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The Internet Technology

ICANN Wants To Change Rules For GTLDs 127

An anonymous reader writes "The May 10th deadline for comments on the .net registry agreement renewal has arrived with new domain name dispute changes that aid corporations. Instead of UDRP, the new agreement proposes adding the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) process to the .net TLD. The URS is a quick $200 process for a trademark holder to disable and take ownership of a domain. URS also reduces the panel size from 1-3 people to a single person. You can still comment on the proposal by sending an email to ICANN (net-agreement-renewal@)."
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ICANN Wants To Change Rules For GTLDs

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  • Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @11:52AM (#36084876)

    So it only takes $200 and a single bribe to take someone's domain. Thats efficiency!

    • by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      $200? There must be countries where it's cheaper than that to register a trademark. And since it's a global TLD, there wouldn't be any bias towards accepting US trademarks over Albanian ones, would there?

    • I would be more inclined to call it the efficient dismantling of the free web.

  • Incoming department of homeland security, protectin us for the terrrists.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Big government looking out for big business. The little guy is fu#k@d over.

      • by qubezz ( 520511 )
        The Internet community reclaiming the Internet from domain squatters and registrars that scarf up expired domain names that should go back into the wild, just so they can show backpack girl [istockphoto.com] and keyword spam, and extort money from potential domain name users.
      • Re:We're doomed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dakameleon ( 1126377 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @06:57PM (#36089006)

        The little guy was always fucked over. You're just hearing about it these days because they don't worry about hiding it.

    • What if we don't want to be protected! My state's economy is largely dependent on tree-hugging turrrists. Oh...wait a second.
  • Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Catnaps ( 2044938 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @11:57AM (#36084914)
    So now people like Sony can just slap this on, for example, the domain Geohotz was using and it's done- no more website for you. Anti-Sony forum? Bam, shut down. You get my drift. Thanks guys, that's a well thought-out and simply great idea. *facepalm*
    • Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mldi ( 1598123 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @12:03PM (#36084966)
      Exactly. Welcome to the new age of creating dummy corporations just to trademark them and seize a certain domain, just because they can or because it'd be vastly cheaper than buying the domain from the owner.

      Thanks guys. Now I can't register shit on .net without running the risk of being taken over by someone claiming a trademark. Makes for solid reliability.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        Oh no! My glennblech.net domain may be at risk for takeover. I wonder what freedom-fighter Glenn Beck thinks about this.
      • It's been advised for as long as I can remember to proactively trademark your domain name. Anybody who's done that previously shouldn't have anything to worry about. The people that do have something to worry about either didn't trademark it or are running fan sites.

        • by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

          How do you register a trademark on a domain?

          Last I check domains covered the globe, your trademark doesn't.

          • If you file in the same country as the registry you're fine. Just because you can access a domain from anywhere in the world, does not mean that you need to have a trademark that covers the whole world. You're not going to have a court in Venezuela or Sweden with the power to issue binding orders on domain registrars operating out of the US. Which has caused a lot of trouble for some European nations with bans on the trade of Nazi memorabilia.

            • by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

              So if I'm in Australia and my Registrar is in the U.S. am I eligible to trademark the domain?

              Verisign being the registry operator of .com and .net are also in the U.S. but .com and .net are officially country independent top level domains.

    • They have been trying for years to take away this guy's [nissan.com] domain. So far, the courts have sided with the rightful owner.

      I suppose the idea now is to take away the site from the first person who had the idea of registering a site with his name and give it to a corporation that happens to have the same name.

  • They made up their minds some time ago that they will sell gTLDs, and come hell or high water that is what they will do. All the reason and logic in the world won't stop this machine.

    The best you can do is find what will replace this broken registry system, and invest in it. Of course, eventually the ICANN idiots will end up in charge of that, and break it, too.
    • by Skapare ( 16644 )

      Of course, eventually the ICANN idiots will end up in charge of that, and break it, too.

      But at least that will give us a few years of freedom on the net. When it happens, rinse, lather, repeat.

    • ICANN Stopped being about the common good many years ago.

      The only goal that ICANN has is to make money for ICANN and the registrars that support it.

      • You almost made me write a new sig, but I'll hold off for now.

        "The only goal that ICANN has is to make money for ICANN and the registrars that support it."

        Let's rework that famous quote:
        "At first I didn't care because I thought it was about a buck for ICANN. Then I discovered the abuse potential but TFA said it was for battling squatters and scammers. I pointed out the potential damage to Your Rights Online but an AC appeared and told me to take off my tinfoil hat. Then the worst case scenario became signed

      • This is the problem with privatisation. If you give something over to a private interests to manage, they will relentlessly manage and re-manage the company in an effort to extract as much remuneration in bonuses,etc for themselves as they possibly can. Instead of simply following their brief and running the quiet, efficient operation they promised you, a private company will cut corners, invent new side businesses, change their brief, and eventually derail the organisation from its original purpose. They w

        • The entire operation that is now ICANN, all its basic briefs and functions, was once run by one man, Jon Postel. Now you can spin it any way you want, but even with the growth of the network since 1994, ICANN should consist of an office with perhaps 20-30 people to perform the same task today. That would be an efficient operation.

          I think you hit the nail on the head there; ICANN is bloated and mismanaged. However I think one could also make an argument that not only is ICANN doing a lot of functions that it didn't do before, it is also doing almost none of the functions it did originally.

          There was a time when if you had a complaint to level against a registrar, you could do it through ICANN. They had the power to strip a registrar of their right to sell domains. Now, ICANN is - as you point out - run by business goons who ca

    • welp, looks like people will be pushing to take control away from ICANN even further. I knew people were working on a replacement DNS system but way to push that along even faster.

      goddamn.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @12:01PM (#36084944)
    If URS really will work the way its described at http://www.newdomains.org/news/New_gTLDs_Uniform_Rapid_Suspension_System_URS [newdomains.org], it's not as bad as the summary suggests.
    • I'm sure this is the last measure [wikipedia.org] that will ever be taken to make the seizing of domains by special interests easier.
    • Have you read parts of the ICANN PDF (second link from this overview page [thedomains.com])? Start on page 25, but pay attention to page 29. First, your domains are frozen by the registry, and your registrar is obligated to freeze your whois information. You have two weeks to respond -- hopefully you don't receive email at a frozen domain! Also, hope that the authoritative nameservers any of your domains (URS targeted or not) use are not frozen!

      The UDRP process was more transparent, often used larger panels of arbiters, and

  • by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @12:06PM (#36084986) Homepage

    It's time to change the whole basis of domain trust relationships. Or, in other words, let's try again to establish a completely separate domain infrastructure.

    This is fully possible because there is nothing in the design of the internet protocols that confers power to ICANN and it's corporate teat suckers to own the domain name space. That trust relation exists in a combination of what domain name server each computer chooses to use (in /etc/resolv.conf for Unix/Linux users), and the root zone hints file in the domain name server itself.

    Oh, but wait ... the nay-sayers will argue that this will fragment the internet.

    And I agree, it will fragment the internet. And that's a GOOD THING. Fragmenting the internet would mean we don't have to deal with corporate B.S. so much. This would then be the people's network. Let the corporates and all their loony lawyer types talk to themselves over the corporate network. We don't want to be bound by stupid rules (like trademarks, patents, and copyrights) that give others the power to take even our very thoughts away from us.

    Just start a whole new root zone. Start over with the domain name space. Ban "dot com" entirely (or more precisely, leave "dot com" to the trademark peddlers).

    • Just start a whole new root zone.

      No, roots are proven to be broken, can be taken over, and will attract power/abuse. Figure out something distributed - you've got a whole Internet to work with.

  • We should be willing to allow some title line flexibility in order to properly designate acronyms. You, me, and every salivating spammer with deep pockets all know that ICANN has been calling it gTLD for a long time now.

    Say goodbye to your mailbox, and hello to higher prices for internet access (and all forms of internet business), once the gTLDs go up for sale to the general public.

    Of course, if you know how to get in on the .viagra domain first, you could make some quick cash for yourself - though
  • Nobody should even think about disabling a domain for trademark claims until or unless a court of law where the trademark was registered issued an order that effect or a finding that the domain was actually violating the trademark. One or even three people working for the TLD or ICANN aren't qualified to interpret and apply trademark law. Arbitrarily re-assigning domains is simply bad for business. Also if the domain is older than the trademark it would not be disabled from claims about that trademark.
    • by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      Indeed, it's insane. My old domain was a word trademarked by several different companies in several different countries; how could anyone other than a court decide whether it violated any of their trademarks and, if so, which one of them had the right to it?

  • Saying stuff like "aid corporations" is baiting /. to hate, but it sounds like this will help thwart domain squatter/trolls, which /. is supposed to hate even more.
    • It's giving corporations a nuclear weapon to use on squatters and trolls, except there's no telling who the corporations will actually use it on.

      • Perhaps, but using nuclear weapons against squatters, trolls and spammers has some appeal to me, no matter who does it.
        • Perhaps, but using nuclear weapons against squatters, trolls and spammers has some appeal to me, no matter who does it.

          Say that after you find yourself in the house next to the squatter (or the city next to them, for that matter). If we give them a tool to use against "the bad guys" they will simply redefine who "the bad guys" are every time they want to use it. Or do you trust them not to abuse this power in pursuit of their corporate anti-consumer agendas? Have you been paying attention to Sony lately?

  • I think corporations are reasonably well protected already. But what about the average person who just wants to register a domain that is taken by a squatter, without having to go through the time and expense of obtaining a trademark?

    • That's not squatting. And even if you applied for a trademark after the fact, (theoretically) it holds no water in the UDRP process.

      Bottom line is if someone else registered the domain first, then you can either make him/her an offer to buy it, or pick another one. Similar to real estate, domain names are property and operate under the concept of capitalism.

      • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        That's not squatting.

        What isn't squatting?

        Similar to real estate, domain names are property and operate under the concept of capitalism.

        Domain names are IP [wikipedia.org] not RP [wikipedia.org]. Economically speaking, it is very different from real estate. Real estate is finite, expensive, and owned permanently unless transferred. Domain names are infinite, cheap, and are only available for rent.

        It seems like almost every English dictionary word is registered as a domain right now. Any domain that expires is immediately snatched up by squatters. This is an unfortunate problem.

        And even if you applied for a trademark after the fact, (theoretically) it holds no water in the UDRP process.

        The UDRP [wikipedia.org] process is almost exclusively based on trademarks. While I'm

        • That's not squatting.

          What isn't squatting?

          Simply put, squatting is limited to registering vreizon.com then putting up cell phone ads. Wanting cars.com just because you want it, doesn't make the owner a squatter (even if the domain is parked or has no content). Nor is the person who registers a domain, then someone else comes along and files a trademark on the term for UDRP purposes.

          Similar to real estate, domain names are property and operate under the concept of capitalism.

          Domain names are IP [wikipedia.org] not RP [wikipedia.org]. Economically speaking, it is very different from real estate. Real estate is finite, expensive, and owned permanently unless transferred. Domain names are infinite, cheap, and are only available for rent.

          It seems like almost every English dictionary word is registered as a domain right now. Any domain that expires is immediately snatched up by squatters. This is an unfortunate problem.

          I was speaking in terms of how the courts view domains:
          http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-223597.html [cnet.com]

          More recently, where all this is headed:
          http://www.domainnamenews.com/ [domainnamenews.com]

          • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

            Simply put, squatting is limited to registering vreizon.com then putting up cell phone ads.

            Right, that's exactly the situation I was talking about. I am confused because you said "That's not squatting" and I am trying to figure out what it was I said that is not squatting.

            I was speaking in terms of how the courts view domains: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-223597.html [cnet.com] [cnet.com]

            Good link: so was I. That court ruling states that domains names are intellectual property, not real property. The relevant difference here is that ICANN's rules forbid squatting, whereas squatting on real property is well-protected by the law.

            As for the trademark thing, do not misunderstand what a registered trademark means.

  • .NET (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @12:31PM (#36085322)

    Microsoft should pay the $200 and seize the entire TLD.

  • I'm getting really sick and tired of ICANN. They used to have good people who actually cared about the network like 15 years ago. Today all such members of this organization who matter have long since fled. Now it is just about policies to maximize profits at the expense of the network. I wouldn't be surprised if they felt like they needed to make this change to counter the ill effects of their insane TLD policy.
  • ICANN HAZ YOUR DOMAIN
  • This is pretty well silly. Trademark is common law, registered, international, national and just about every other sort of monkey court in existence. ICANN may be opening themselves up to some real silly nastiness. The sort of thing they will richly deserve if they go through with this.
  • So, if you have a personal domain, get a trademark out on that domain before some bastard corp tries to take it off of you.

    How much does a trade mark cost anyhow?

  • Was that something that had significance back before people found their information through search engines and used URL shorteners to provide compact links to people? Did people actually type significant domain names into address bars? How quaint.

  • If you haven't sent an email to net-agreement-renewal(at)icann(dot)org, you are not doing your duty as netizens!

    So send one, already!
  • This will merely speed the process. I had a domain I was going to use as a sales site..I bought it and let it set for a while before doing the whole ecom thing. In the meanwhile, a company in a completely unrelated industry offered me some crumbs for the domain..I replied with what I thought was fair, then began receiving the lawyer letters, trademark litigation, and eventually had the domain ICANNed away. The bottom line is, unless you have the legal team, any domain you own can be taken away. Period.
  • Screw it. Let's see them try to trademark a dotted quad, or an IPv6 unicast addy. Too much to memorize? Most of us can run our own damned domain server on our LAN, and bypass this ICANNdy assed scheme. Hell, I'll hard code stuff into my hosts file if I have to. Or use a third party DNS, preferably with non-ICANN tlds, that are stable and not liable to being boarded by cutlass wielding trademark lawyers. (Arrr!)

    If they wreck it, we can fork DNS. We can even ignore it. The Internet, so long as it isn't redesi

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