Domain Hording Illegal?

[interactive]

I was talking to my uncle today, and he said that I guess a law passed back in 2000 made "domain hording" illegal. I have no reason not to believe him, but was wondering if anyone had any additional information about this law?

[Mark]

I think you are refering to this: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,32805,00.asp

I haven't heard anything lately on the issue, but I don't think it is illegal since many companies hold and sell expired domains.

Personally, I think domain squatters should be drug into the street and shot :mad:

[interactive]

I agree with you there Mark. What really irratates me though, is for example say I want the domain lamedomainthatsucks.com (just an example). It's a low traffic domain with no real potential. Well I contact the owner (like I said this is just an example but has happened to me), give him a reasonable price (around $1200, again just an example). He replies back with something out of this world (around $50k). Now I need he's in business to make money. But personally I don't think that should be considered business, more like high way robbery.

That article is sort of what I'm talking about. My uncle was telling me about a interesting story with the domain SoundBlaster.com. As most of you should know Creative Lab's makes the SoundBlaster series. A fellow owned the domain SoundBlaster.com, and registered it back in 97. Creative really didn't care for the domain as they wanted to target there market which just wasn't their SoundBlaster series so they stuck with the name CreativeLabs.com. The guy who owned the name started selling advertising on his site (which really didn't have much to do with SoundBlaster). At first Creative bought advertising from him, and he even offered to sell it for $25k. They declined. Then when they saw that he was starting to make good money selling advertising on it, they got upset. As soon as that law was passed, they went to court against him and try to get a judge to release the name to them. The judge saw right through them. He told them that if they wanted the name they would have to pay the owner 3 years worth of income (36 months x average of about $3k a month). They went through with it and ended up buying the name for $108k while if they had jsut broke down and bought it in the first place could have only spent $25k. How stupid some companies really are. Doesn't have much to do with the topic but I thought I'd share.

[Dylan]

A new law was passed the other day making it illegal to register misleading domains with intent.

[interactive]

Ya I heard about that. It was to crack down on those porn sites that use misleading domains. I'm all for that.

[Living Media]

Any links to that law? I'd be interested in taking a look at the exact wording. (Always the bugbear: how can it be used for situations other than the original intent?)

[markblair]

With that new law, I wonder what will end up happening to whitehouse.com? Obviously, that can be very misleading since many people wouldn't know to use .gov for the real government site.

In case you don't know, whitehouse.com is a porn site. Didn't want anyone typing it in without knowing.

[interactive]

Ya I bet you the white house one will be first to get hit.

Lesli: Not sure about any links as I'm looking myself.

[Robert]

Well than HHO is wrong. It says "HOSTHIDEOUT", meaning that us, HOSTS, can come and HIDE OUT. So misleading!

[interactive]

I know you're joking robert (err I think ;)) but it applies to adult sites.

[Living Media]

Originally posted by interactive:
Ya I bet you the white house one will be first to get hit.

...and I'll bet Ashcroft will relish putting that site out.

Isn't whitehouse.com some kind of parody / satire site, rather than porn? (I thought I remembered it being something along the lines of Onion or Landover Baptist - now that you typed in that caution, Robert, I'm afraid to take a look and see if my memory is accurate or not.)

Though whitehouse.net is clearly just some people messing around with a domain name.

[markblair]

Originally posted by Living Media:
Isn't whitehouse.com some kind of parody / satire site, rather than porn?

Not the last time I checked ... um, I mean, not from what I hear. Yeah, that's it. :baghead:

[interactive]

Lesli, you're talking about Whitehouse.org

[Living Media]

!!! That's it. I knew it was one of the alternative "original" TLDs - but I was afraid to try them all ;->. Thanks, Robert.

Actually...were .com / .net / .org / .mil / .gov the original five, or were there fewer to start out with? Just curious.

[Franky]

I thought there are six "originals": .com / .net / .org / .gov / .mil / .edu ???

[suppleSupport]

Yup .edu's were around way back in the 80's

[allan]

Originally posted by Franky:

I thought there are six "originals": .com / .net / .org / .gov / .mil / .edu ???

There was one orginal TLD: .ARPA

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0819.txt

Next, the DDN and CSNET domains were added:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0881.txt


The modern set of TLDs was not released until 1984:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0920.txt

These included:

ARPA
GOV
EDU
COM
MIL
ORG

NET was not added as a TLD until a few years later.

[nameslave]

Don't forget we have .int as well! :)

Originally posted by interactive:

I was talking to my uncle today, and he said that I guess a law passed back in 2000 made "domain hording" illegal. I have no reason not to believe him, but was wondering if anyone had any additional information about this law?
Are you sure your uncle was not referring to the notorious DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)?

Originally posted by Mark:

Personally, I think domain squatters should be drug into the street and shot :mad:
As I have posted elsewhere, those who buy and sell and hold domain names are engaging in a legitimate business just like anyone who profits from real properties. It's a cruel reality but a fact of life that downtown Manhattan office space and apartments are extremely expensive; and those who are LATE to the show have to resort to the suburban/uptown area for either lower rent or more rooms.

Cybersquatters should be confined to those who intentionally register domain names that clearly belong to specific entities and blackmail them for unreasonable, higher-than-market prices. This is clearly unethical and sometimes illegal. But even then, domain names COST (at least since 1995) and squatting is not an appropriate term.

By the way, the latest bill (actually it's an amendment to a totally unrelated child protection bill) passed by the U.S. Congress that criminalize using so-called "misleading" domain names to drive traffic to sexually explicit website is more a by-product of the current political climate; and going after whitehouse.com is clearly a violation of the First Amendment. (Yeah, I know I'm a liberal.)

[markblair]

Yes, but whitehouse.com can be very misleading. To the average Internet user, they may think that is actually the site for the home where the U.S President resides. Of course during the Clinton years it would have been hard to distinguish if that was false.

A bigger problem for that site is that they used to have a backdrop of the actual White House behind their images. To me, that just helps the government that may be trying to prove they are deceptive.

[Living Media]

Thanks for the history. I'd forgotten about the .edu TLD, and didn't know the total history.

This latest move with the domain names is interesting. It's passed by the US government, isn't it? So what about people who "horde" domain names in Canada? The UK? What's going to happen when some big business decides that some individual or small business has a domain name that -=they=- want, and they try to enforce this law, only to have the person say "I'm not subject to your laws, I'm not a citizen of your country"? Plus - isn't there already a domain appeals process in place, and didn't some international body put it there, precisely to combat abusive cybersquatting?

[interactive]

Originally posted by markblair:

Yes, but whitehouse.com can be very misleading. To the average Internet user, they may think that is actually the site for the home where the U.S President resides. Of course during the Clinton years it would have been hard to distinguish if that was false.


Good crack ;). I'm sure millions of school kids everyday hit whitehouse.com when they are searching (not purposely).

Originally posted by markblair:
A bigger problem for that site is that they used to have a backdrop of the actual White House behind their images. To me, that just helps the government that may be trying to prove they are deceptive.

But honestly Nameslave, there's a difference between freedom of speech and breaking the law. I would not have a problem with it (I oppose porn anyways but thats another story), if they would do it in a more legit way. As I said earlier I'm sure there are tons of school kids who accidently hit it.