Several people pointed out that although the suit still hasn't appeared in PACER, copies of the complaint are available online, including this one [PDF] at Lextext. Having read it, I'm rather underwhelmed... I do not purport to be a lawyer (nor do I usually play one on the net), but it's hard to see how the facts, which are not in serious dispute, would support any of these charges. more
This post is based on the scenario that a trademark.tld domain name is registered with a UK ICANN accredited registrar, (they have an exclusive UK jurisdiction clause in their contracts), the trademark.tld criticism website located at that domain name is strictly non-commercial, the servers are located in the UK, and the registrant is a British citizen. In the above circumstances, the corporations and/or their lawyers are taking a big risk when they use the Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policies (UDRP) in order to silence criticism at trademark.tld. more
In a recent press release, Los Angeles law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner says it's filed a class action suit against Network Solutions and ICANN for front running. (If you tuned in late, NetSol admits that if you query a domain name on their web site, they will speculatively register it so that it's only available through NetSol for five days, at their above market price.) This is a very peculiar suit... For one thing, it's hard to see how the total class damages would be large enough to be worth a suit... more
Day two of Domain Pulse 2008 last Friday (see review of day one) focused on online security issues giving the techies amongst us details of security issues, and the more policy-orientated amongst us something to chew on in a few other presentations. Kieren McCarthy, these days of ICANN, also gave some insights into the drawn out sex.com drama with more twists and turns than the average soap opera has in a year! And Randy Bush outlined the problems with IPv6. Among other presentations... more
Around 350 attendees came from Russia in the east to Ireland in the west, as well as a few people from elsewhere around the globe, to attend Domain Pulse 2008 in Vienna on February 21 and 22. Day one's focus was internet governance. The future of the DNS was one of the key issues addressed by Michael Nelson of Georgetown University in Washington DC, with domain names becoming less important, but their numbers still increasing, as online access by a myriad of devices skyrockets connect -- everything from the television, refrigerator, washing machine, pets, sprinkler systems and cars. more
A new book by David Lindsay, an academic at Monash University's Law School and a widely published expert on internet law, intellectual property law and privacy, has recently been published. ...In this path-breaking work the author examines the extent to which principles of national trade mark law have been used in UDRP decisions. It will be essential reading for anyone, whether academic or practitioner, interested in internet law, intellectual property, and e-commerce law. more
In a message posted to the ICANN GNSO list, Avri Doria forwarded along a most interesting document from Neustar, who runs the .biz domain... Neustar proposes to change their registrar agreement so that each registrar will only get credit for deletions of 10% of their new domains, with a few minor exceptions for tiny registrars and bulk registrations due to one-time mistakes. They say they expect Afilias to propose the same change for .info. more
February 4th 2008 will be the day the repotting of the internet finally starts. A milestone of sorts for some people who spent a good part of the last five years getting us this far. It should now be finally possible for a IPv6 only device to have a chance to communicate on the Internet. Indeed, today, IPv6 address information is not included in most root DNS servers. Some good write-ups are already appearing on the subject covering the relevance of this development... Why get excited as there are practically no IPv6 only devices yet, some will bemoan. Well, one can hear a distant rumbling of such devices coming, alongside the mobile internet... more
At last week's meeting, the ICANN board uncharacteristially did something and voted to make their fee of 20 cents per domain-year nonrefundable. They expect this to stop both domain tasting and NSI's frontrunning, which it certainly will. It's not clear when this change will go into effect, but it might be within a month. more
Time Warner Cable's planned experiment with tiered charging for Internet access has generated a flurry of coverage in the blogsphere, but no new insights (at least that I've seen). The primary problem ISP's complain about is that 5% of their customers use 90% of the available bandwidth and when they examine this traffic, it's mostly peer-to-peer file sharing... more
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