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France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

arstechnica.com

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Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

#81

Post by tgrapperon »

pavlov wrote: post #23
Shinkei wrote: post #21

I'm pretty disappointed by all the armchair lawyering in this thread that isn't defending the individual/citizen in this case. .gov, .fr, etc were created for a reason. Trademark law is intended to protect people from intentionally misleading branding. These two items taken together should make it obvious that France.gov is the only name the government of France 'should' be entitled to. If you are willing to say that…

.gov is only available to the United States government. There's no way for France to get france.gov.

Indeed. It uses .gouv.fr subdomains.

Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

#82

Post by trumped »

lkrubner wrote: post #7

The courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead they are like telephone numbers: ---------------- The court found that under the California tariffs, rules, and regulations applicable to public utilities, and under the terms of the contracts, the debtors had no “proprietary right in the number.” https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a84b472-c89f... Also: ...under Virginia law,…

Wow that's crazy... you buy something yet but you don't own it. It's a bit like cellphones, I guess.

Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

#83

Post by makecheck »

Somehow, despite domains having sufficient differentiation, it has evolved to the point where the first part seems to be all that matters.

In this case, "something.fr" should be sufficient in France and yet the reality is that if you don’t also control "something." for all possible values of "", you might encounter a problem later.

Even worse, it has evolved that we now have to care about certain patterns on certain sites. What if you don’t control "something.facebook.com", or "reddit.com/r/something" for instance?

It’s crazy. We need to be deploying security technologies further so that names alone can stop mattering so damned much. All we seem to have in wide use are certificates, which are still not required and essentially not understood by users (if they don’t get an entity name and padlock, they’d probably load the site anyway).

Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

#84

Post by CyberDildonics »

mc32 wrote: post #67
loup-vaillant wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may argue that domain names are different from phone numbers because they are recognisable. They carry trademarks, and unlike phone numbers, are often the way we remember of an internet facing person or company. Also, the practical consequences of losing a phone number are much tamer than that of losing a domain name. I'm not sure the courts would hold the same conclusions for domain names and phone numbers. While…

What about the case where companies pay for vanity phone numbers that either match their business name, or approximate the business name: ex, 800 mattress or 800 eyeglasses?

Is the government seizing those too?

Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

#87

Post by salzig »

makecheck wrote: post #83

Somehow, despite domains having sufficient differentiation, it has evolved to the point where the first part seems to be all that matters. In this case, "something.fr" should be sufficient in France and yet the reality is that if you don’t also control "something. " for all possible values of " ", you might encounter a problem later. Even worse, it has evolved that we now have to care about certain patterns on certai…

or they could have used .info, as country names are reserved .info names. »ICANN and Afilias have also sealed an agreement for country names to be reserved by ICANN under resolution 01.92.« - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.info

Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

#88

Post by koolba »

ThomPete wrote: post #46
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the domain owner should have registered a business called "France.com"

He did, but more importantly, the French government isn't a business either.

Nor is the French government a US citizen, permanent resident, or corporation.

Does this mean they can seize the word “France” in other languages well?

Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994

#90

Post by rdiddly »

Shinkei wrote: post #21

I'm pretty disappointed by all the armchair lawyering in this thread that isn't defending the individual/citizen in this case. .gov, .fr, etc were created for a reason. Trademark law is intended to protect people from intentionally misleading branding. These two items taken together should make it obvious that France.gov is the only name the government of France 'should' be entitled to. If you are willing to say that…

Isn't this now (yet another) misuse of .com? That TLD is for COMmerce. And it appears they're ruining some guy's life just to redirect to france.fr - i.e. it's only there to catch when someone mistakenly types france.com. Someone who types france.com deserves to be taken to some kind of commercial entity. Such as france.com!
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