Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 232 posts

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

#151

Post by Zak »

mercurial wrote: post #133
gaius wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ermm how exactly was an Internet company named Genesis Access Point domain-squatting a clothing company that didn’t even know what the internet was at the time they bought it? Did you think this one through?

In this particular instance, clearly not. However, a rule of "first come first served" does not do anything but validate domain name squatting as a business model. It's like patents, you may have a patent linked to a legitimate business, or you may be in the extortion business. Let's not enable extortionists.

Perhaps first practicing entity come, first served then? First with a legitimate interest in the name?

I'll grant that domain squatting is bad and not something we should want to enable, but it's also bad to automatically let the most powerful company win. If your name is Nissan and you own a computer store, you shouldn't have nissan.com taken from you because the car company is bigger. If your name is Mike Rowe and you thought to register mikerowesoft.com for your software projects, you're clever, and should get to keep your domain.

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

#152

Post by ill0gicity »

This seems somewhat familiar to me... https://domainnamewire.com/2009/11/30/paris-wins-parvi-org-i...

Hopefully it turns out well for Mr. Frydman as it did for me (even though Paris still hasn't paid up): https://domainnamewire.com/2012/09/17/city-of-paris-ordered-...

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

#153

Post by gnulinux »

return1 wrote: post #134
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…

.com is a good compromise. i believe the average user assumes the .com domain to be the most legitimate / canonical.

I think it's the exact opposite. .com websites are very rarely legitimate, canonical whereas .org, .edu, .gov etc... are more legitimate and trustworthy

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

#154

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

reificator wrote: post #102
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…

> 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. > Call JG Wentworth- 877-CASH-NOW! > So ladies, if ya' butt is round, and you want a Triple-X throw down, dial 1 900-MIX-A-LOT and kick them nasty thoughts. Baby got back! > I pity the foo' who don't use…

I would argue that with a phone number, the letters are explicitly tied to the address whereas a domain is more or less key value pair for an ip address.

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

#155

Post by delinka »

rrix2 wrote: post #70
delinka wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“...cloud providers owning your digital properties.” Not entirely the case. If your domain name represents a registered trademark, I think you’ll find the courts on your side should someone attempt to commandere your domain name.

I think we'll see if that's the case after this court case is closed.

I don't see anyone claiming that the plaintiff has a registered trademark. He does, however, mention that the defendant specifically disavowed ownership on a trademark of the word "France."

In other words, this case does not hinge on trademark. My point is that cases that do hinge on trademark tend to work out in favor of the trademark owner.

This case feels like a kind of imminent domain.

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

#157

Post by casefields »

tripletao wrote: post #143
dingaling wrote: post #2

So the case came down to violating French trademark law. That's because country names cannot be trademarked internationally ( and why tourist agencies register names like Visit ) So it's not clear why Web.com even responded to the complaint unless they have a presence in France. Or was the risk that it could have been escalated to a European level of penalty?

That part of the story seems severely underexplained to me. Web.com doesn't seem to have any marketing content not in English, so their EU business is probably small compared to this reputational hit. Concern that France would eventually get to them through their payment processors and banks, if the EU takes its cue from the USA in applying extraterritorial law? (Link to GDPR enforcement debate here...) I guess this…

It's because someone screwed up big time and when journalists started calling their lawyers told them to shut up.

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

#158

Post by znpy »

kardos wrote: post #141
lspears wrote: post #110

Domains on the blockchain?

https://namecoin.org/

I was about to get some namecoins and register my .bit domain name but I decided to dig a bit more before going all in.

Correct me if I'm wrong (seriously, please do) but it seems to me that namecoin being (technically) a fork of bitcoin, shares most of bitcoin's problems, in particular regarding mining and exchange.

Here was my doubt: suppose that I get namecoins and obtain .bit domain name, how do i keep it registered? Do i have to mine? Do i have to renew by "spending" namecoins? Can i get namecoins on exchanges? (spoiler to last question: yes).

Here is how it might just fail: given that namecoins has mostly the same cryptographic properties of bitcoin, if namecoin was to become widely adopted then everybody would start mining and selling namecoins, making namecoin price skyrocket at the point where 1) mining namecoins to keep your domains would become super expensive 2) people would burn "real" money on gpu mining and asic miners, accumulating large amounts of coins and keeping them hostage (that is, hoping to sell them for a lot of "real" money).

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

#159

Post by jpambrun »

gnulinux wrote: post #153
return1 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.com is a good compromise. i believe the average user assumes the .com domain to be the most legitimate / canonical.

I think it's the exact opposite. .com websites are very rarely legitimate, canonical whereas .org, .edu, .gov etc... are more legitimate and trustworthy

All of those are US only, making .com the next best thing in this case I guess?

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

#160

Post by jpambrun »

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…

francesucks.com cannot be mistaken as an official France site. Americans looking for travel information won't know to type france.gov.fr
Post reply on HN