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

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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Maybe it’s time to not make them us only. France.gov would make way more sense.

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

#172
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

Americans looking for travel information don't type any domain name at all.

They type "france travel information" into Google.

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

#174
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,…

Did France use bankruptcy laws to get the courts to order that the domain name be transferred? Was France a creditor? Was Frydman a debtor?

Did France use trademark law to pressure the registrar to transfer the domain name registration?

What if Frydman was not using the domain name to provide information about anything covered by the classes under which France registered its trademark(s)?

What about if, e.g., France had registered in some class covering tourism and Frydman was providing information about French tourism.

Does it matter? Why or why not?

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

#175
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,…

The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up. The internet is deeply democratic, maybe anarchic -- whatever rules I want my machine to follow it follows. If people generally disagreed with this decision, a viral hosts file would roll it back. (I don't think this so alarming a case that it will spa…

Phone numbers take you to an IMEI, which is looked up in some table.

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

#176
post #75
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But so are domains, just with a suffix instead of a prefix. You oughta think a .com domain is more suitable for a commercial entity then for a government/state department.

.com has become the de-facto default TLD for the net for better or worse.

Maybe the default for businesses, but not countries. Canada.com -> Not government owned USA.com -> not government owned Germany.com -> not government owned

Just some quick ones I checked, but you get the gist.

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

#177
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,…

Can the US seize google.com at any moment?

The new law that got signed into law a few weeks ago, FOSTA/SESTA, web sites that allow users to post public messages can be likely taken away. It's a pretty bad time to be a web site owner.

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

#178
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up. The internet is deeply democratic, maybe anarchic -- whatever rules I want my machine to follow it follows. If people generally disagreed with this decision, a viral hosts file would roll it back. (I don't think this so alarming a case that it will spa…

Phone numbers take you to an IMEI, which is looked up in some table.

no, phone numbers "take you" to index lookup in the SS7 system, which might direct a call to a DID hosted by a voip operator, a DID connected to an ESS5 switch serving POTS/analog dialtone customers, a DID connected to a fractional DS3 and somebody's legacy PBX, or to a mobile phone network and an IMEI.

by no means does a phone number mean that it must always go to a mobile phone network.

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

#179
post #67

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?

since the 800 prefix has been exhausted, there is a pretty healthy secondary resale market in selling 800 numbers that have some recognizable combination of alphnumeric digits.

"as seen on TV" type ads selling kitchen gadgets and such will pay a fairly large amount of money for a "good" 800 DID.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up. The internet is deeply democratic, maybe anarchic -- whatever rules I want my machine to follow it follows. If people generally disagreed with this decision, a viral hosts file would roll it back. (I don't think this so alarming a case that it will spa…

Phone numbers take you to the same phone until... - that person gets a new phone - a hacker politely calls customer support and asks to have a new phone activated on that number - the area code is split and someone else ends up getting the number The phone system has a lookup table too.

In Australia, your phone has zero to do with your number; the SIM card is what “holds” it (not really. And that’s an oversimplification but oh well). And there are no area codes for mobiles.
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