Everything to do with the DNS system is so corrupt and shady. Half the domains dropping in the new GTLD process are "unavailable", "registered", etc. We tried to get an exact trademark for one of our companies in the new GTLD system during the Sunrise phase only to be told by Gandi that the new GTLD owner rejected it. We pushed it pretty hard and had a back and forth with Gandi's CEO who was pretty much on our side but the new GTLD owner (Demand Media) wouldn't budge. We have to sue them if we want it. That's what the privatized DNS system has come to.
You know who I feel bad for though? Those people who originally registered big corporate brands .COM in the 90s and had their domains ripped from them. That shit is ICANN endorsed nowadays.
Is there any law or ICANN rule saying you're owed the domain with the same characters as your trademark in every possible GTLD? I don't understand what the outrage is about. It's not even like you have an exclusive claim on that particular string (multiple companies can have the same mark, eg across industries, countries, etc).
nly answered it pretty well. But just taking a more 100 ft view approach, it's pretty obvious what Donuts and Demand Media's game is. Once donuts gets their 300+ GTLDs, they can push around every small and medium sized business around right up to the point that company is going to file a lawsuit. They can and will exploit that friction to extract premium prices. Just another kind of rent seeking. Here's Washpost's view on it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/donuts-inc...
His point is he had a strong claim to the name, as strong or stronger than anyone elses, and he was willing to pay the Sunrise premium to get it... and still couldn't.
It's not an argument. It's a request for one. What's the argument for condemning the GTLD holder just because he doesn't want to sell a particular domain?
We have traditionally held DNS administrators to a higher standard of behavior in exchange for our granting them the rights and responsibilities of administering a portion of the DNS system -- specifically, we've required that they engage in reasonable, non-discriminatory practices.
DNS is not private land; it's a system in which the existence of a TLD is dependent on the widespread agreement to grant registrar(s) the right to administer it. Movement away from reasonable and non-discriminatory behavior is an attempt to secure undue control over a system that exists only because of the participation of the internet community at large.
Of course, given the massive growth in internet consumers and the general impossibility of their all being educated (much less having a voice in these sorts of decision), this sort of abusive behavior is quickly becoming par for the course on today's internet.
The argument is that there's only one Sunrise phase. If Demand Media decide to sell it later to say a competitor of mine, I'm out of luck now aren't I?
What's the point then of even having a Sunrise phase? It's just smoke and mirrors.
>>If Demand Media decide to sell it later to say a competitor of mine, I'm out of luck now aren't I?
That depends - are they really a competitor in the same industry, and their use of your trademark leads to confusion in the marketplace? Because then you're not out of luck at all, you have a trademark case.
A domain is free to register. You register it as per your registrars normal procedure. In some faraway country (say the USA) a bankruptcy court decided that this domain that you just registered was part of the original holdings of the company in bankruptcy.
Even though the company (or the receivers) let the registration lapse (presumably because they were not doing too well financially).
And so the court will order that domain that you just paid for to be assigned to some third party.
That's pretty perverted.
If there was an unbroken chain of ownership from the moment the original company registered it to the point where the domain was levied during the bankruptcy proceedings I can see the logic of it, but once the company and/or the receivers let the domain lapse they technically forfeited it and a judge should not cooperate with them to reverse agreements between two other consenting parties (you and the registrar) in order to re-assign that domain to the pile of assets in the bankruptcy, especially not 'ex parte' (so without hearing either you or the registrar as to how you came into possession of that domain).
Otherwise from now on there is no such thing as a 'lapsed domain' any more. And in fact, domains would not longer be 'property'. (I don't think they're property to begin with and this case is a nice example of why I think they aren't even though everybody treats them as such.)
U.S. bankruptcy law gives courts great latitude to reverse transactions involving the property of a bankrupt entity, because a lot of abuse of the bankruptcy system is possible otherwise.
The problem here is actually with VeriSign. Any time you transfer an asset to an entity but retain the right to get it back under certain conditions, you have to think through what will happen if that other party enters into bankruptcy and those assets get sucked into the proceeding. It's wrong for them to assume they can resell the domain name the second it lapses.
That seems a bit odd, as it's at most leased, not owned by them; the lease expired, so it is null and void and is therefore not an asset. I'd thought UDRP was fairly clear about this...
And the order isn't against the new owner - so it sounds invalid to me? Not a lawyer, but Verisign should at least have questioned these. I have no idea if they'd have a claim, or what kind of claim, or who to.
Interesting reading the comments, seems DreamTeamFinancial.com went bankrupt and the domains were seized as part of the assets, even though some (many?) had been transferred elsewhere. I would guess you could get an injunction forbidding the domain seller who was liquidating the names from selling them until ownership was more closely established but it does seem like there is an education gap on domains that are "owned" by a company who then doesn't pay to renew them so they simply 'lose' ownership rather than selling them.
It's really difficult for anyone to speculate on a sealed court order.
Probably a deal gone bad and the person convinced a judge that if it went through normal channels the persons owning the domains would liquidate them. That or the transfer was deemed illegal in the first place.
A quick google for Robert Olea reveals he is a domain broker.
This reminds me a lot of the no-ip.com case. Did anyone ever find out how that was resolved? Apparently Microsoft gave back the domains[1], but did they face any payments for damages or censure?
Details are obviously not public, but noip did not receive any money as a result. Regardless of popular opinion on the matter, Microsoft managed to get a lot of harmful malware shut down.
Another incident that tells us we need to move towards something more decentralized. Namecoin is an excellent concept and idea, it's a pity it is not used and supported more widely.
The only thing we know is that they were under sealed court order.
Namecoin is not a magical solution to every problem with domain registration, and it barely scratches the surface of the decentralization issue as it's pretty cheap for anyone with the budget of a nation state to 'recentralize' the namecoin system, let alone a $5 wrench.
When it comes to things being seized under sealed court order, the authorities usually don't have a problem finding a wrench.
I actually do some work on Namecoin, and need to post in that thread. The current namecoind is based on a horribly old version of bitcoin, and we could really use some donations to help get a rewrite against something more maintainable done.
More of the issue is that it's really hard to set up. It's getting better with things like DNSChain, but it's still not exactly something a non-technical person can get going with in 10 minutes. It's also not something you can use on your phone safely yet.
It's not going to be something that legitimate companies are going to use for their primary domain name for a long time. More than that, it's going to be used in niche applications - decentralised identity (id/ rather than u/), primarily, along with being used as a name service for things like OpenBazaar and maybe Tor.
On the other hand, if you happen to run a company or project and have some form of cryptocurrency, you might as well exchange some of that for namecoins and register d/whatever, just in case.
What if the 5,000 domains were seized and shut down to prevent a massive worm that had compromised millions of computers and would result in massive theft against millions of consumers?
In the vast majority of cases law enforcement and court actions against domains are justifiable and benefit the internet.
In that case why would it be a sealed court order? Also if sealed court orders are involved and we assume we don't know about all of them, how can you possibly make claims regarding "the vast majority"?
That's a very interesting website. It also features for example analysis of companies and what domains they did/should buy. It really shows how there is really an entire economy over domain names, not just in buying/selling but also other secondary fields like regulation.
While this is obviously a perversion of justice, I'm not shedding many tears over shady domain landgrabbers losing their 'property'. It's unfortunate (and clearly shouldn't have been filed under seal) but the histrionic comments on anigbrowl's link about how this is going to kill the domain squatting 'business' just make me think "good."
- "Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?"
"Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!"
- "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"
That's a great quote, but I'm not sure it really applies here. Both sides are "the law" here. One side is the law (defined by ICANN and enforced by a US court) that allows domains to be taken away. The other is the fourth-amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure, which clearly forbids that very same thing. Both sides are the Devil, too. ICANN vs. domain squatters and speculators. Which is more loathsome? Which law to defend? Which malefactor?
Let's not conflate the implications of this with prejudices against the victims.
If a startup had snagged one of these domains and had built a community or SEO with it, could you imagine that being taken away from them without any sort of due process?
The sealed bit is weird, but bankruptcy judges are awfully sensitive to economic value. I'd be surprised if they would do something like that.
Of course, if the domain were seized in that case, due process would still be available. The startup's lawyer would immediately file with the judge in question asking for control to be temporarily restored to the startup while the legal stuff plays out.
Given that we don't even know why they were seized (or how many were seized by each person), it seems like you have an amazing hostility towards domainers in general.
Imagine a shopping mall car park where it costs $0.20 a day to park. Except you can't park anywhere near the door, because people turn up at the start of the day, park their cars across three prime spaces, and offer to sell them - for $20.
You'd have to be a big fan of the coase theorem to enjoy paying $20 for a $0.20 parking space, when the only thing the seller has done to add value is get in your way.
While this is an entertaining hypothetical, I think Coase would say that you should go & offer the shopping mall $0.50 to rent you the spot. And the price might still end up being $20.
Applicability to domains: maybe they should all be auctioned?
Or - if you simply look at it as real estate - they bought that land when the supermarket was being built (and no one else thought it was valuable).
In this space - it's akin much more to having parking spaces near a sporting event or concert. In which case - there's lot of happy people willing to pay $20 for the privilege of parking.
Also - you should know that pricing goods based on "what they cost" isn't the proper way to valuate a property, service, etc. If that was the case, every user past 1,000 in most SAAS apps should just ask for their subscription to be free.
No, the mall bought the land and made the parking spaces. They are merely squatting on parking spaces that other people created. And the reason those parking spaces were created was to enable actual, productive business to take place, not to feed parasites.
They are parasites. They add nothing to the system.
In some cases, speculators provide actual value. E.g., they prove or maintain the assets that they speculate on. In others, as with financial speculators, they provide liquidity to the market.
Neither is true for domain speculators. They get paid for making the world worse.
You're making broad assumptions on a lot of people.
Some domainners have lots of domains & develop lots of them into valuable properties. Sure - they have a few that are parked - but that's a percentage.
Typically - money is a measure of value you add to the world. They have to be adding some sort of value in the world or they wouldn't be able to extract value from their activities.
On average, money is a measure of added value. But plenty of people extract cash without creating value. Thieves, for example. Corporate raiders. Many speculators in the financial market. People running protection rackets. People running MLM schemes.
The classic medieval example is a bandit or a warlord who take over a section of road and extracts tolls. He didn't build the road, but he can extract plenty of money as long as he controls it.
All you really need to read is the language, they aren't people they're 'shady domain land grabbers'.
You can tell from the language that the OP knew of an opportunity to buy mispriced assets and/or renew their domain, and having failed to take the opportunity is now upset at others having taken the opportunities they missed.
You know the kind of people that couldn't be bothered to spend $90 for a 10 year registration and now have to pay a few hundred to get a domain back they wasn't worth $10, or clicking the 'auto-renew' button to them.
Given that you have 75 days to renew your domain after it's lapsed renewal - it's not really taking advantage of anyone.
There has to be some mechanism to release unused & unregistered domains back to the market.
And careful - you just dehumanized an entire set of people ("they're not people") because of the work they do. Domainners might be annoying - but they're not gangsters.
Because it's done with the purpose of eventually giving some one a shake down ergo eventually might have a use for the domain.
Only reason they they let this happen is because it's good for business. I'm sure domain like 95 percent of domain registrations are done by these so called "domainers" or people protecting themselves from then.
There are now several 'known' ways in which this can happen, all of them seem to involve a US court at some point in time so if you're running a legitimate business on a .com and you acquired the domain as first registrant from a registrar.
If you acquired that domain through the 'aftermarket', especially if it had lapsed we now know that if that entity should ever go bankrupt there is a potential problem.
And even in that case I assume you could object against this in some way (though the story does not detail any of that so far, we'll have to wait to see how it all plays out).
I'll be following this quite closely, to say that I'm surprised here is an understatement.
There is even potential for a chain of bankruptcies causing repeated clawback of the same domain!
Would it be possible to transfer the name initially to a front company, resell it on to the intended company with a clause that says it cannot be clawed back and then bankrupt the first so creating a legal firewall?
You know who I feel bad for though? Those people who originally registered big corporate brands .COM in the 90s and had their domains ripped from them. That shit is ICANN endorsed nowadays.