Domains on the blockchain?
France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
141–150 of 232 posts
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#142Somehow, 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.
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Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#143So 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 means we should all ask our registrars what countries' court orders they'll abide by? What happens if Maduro has a Venezuelan court order seizing DolarToday.com?
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#144The 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,…
Your point seems odd in lumping governments together - they can within their own territories act as you suggest but not extraterritorially. It would seem stange to me if France could forcibly assign a number to itself if that number was a US number (eg with a 212 area code).
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
The irony that it was generically named web.com who did this. Why should they keep their name, they don't own the web?
He should team of with Tim Berners Lee, and get the creator of the internet to claim he owns the rights to Web.com ...
So it should really be web.co.uk, or web.ac.uk, or web.gb, or web.ch or web.ac.ch or something 8) Sir Tim is a Brit and we have two TLDs uk and gb and of course Sir Tim was working at CERN in Switzerland (.ch) when he started the www thing.
Sir T only invented the www. The internet as such was invented by an American agency - ARPA/DARPA.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
why? nissan.com is owned by Mr. Uzi Nissan so there is a reasonable defense that he has a justifiable claim to the domain. seems a lot more clear cut than this.
So you're saying that if the owner of france.com was a Mr. James France, the French government wouldn't have done the same thing?
They might have. No definitive answer to that alternate timeline.
If his name was France, his use of the domain would have been more defensible(depending on what he was doing with the domain).
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#147I'm surprised the article didn't mention the value of the domain. I used to work for a domain name marketplace where we sold kittens.com for $6 million dollars. France.com has to be worth a few million. Painful.
I can't detect if you're joking but that seems pretty messed up. I guess from the looks of it today, kittens.com didn't turn a profit?
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#148https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-names I have read the entire judgement and beside the fact you can not register the name of a country, he had not also the right to register a trademark from the beginning.
ICANN was formed in 98. He bought the site in 94.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#149The 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?
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
He should team of with Tim Berners Lee, and get the creator of the internet to claim he owns the rights to Web.com ...
So it should really be web.co.uk, or web.ac.uk, or web.gb, or web.ch or web.ac.ch or something 8) Sir Tim is a Brit and we have two TLDs uk and gb and of course Sir Tim was working at CERN in Switzerland (.ch) when he started the www thing. Sir T only invented the www. The internet as such was invented by an American agency - ARPA/DARPA.
Was Al Gore for Darpa at the time? lol