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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

#161

Post by CodeWriter23 »

Silhouette wrote: post #43
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,…

The courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead they are like telephone numbers The implications of the current legal position you describe are troubling. These virtual identifiers, whether it's a phone number or an email address or a domain name or a Twitter handle, are now the dominant way we contact someone. Physical addresses that are inherently tied to their current occupant (and t…

> The implications of the current legal position you describe are troubling.

No more so than actual real estate being seized by governments under Eminent Domain laws.

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

#163

Post by brownbat »

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,…

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 spawn a movement, but that response is available.)

.onion and namecoin and various others are a wholecloth attempt at this.

But it goes farther than hosts and alt roots. One of the unique properties of the internet is that if it gets overburdened with cruft people don't like, we can just build it from scratch on top of existing systems.

There are infinite namespaces. You could build a copy of the Internet that's the same but with no Facebook. You could build a copy of the internet where all domains are mapped right to left. You could build a copy of the internet that only hosts MUDs.

Adoption isn't guaranteed, or even likely, but maybe widespread adoption is part of the problem you're running from in the first place.

Here's to the dystopia of unregulatable and unusable internet fragmentation. Some pros, some cons.

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

#164

Post by TipVFL »

gtirloni wrote: post #147
TipVFL wrote: post #85

I'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?

Not joking. Single word domains under the .com tld are worth a lot, especially very common words.

I don't know that kittens.com was ever turned into anything, they may have just bought it betting on it being worth even more in the future.

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

#165

Post by gtirloni »

TipVFL wrote: post #164
gtirloni wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not joking. Single word domains under the .com tld are worth a lot, especially very common words. I don't know that kittens.com was ever turned into anything, they may have just bought it betting on it being worth even more in the future.

That's impressive. I need to re-calibrate my assumptions about this. Thanks!

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

#166

Post by mr_toad »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #6

I think he will win according to US law. At least there's no bad faith, simply a site about "France"

I doubt he’ll get anywhere by suing the French government. They’ll either just ignore him, or assert sovereign immunity.

He’d probably have better luck suing web.com or the new registrar in a US court and forcing them to hand it back.

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

#167

Post by OrganicMSG »

brownbat wrote: post #163
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,…

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…

I think that a renaming is something that will happen. The current DNS mutual hallucination has an insane network effect, but I think something else (fuck knows what, could be a toy, could be a tool, could be a protocol), with it's own naming convention will eventually become wildly popular and then make DNS obsolete.

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

#168

Post by jolmg »

brownbat wrote: post #163
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,…

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…

> 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.

Not if I take my sim card and put it in another phone, or call my service provider to cancel my service and then they reuse the number for a new client.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but phone numbers, domain names, and ip addresses are all references that requiere looking up in some table (think routing tables for ip addresses and, I imagine, phone numbers).

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

#169

Post by phyzome »

brownbat wrote: post #163
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,…

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.

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

#170

Post by ubernostrum »

Spare_account wrote: post #122
CyberDildonics wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the government seizing those too?

They could . Should they be able to?

Well, the Supreme Court just reinforced the difference between types of property, and upheld the idea that a government-granted artificial privilege doesn't have the same set of rights and due process attached to it that other types of property do.

Trademarks, being in the same boat, could in theory be revoked with less due process.

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