certificate authority until they sold off everything but registry operations to an overpriced bloated antivirus company.
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I have to do this the long way, but let's start off with http://www.internic.net/ [internic.net] which is " InterNIC is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Commerce "
then we go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterNIC [wikipedia.org] look at the section internic and icann, again it's a contract agreement for services, the DOC retains control of it.
then we shoot over to the recent seizure warrant used by ICE, http://www.scribd.com/doc/45473003/ICE-affidavit-partial [scribd.com]
I wish I had the note's where it's mentioned in the DOC tha
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You're cherry picking historical info just to make your point correct. Note the following from your Wiki article.
The Internet Network Information Center, known as InterNIC, was the Internet governing body primarily responsible for domain name and IP address allocations from 1972 until September 18, 1998 when this role was assumed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
And from interNIC.net.
InterNIC is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It is licensed to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which operates this web site.
InterNIC is merely a service mark owned by DoC. They license it, the service mark, to ICANN, no contracting of any services - ICANN completely assumed control of the technical administration of the internet. The Department of Commerce has exactly zero control over it.
The US government has control over exactly one zone: . (No, that's not a typo. The zone is a fullstop).
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Yes. They have the internets. Power, on the other hand... they have it, but it costs an arm and a leg. Literally.
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Power, on the other hand... they have it, but it costs an arm and a leg. Literally.
Where did you get that impression? I pay 5.9c/kWh off peak and 10.7 on peak (60% of my usage was offpeak, only 25% of my usage is peak).
This site http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/electricprices.html [ppinys.org] shows the average US citizen pays a lot more than that.
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On the bill I am thinking of, power has gone up from 15c/KWh to 20 c/KWh recently. I am not sure offhand if that is before or after they multiply KWh by 1.1.
That is as expensive as it is in Hawaii, the most expensive state in the US. Only this bill is in Ontario, where power generation is a LOT cheaper than in Hawaii.
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Note: those are actual costs, i.e. take the price, divide by KwH. Not Generation costs.
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I think you are remembering wrong. The prices I quoted are in Ontario from the latest bill I have sitting in front of me. Ontario with over 50% nuclear power is among the cheapest places for power in north america.
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I am not remembering wrong. I am looking at the bill on hydroone. The prices you quoted are what they formally say prices are, which generally means generation bill up to a certain amount. Divide your total bill by your kilowatt-hours. Even then, distribution costs vary depending on where in Ontario you are. Debt retirement charges, the result of massive mismanagement for years, also go into it.
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Neil Young, Rush, John Candy... that's all you'll ever need to know about that country.
And .. Pamela Anderson, Dan Aykroyd, Justin Bieber, Jim Carrey, Tommy Chong, James Doohan (Scotty) William Shatner (Kirk), Erica Durance (Lois in Smallville), Brendan Fraser, Natasha Henstridge, Margot Kidder (Lois in Superman), Howie Mandel, Rick Moranis, Matthew Perry, Jason Priesly, Keanu Reeves, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Keifer Sutherland, Amanda Tapping (my fave!), Fay Wray, Leslie Nielson, Meg Tilly, and hundreds of other actors generally thought of as American.
Also dont forget Canadians created all
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I really hope you don't have to explain who Doohan and Shatner are to people on Slashdot.
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What has Canada given the world?
Donald Sutherland, Keifer Sutherland (Donald's son, and grandson of the guy who brought universal medical care to Canada), Jim Carry, Cirque du Soleil, UN Peace Keepers (created by Nobel Laureate The Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, past Prime Minister of Canada), Shania Twain, Norman Jewison, Long Distance Telephony (The first long distance transmission was made in August 1876, between Brantford and Paris Ontario.), Wayne Gretzky, The Light Bulb (Edison bought the patent
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I first read the domain name as "canadians exacts" and wondered if there's also a canadiansapproximates.org :-) ...
Then I noted that you can also split it in three words, and it started to make sense
Slashdot effect in the great white north (Score:2)
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Traffic=moving cars
There, preprocessed that for you. Now pls. start reading!
Re:dr;nca (Score:5, Informative)
No, you do not have it right. You have made the common error of imagining that it is the copyrighted work that is "intellectual property", the thing that is owned by the copyright owner. Actually, what is owned is the copyright itself, that is, the exclusive right to authorize copying of the work.
The analog of car theft would be not infringement, but the act of assuming the ownership of a copyright without the consent of the rightful owner. This could happen if a person were to fraudulently convince the state agency that administers copyrights that the owner of the copyright has assigned it to him.
Infringement is more like a trespass -- like someone finding your car unlocked and sitting in it. The copyright owner is still recognized as owner and is still for the most part enjoying the state's enforcement of his monopoly.
Please do not misread me as a defender of the justice of copyright law. That is a question for another time.
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Oddly though, I think that
This could happen if a person were to fraudulently convince the state agency that administers copyrights that the owner of the copyright has assigned it to him.
sounds a lot more like registering a fraudulent title to the car.
Pure theft of the car would be far more like destroying all copies of the work the copyright owner has. The copyright owner is still lawfully regarded as the owner in that case, just like with the car theft case, but down must track down a copy in order to fully utilize their ownership rights.
The big difference is that with a car, there is only one that could be tracked down, while with a copyrighted work, there are p
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more like registering a fraudulent title to the car
You are perceptive to notice this difference; it arises from the fact that a car is physical, and so subject to a physical theft without transfer of title. But a copyright is not a physical object; it is a legal right enforced by the state. One could effectively steal it from its owner only by fraudulently convincing others, including the state, that one owns it, which under a registration regime would most effectively be accomplished by getting it register
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Not entirely off the rails.
With a stolen car, the owner cannot utilize nearly any their rights.
Without a copy of the copyrighted work, the copyright holder cannot utilize some of their rights. For example without a copy, the copyright holder can still go after infringes, but would experience great difficulty in licensing the work to others, since in addition to a license, most licensees require an initial copy of the work, and telling them to buy it from one of the other licensees is unlikely to go over ver