The term "jurisdiction" has various definitions in law, but for our purposes here we can say it is the power of some legal body to exercise its authority over a person or subject matter or territory. In the Internet today, it is territory that gives rise to many major issues. As in real estate, what matters in jurisdiction is "location, location, location". When the Internet and trademark rights began to intersect, it quickly became apparent that traditional concepts of the jurisdiction of courts and legislatures would be seriously strained by situations where a registrant in one country could use a registrar in a second country to register a domain name in yet a third country. more
In Ian Flemming's Thunderball M sends 007 to the Bahamas on a hunch that SPECTRE is hiding something there. Well, it's been our hunch for a while that the Bahamas "office" for the Registrar Internet.BS does not exist. Now we have confirmation of such. It has been documented in an explosive undercover expose by LegitScript that Internet.BS address as stated could not be verified, could not accept mail, and that the business itself could not actually be found in the Bahamas. more
We have posted our support of the WHOIS Policy Review Team Report with two important comments. First, on page 79 of the report it is confirmed that the RAA is unenforceable on WHOIS inaccuracy (we wrote about this while at the last ICANN meeting) because the language of RAA 3.7.8 has no enforcement provision. It is now time for ICANN to confirm this problem officially. more
This may or may not come as a shock to some of you, but ICANN's contract with the Domain Name Registrars, in terms of WHOIS inaccuracy is not enforceable. Bear with me. The ability of ICANN to enforce against a Registrar who fails to correct or delete a domain with false WHOIS does not exist. more
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently issued a detailed press release regarding Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) cases for which it provided arbitration services in 2011 and, once again, the number of WIPO filings was up. According to WIPO: "In 2011, trademark holders filed a record 2,764 cybersquatting cases covering 4,781 domain names with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (WIPO Center) under procedures based on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), an increase of 2.5% and 9.4% over the previous highest levels in 2010 and 2009, respectively." Yet that's an incomplete picture. more
When a sniper ends the life of soldier Paul Bäumer in Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," a laconic situation report from the frontlines recounts an unusually quiet day. In the grand scheme of things, nothing worth reporting has happened. Reading David Kravets' recent article in Wired brought this upsetting ending to mind. U.S. authorities taking down individual domains based on copyright infringement charges is the online equivalent of Remarque's allied snipers: picking off the occasional domain - for better or worse - has little effect on the overall situation. more
One fine night in November 2011 I got an opportunity to get my hands dirty, working on a project for the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). They were planning to seize a bunch of computing assets in New York City that were being used as part of a criminal empire that we called "DNS Changer" since that was the name of the software this gang used to infect a half million or so computers. more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office currently does not provide Trademark protection services for the Top Level Domain industry, an industry which generates almost $1 Billion in revenues annually in the United States. The Top Level Domain industry is the only legal business class in the United States that is denied constitutionally guaranteed intellectual property protections... The lack of Trademark Protection for the Top Level Domain industry has greatly increased the amount of uncertainty associated with the ICANN Application Process for new Top Level Domains. more
Knowing how long to store your company email can be confusing. For some industries and public companies there are laws dictating how long emails should be kept, but for other companies it is more discretionary. A document retention policy can help with this. Deciding which emails to keep and for how long - and then most importantly, sticking to your policy - will be looked on more favourably should you find yourself justifying missing email evidence to a judge. more
It would be reasonable to assume that your employer is archiving your email communications. But what about your personal emails, texts, phone calls and Facebook posts. Are these really private? Not for long, if the UK government has its way. It has been reported that its new anti-terror plan, if passed, would require Internet providers and phone companies to store all online communications by UK citizens for one year. more
Mid-January 2012 marked a major inflection point for digital copyright policy in the United States... Yet no one involved with Congressional interaction on either side of the issue believes it has been sidetracked for long, and "Hollywood" and "Silicon Valley" are both plotting their next moves in this high-stakes game to further define the responsibilities and potential liabilities... The resolution of this dispute will determine the ability of Internet services to move to "the cloud"... more
Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight, or CRIDO, released a plan they called a "peacemaker" three days before the Jan. 12th, 2012 launch, which would allow brands to begin the ICANN application process but would allow organizations and companies the opportunity to place their brand names, without cost, on a temporary "do not sell" list. ICANN so far has not responded to the "do not sell" list, and CRIDO is getting restless and threatening lawsuits. more
I, for one, have been a proponent of new gTLDs from the early days of their policy development process within ICANN. I always believed that the existing gTLDs -- and mainly the .com space -- have created artificial scarcity, which is primarily responsible for much of the cybersquatting and the abuse trademarks experience. I do not share the same fears as those who argue that new gTLDs will create intolerable levels of cybersquatting or will necessitate defensive registrations from brand and trademark owners alike. more
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its defeat call attention to a delicious irony in public discourse on Internet governance. Even those who don't want the Internet to be an exception from traditional forms of regulation and law are forced to admit that something new and exceptional must be done to bring it under control, such as massive departures from traditional concepts of territorially bounded sovereignty through the use of in rem jurisdiction. more
"While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries," says Michael Geist in a blog post today. Geist writes: "With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11 ..." more
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