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As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

thedomains.com

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Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#31
post #28
post #15

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.

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"?

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#32
Scenario:

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.)

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#33
post #9

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."

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. What makes you so mad towards them?

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.

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#34
post #15

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.

I heard it didn't gain support due to name squatters. The migration path to a decentralized solution is the challenge.

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#35

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 b…

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).

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#36

Scenario: 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 wi…

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.

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#37

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 b…

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).

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.

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#38
post #34
post #15

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.

I heard it didn't gain support due to name squatters. The migration path to a decentralized solution is the challenge.

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.

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#39

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 b…

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...

Re: As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign

#40
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

Yes. So what?
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